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When Brian Fallon writes, he's constantly being watched. There's Paul, Tom, B.B. and George, among others, looking over his shoulder. And yes, that's McCartney, Waits, King, and Harrison. You see, there's a room in Fallon's house where he does most of his writing. (When's up there, he's always dressed as if he's going to work. No slippers or pajamas. But that's another story.) And in that room Fallon, also singer of The Gaslight Anthem, hung pictures of some of his songwriting idols. Fallon purposely put them high, close to the ceiling, so he always feels like he's being watched, even judged. He looks to them for inspiration and affirmation. He'll even carry on the occasional conversation, imagining how they might react to a line he's written.

Besides songwriting, what kind of writing do you do?

Not too much. I can put together a song, but my English is awful when it comes to writing. The written word is my greatest enemy. I can't even structure a sentence the way it's supposed to be and then find the correct punctuation. This is not a school problem, because I actually did well in school. But when I left, the spirit left me.

I'd love to write a book or do something else besides songwriting, but I've never had the time because I find punctuation completely daunting. Laughs. So because of that, I'm reluctant to write anything other than songs.

That could be the best answer I've ever gotten to that question. No one has even confessed a fear of punctuation.

Benny (Horowitz), The Gaslight Anthem's drummer, is good at that kind of stuff. He knows where commas go and he knows what to capitalize. But he also corrects my mispronunciations constantly. One time I pronounced "hyperbole" as "HY-per-bole," as he stopped me mid sentence to correct me. I was like, "Dude, I just read it and I've never said it before. How do you expect me to know how to pronounce it?" Laughs. Or we'd be riding on the bus, everyone would be quiet, and he'd turn to me out of the blue and say, "I don't understand how you can write lyrics, which to me are pretty good, but you can't spell or use punctuation properly. You write like a caveman." So he makes me feel like Frankenstein. All that shame. Laughs. I was like, "Dude, you could've let that one go. Because I'm never using that word again."

I've always wanted to be someone like Charles Dickens. I'd think He seems cool. He doesn't even write music; he just writes songs on the page. What if I did that? But then I'd never find an editor who could put up with me.

Does one mark of punctuation frighten you the most?

The comma. To me, the comma is a pause. It's a rest. When you're looking at sheet music, and it says, "One and two and three and rest four," that's a comma. I see the comma as a musical mark in writing, which is the problem. I probably use far too many. I get the colon: that's a hard stop. But I see the comma as a musical note, which means I'm probably putting it in places where it shouldn't be.

Back to the writing: do you do much journaling?

No, that stuff drives me insane. Writing down feelings is too tedious. I don't want to read it later. I know how I feel; I don't need to tell myself how I feel. But I think it's more related to my habit of not wanting to keep much stuff around, even when it comes to tangible things. Then the problem later is that I don't remember anything. I go through problems over and over, knowing I've been there before and wanting to understand how I solved them. A journal would probably help me with that.

That's why you need a journal. Songwriters always tell me about the filled notebooks they have stuffed away somewhere.

Really? With me, it's in the trash. At the end of the record, all the songs that didn't get finished go right in the trash. Gone.

Why?

Because the ground has been cursed. If you can't finish a song or if you finish it and it isn't very good, that's unhallowed ground. It must be disposed of immediately. Gone from the living. Back when you and I first talked seven years ago, I didn't think about songwriting as much. But now, I think about it all the time. The job is different. I'm 38 and I've got two kids. There's not a lot of time for musing about. I want to make sure that I'm efficient. I've got diapers and school to deal with.

Has having kids made you a more disciplined writer?

One hundred percent. It's made my songwriting process now more of a job, a routine. I show up every day at 9am like work when I'm writing. I'm not writing all the time. I do like Bob Dylan says: you do the living, then you do the writing. But when I write, it's all about waking the kids up, getting them ready, making coffee, then going upstairs to sit and write.

Can you sit and write for long stretches?

A journal would be helpful here because I'd have material to draw from. But I usually sit down, and something will come right away. I'll work on that, then the ideas will dry up. So I just sit and think. I rarely mix the guitar with my lyric writing. If the guitar is there and I have a little bit of a melody, I'll start working on the lyrics. But as soon as I start working on the lyrics, the guitar is done. I can't do both. So a lot of my writing process involves just staring into space and humming.

I recently read an interview with Paul McCartney where he referred to songwriting as "fun." At that time, I was going through a real drought, so I didn't see it as fun. He saw it as a crossword puzzle: you just have to start and then find the next piece. So it was then that I realized that songwriting can never be about waiting for the lightning bolt of inspiration. It's like a Rubik's Cube: you play around until something happens.

When you sit down to write, then, you aren't sitting down with a specific idea.

Yeah. Very rarely do I sit down with a specific idea. It's mostly all about making it up as I go. I sit down with nothing. I have to admit: it's not great. But I've used books and writing prompts before, and those don't work.

So when those ideas finally come, where do they originate?

I honestly don't know. There's not even a routine place I go to draw those ideas from. I don't write down what people around me say, I don't write down things I read. Again, that's probably not ideal, and that's where journal writing would be handy. It's odd how I start from absolutely nothing. Sometimes I'll think back to a rhythm or beat, or I'll think about what I'm trying to convey emotionally. Words start to form then, but it's actually often pictures or images. I think back to a picture I remember and think That feels like what I'm trying to say. Or it might be about What do I feel right now?

Does a certain emotion trigger your writing impulse?

It's definitely the us songs. The songs where it's you and I, doing something together. Where are we going? Those are the songs I get behind the easiest. When it's us, it becomes about something greater than yourself. And that's pretty easy to write about because it's about a common struggle.

Are you writing these songs from a sense of optimism, or is it easy to write from a position of melancholy?

When I get down, it's too hard to write. There's no motivation. It's the worst. Everyone talks about going through a difficult time and writing a record to help feel better, but I just can't do it. I need some external motivation to write.

How does your writing process typically start? If I'm hearing you correctly, you don't typically start the process with a musical instrument.

Not really. It's old hat. I've gotten that part down after so many years; I know where my hands want to go before I even sit down with the guitar. It's almost like a trap, so I don't want to get lulled into doing the same thing every time with those chords. It typically starts with a rhythm in my head that dictates where I'll go. I build the music around that. It's tough for me to come up with melodies beforehand; it's much easier for me to frame melodies around the words I already have.

Nils Lofgren told me that playing new instruments is a great way to generate new song ideas.

I could see that. I think Tom Waits said he just grabs stuff around the yard and starts banging on them. But that would be incredibly frustrating to me. The strangeness of it all makes me uncomfortable. I tried it with a mandolin once, and it was clearly above my pay grade.

Do you have any type of songwriting ritual?

There's a room in our house that isn't being used for anything else, so that's where I write. It's the only place I can do it without hearing the kids screaming. Laughs. This room is filled with pictures of great songwriters hanging high on the wall. I did that so that it feels like they're judging me since they're all looking down on me. I remember writing a song for the new record, and about halfway through I looked up, and there were the Beatles, just staring at me. And they had these weird expressions on their faces that I never noticed until that moment. Paul looked like he was snubbing me and George looked intrigued. But John had this smirk, as if to say That's kinda cool.

At the same time, though, if I'm in there and not feeling it, it becomes a place of drudgery that I want to avoid. And that can be hard because I don't want the room to be associated with that feeling. There are times when I'll avoid it for days.

Regarding the ritual, is there anything you need in order to have a productive writing session?

There's nothing I need, but I do have to get dressed. I can't show up to work in my pajamas. I also do something that many songwriters will curse me for: I start a song by recording it at home, and I'll write it as I'm recording it. I do that because I don't have time to remember what the chords are. I have to put it down. I don't have time to lay out the chords, write everything out by hand, then play. I'd rather have everything moving forward at the same time. And when that happens, you gotta have your shoes on! Laughs.

I guess I do have a lot of weird rituals. When I'm learning a guitar part, I do a lot of weird things. Light right now I'm obsessed with Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. I want to learn all his songs. And I don't have my shoes on when I learn his parts, because I don't think he wore his shoes when he wrote this. I don't know why. Laughs. And when I'm writing something a little weird, I gotta put a hat on for some reason.

But back to getting dressed: I have to feel like I'm going to work. A lawyer wouldn't show up to a law firm in pajamas, right?

I assume that slippers wouldn't cut it.

Definitely not. I do not respect the slipper. I hate it. It's too casual and comfortable. You're not supposed to be comfortable as an artist.

Interesting you say that, because a few months ago Robyn Hitchcock told me the same thing. He said, "There can't be that much burning inside of you that you want to write about if you're comfortable. . . . Agitation is necessary. It just makes the writing a bit more lively. That's why people like Sylvia Plath were such vivid writers: they were so agitated."

I love that he said that. Bruce (Springsteen) always says that something must be eating at you. I went to see Tori Amos once, and it was the most intense performance I've ever seen. There was clearly something agitating her that she was squashing every night. When she plays that piano and sings, you can tell that there's a war going on, and she's winning it. That's what writing is about: it's about not laying down and dying.

I've found that songwriters are incredibly particular about their writing utensils. So how do you write: computer or pen/pencil?

Laughs. Dude, I'm about to blow your mind. I do not care at all. I write on whatever is close by. Even a bill sitting on the kitchen table. That happened one time, where I had all these ideas and lyrics written on a hospital bill. I couldn't send it in, so I had to call in the payment. It really depends on what I'm writing; a typewriter is good if I'm trying to type out something with rhythm. You can hit the keys with that rhythm. When my mind is buzzing and I've got to run up the stairs to get an idea down that's just popped into my head, the computer is the way to go. I think it really depends on the mood I'm in, and how in control I feel.

So what's a pen and paper mood?

On Handwritten, I felt incredibly overwhelmed with where we were at that point. I think in interviews I may have said that we wanted to be the biggest band in the world, but inside I thought things were going way too fast. I felt lost. So I went back to the basics, stripped away the computers. And thought maybe now is the time to just write things down in a book. I still have that book. It's one of the only things I've kept; it's that and every note from the Horrible Crowes record. I wish I had kept my notes from The '59 Sound, but they probably got thrown out of the van somewhere on I-95.

I remember doing a couple of shows with Pearl Jam, and I'd always see Eddie (Vedder) carrying around a notebook everywhere. And he told me that he writes everything down. So I thought I'd try it. But really I have no preference either way.

My mind is blown. You don't even have a favorite pen?

I don't even have a favorite guitar.

Do you have a typewriter?

I do, but I haven't used it in a long time because the ribbon broke. I see these things as just tools. I come from a construction background, where if the hammer broke, you bought a new hammer. I'm not really much of a sentimentalist, but I wish I was.

That does align with what you told me. When you have no use for something anymore, you get rid of it. No old journals lying around for you.

Nope. Every record is a different record for me. I'm probably going to get in trouble for saying this, but when I do that I feel like I'm digging through my own garbage. Yet even as I say that, I know I'm wrong because I remember Bruce saying that one of his best songs took him like 20 years to write. He started it before Greetings From Asbury Park. But for me at least, I feel like I'm carrying the dead when I do that. I purge a lot of stuff on records, so whatever that last record was about, whatever was weighing me down, I don't want to ever bring that stuff back. A record is like an exorcism to me.

On the new record, what was the easiest song to write?

Probably "See You on the Other Side." It wasn't the easiest to play or record, but the quickest to write. It took about 15 minutes. But my favorite song to write was "Little Nightmares." I had so much fun writing it. If you're familiar with some of those bands a little after the Brit Pop period, like The Kooks, where they're almost rapping, that's what I felt like doing. Then I thought of groups like the Beastie Boys and wondered What if I just do something that's super simple and syncopated? I was making it sincere but having a blast changing the scenery with every four measures.

I remembering thinking that it probably has no shot at being successful, but I'm so happy that it's mine and not someone else's.

Did it take a long time to write?

It didn't once I had the confidence to do the sycopated thing because I had never done that before. I'm not trying to rap or anything, but it's still new to me.

There are two songs in karaoke that I'll lose my mind for: "Dance the Night Away" by Van Halen and "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys. I don't care if it's a bar mitzvah or a birthday, I'm jumping on the table and singing it. I've always wanted to have the raw energy that "Sabotage" has. I'm not even sure that "Little Nightmares" has a notable melody, but it's such a groovy song.

Why "Dance the Night Away"?

Because of the break right before David Lee Roth sings, "Oooh, baby baby." I feel like kicking over a table at that break. The joy in songs like that really inspires me. I see the same level of joy in that song that I see in "Born to Run." It's not the same level of writing, but it's one of the few songs that makes me feel like a teenager again.

What song on the new album was the greatest struggle?

There are a few. "Forget Me Not" was a nightmare, even though I love the song. I was so pleased with it, but when we recorded it, we messed around with keys and couldn't figure out what key to sing it in. We re-recorded the song on the second to last day. And I've never ever done that before.

Do you revise your lyrics?

Sometimes. Ted (Hutt, who produced Sleepwalkers) was the first person who ever pushed me to revise my lyrics. In the past, people have told me that my lyrics are my strongpoint and that I don't need to mess with them. But Ted wasn't that way at all. I'd think a song was done and would do a little cheer, and his response was, "Yeah, I don't really get the point." And I'd tell him that the point was NOT the point! I'm describing the point without telling you the point! Here are all these details so that you can form the point! And he'd just say, "Yeah, I'm not hearing that. I think you need to say what you mean." I'd go home and dig and dig and dig. I rewrote so much to get more true.

That can be a struggle because when someone says that, you're initial response is that you can't dig any deeper. When you're the kind of songwriter who writes from the heart and who doesn't really tell stories, people expect you to be real. And it's not easy to be real all the time. What's left to tap?

Is that when you look at the songwriters on your wall for inspiration?

Yeah, that's when I look at Tom Waits or Paul McCartney and think What's the creative way to get yourself out of this hole? I think I've chosen the people on my wall wisely. Paul would choose a melodic and sensible thing to say, but Tom would choose the weirdest thing you would find. So I want to bridge that.

Last question: who are you reading now?

I'm really into Neil Gaiman. When I was younger, I read the Sandman comic books. I'm rediscovering his novels now. It's like The Cure or The Smiths in a book. For a while I went through a phase where I read nothing but the classics. Terribly depressing books like Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations. Then I put those books down and went for the fantasy literature.

http://www.songwritersonprocess.com/blog/2018/2/7/brian-fallon-the-gaslight-anthem

#interview #brian fallon

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chasingferriswheels-blog · 6 years

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Live session at WFUV in New York City, NY (11/30/17).

Listen to the interview here.

Forget Me Not | If Your Prayers Don’t Get to Heaven | Rosemary

#live #interview #brian fallon

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chasingferriswheels-blog · 6 years

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Brian Fallon and Dave Hause’s European Tour matching posters by Ernie Parada! Available at Hellgate Industries.

#tour #brian fallon #dave hause

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chasingferriswheels-blog · 6 years

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Brian Fallon has found his groove.

"Sleepwalkers," Fallon's newest record, shows that the Jersey Shore crooner is at the top of his game and comfortable as a solo artist.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Daily News, Fallon goes into detail on the impact "The '59 Sound" has had on his career, how he has gotten comfortable as a solo artist, and much more.

New York Daily News: When you guys went into the studio to follow up your debut “Sink or Swim” was the plan to try and make a record that sounded polished and different from your debut?

Brian Fallon: When we went in? No (laughs). We actually had never worked with a producer before. The way that it lined up was that we did “Sink Or Swim” on no budget and we did it essentially on our own with a friend of ours who was running the board and would give his opinion every now or then.

When we did “The ‘59 Sound” we were in a real studio in Los Angeles from Side One Dummy that (producer) Ted Hunt had put us in. And we hadn’t ever worked with a producer before, that’s probably the difference between them. I definitely wouldn’t call it polished. It was seven days of recording very quickly, as fast as we could. That was kind of the way it was back then. There was no time for any plans or any kind of… really anything. It was just sort of going at the speed we could go at and try and get everything done.

NYDN: “The ‘59 Sound” gained a lot of steam on the underground message boards of the web, like AbsolutePunk when it came out. If it was released today in the world of streaming services, do you think it would’ve had the same reception?

BF: It’s impossible to say because I don’t think that was the kind of record that was registering in any kind of mass form. A lot of it was word of mouth. A lot of it was on independent blogs and music sites. A lot of it was kids finding it going “this is cool, what’s this?” It sort of went from there and that’s when later on the mainstream media picked it up. It could happen today, meaning it’s possible, but I’m not so sure.

Everything has to line up for something to be successful, it’s not just simply whether it’s good or bad. You have to have a lot of favorable things happen in the process in order for it to actually reach a large number of people. Sometimes timing is one of those things that you can’t plan for. I’m glad we don’t have to do it again (laughs). If I had to put that out now would I be able to manage a career? I have no idea if that would work so I’m glad it did then.

NYDN: You just said timing could play a big part in an album’s success. Do you think you guys got lucky with the timing of “The ‘59 Sound”?

BF: Definitely. You can call it luck. But two, there’s that element that you can’t control — whether the public is ready for it. Whether they are ready to embrace something like that at the time. And that’s not just for us, it goes for any kind of music. So if the public consciousness is primed for, like, Nirvana to come out, then it’s going to come out. If it’s primed for Kendrick Lamar to come out, then that’s what’s going to happen. It’s almost like what resonates with the actual feeling of the people at the time. I think that sort of dictates a lot more of it than whether you had one band have a really catchy song. And that’s what people mostly talk about when they talk about records. “Oh this record’s got to be so catchy. This song’s a hit… blah, blah, blah.” That song isn’t a hit until the public decides that.

For instance, around the same time as “The ‘59 Sound” came out, Florence and The Machine’s EP (“A Lot of Love. A Lot of Blood”) came out with “Dog Days Are Over.” I got turned on to that song when we played together at Glastonbury when Bruce Springsteen came out to play (with The Gaslight Anthem). Two bands after our set was Florence. I checked it out and thought it was amazing. That EP ending up being out for 18 months or so before anything happened and then all of a sudden it was on every commercial on television. How do you explain that? “The ‘59 Sound” and “Dog Days Are Over” came out and they have nothing really in common with each other stylistically. Why did “Dog Days Are Over” take 18 months to get big? That song was just as good versus 18 months later. Because that’s when the public was ready for it.

NYDN: This “59 Sound” 10-year anniversary tour is your first time playing with The Gaslight Anthem since Reading Festival in 2015. How did the decision to get back together go down? Did certain people need persuading or was it a unanimous choice?

BF: We really had a pretty basic straight talk with each other. We’re all adults now and most of us have children and other responsibilities so it’s not quite as roundabout as it used to be. Everything used to be based around “Well how do you feel?” Now there’s less of that and more just “Is this smart?” “Does this do anything to make us feel better about it? Or are we just rehashing something?”

But when this came up we all sort of felt the same about it. We all feel it’s a really good record and none of us would be where we are today, individually or collectively, without the record. We also took into consideration when we were going to stop Gaslight for a while, it was abrupt. A lot of people didn’t get the chance to come out and see us before we were going to stop. And we did that a little bit intentionally because we didn’t want it to be a ticket grab, because that’s usually how those things come across. We’ve been doing it long enough to know that if you announce something like that, people are just going to flood the tickets and try and catch the last time that they might get to see a band. That doesn’t feel like what we’d want.

NYDN: And then you get all the fake reunion tours afterwards

BF: Yeah. I had to think about it because I had a record coming out (“Sleepwalkers) and I wasn’t sure if it was going to come out in the fall of 2017 or in the winter of 2018. I was kind of already on track with that record and then in the middle of last year it was brought up to me: “‘The ‘59 Sound’ is 10 years old next year. We should probably talk about this.”

And I said “wow” but I had to make the decision for myself that was the best. I think that came easier than it would seem.

NYDN: Like you said, you’ve all known each other for a long time. After “Get Hurt” when you guys came to the decision to go on hiatus, was breaking up altogether ever on the table?

BF: It could’ve been on the table, but I think we learned from a lot of mistakes other bands made. They break up altogether only to reinvent themselves on the “jukebox reunion tour” where they play the hits. That just always seems a little bit like fans going “well we all knew that was going to happen, but you guys didn’t?”

I like to have options. I didn’t grow up with too many options so I like to have as many options as I can. I think we all feel that way. It’s best not to say “never.” We knew we needed a break, we didn’t know what else we needed. So when we stopped, we just kind of called it as it was and said this is going to be a break but we’re not breaking up.

That’s the same thing we’re doing now. This record is 10 years old. We kind of abruptly stopped. We think it will be fun to go out and play these shows and we think a lot of people agree with that and want to see it. So we’re going to do that and then beyond that, we’re not going to do anything, because we don’t know what else to do. Until we do, this is what we’re comfortable with so this is what we’ll do.

NYDN: Are you going to announce more dates for “The ‘59 Sound” show. Is there a homecoming Jersey show in the works?

BF: You know I can’t get specific, but there are more that we are going to do later. We’re going to put a little more out there, soon, and then that’ll be it for a while. Actually not for a while. That’s really all that there is.

What I’d said to those wondering (about the tour dates) is to trust your better judgment, people. If you look at them and are going “hey there’s no… you know” just think for a second if that seems right.

NYDN: After “Get Hurt,” what made you release solo music under your name rather than some other moniker?

BF: Actually, I was recently talking to a friend of mine who had brought that up and I probably would’ve just kept doing various band names but she said to me that it might not be a good idea to do that. Because then you have to separate all the songs on which band is on tour when. If you just do it under your own name then you can kind of do whatever you want. Because you’re the thing that’s defining who it is. You’re not stuck with one stylistic thing and you don’t have to worry that this band doesn’t play that band’s songs.

NYDN: New Jersey is present in all of the records you've written, especially the early ones. What did the Red Bank (New Jersey) show in January at Count Basie Theater mean to you?

BF: That’s a theater in my hometown. They hosted really big shows there when I was a kid. So for me to be able to go in there and play is a huge thing. You never get away from that thing in your hometown that it has over you. You don’t outgrow where you come from. To be welcomed back is really the best you can ask for.

I guess sometimes people feel that you’re not the same anymore or that you are not theirs, and it’s a good feeling to know that you are still theirs, no matter what has been done or how much stuff we’ve done. I feel like I’ve still got somewhere I can call home, that I can go back to and play and be received, especially with something new.

I went up there and played piano in front of a big crowd for the first time and I was really happy that it was in my hometown and not somewhere in some weird city that I don’t have any connection to.

NYDN: You included the piano in that set during the performance of the title track on “The ‘59 Sound,” something you’ve never really done.

BF: I’ve been taking lessons for about six months before that. It’s something that I've always wanted to do. The piano is where everything starts and ends. Everything is based off of it. If you understand that, you wind up understanding a lot more in all other instruments. For me, it had always been something important to try and learn.

Also, all the people that I’ve looked up to, from Bruce Springsteen to Tom Waits, they all play the piano. And they all have these beautiful songs that, when I didn’t know how to play piano, you’re locked out of because you can’t do it. I’d have to play them on guitar and some things simply don’t work on the guitar.

It was little tough to start at age 37, because there’s this voice in your head that says “you're too old to do this.” It was really funny to go to music lessons because there were a bunch of kids in my classes. I felt stupid when I started but then I didn’t. No one looked at me funny. I took on the role of student. I wasn’t like “I’m the guy in The Gaslight Anthem, I know Bruce Springsteen, get out of my way!”

I took it as a student. I sat down and I learned “Wonderwall” by Oasis first. Fortunately, I’ve had two teachers that don’t bother me. I asked to learn “Androgynous” by The Replacements and they'd figure it out and then let me be without showing me Chopin and Bach, because I don’t want to know that. I want to know what Tom Waits did. I want to learn to play “The Promise” on piano like the E Street Band does! I want to play “For You” from the Hammersmith bootleg, I don’t want to play Beethoven.

NYDN: Speaking of Springsteen, you covered “Spirit in the Night” at the Red Bank show

BF: The funny thing is, I wanted to learn “The Promise” first. But I hit that road block and couldn’t do it right on the guitar, the chords were too weird. I went to play it on piano, and that was much too difficult.

So then I thought maybe I can do “Spirit in the Night.” I saw a clip of him playing it when he was very young on the piano… but he was still clearly a few years ahead of me on the piano. When I realized I couldn’t do that, I moved it to the guitar.

I really like that song. It’s the early days of Bruce. That always sort of felt like a little bit of a lightning rod to me, musically, because it grounds him at home. And no matter how big he gets you can always go back to those songs on the first record. He talks about Route 88. I know Route 88. That was the whole thing. This is a Jersey song and I love so I did it.

NYDN: With "Painkillers" and now "Sleepwalkers," have you ever have trouble trying to separate your solo sound from that of Gaslight?

BF: Earlier on I think I did. On the last record ("Painkillers") I thought "I have to make this different" because it was so fresh. I didn't have a master plan when this all happened. It wasn't like I knew I was going to make a solo record and that Gaslight was going to go on hiatus and then I'll really shine (laughs).

What actually happened was that I kind of panicked. I felt like I was out of a job. I didn't know what to do. I don't know how to do anything else. I've spent my life playing music. I tried to figure that out as I went on the first record and sort of got it together. I didn't technically have a recording contract when we stopped Gaslight. I didn't have a solo contract so I didn't take for granted that Island Records was going to put out my solo record. I thought they might say no.

But they didn't so I just went with it. So there was definitely a lot more of figuring it out on the first record and a little bit more comfort on this new one. As I've gotten older I've realized the element that sounds like The Gaslight Anthem that's mine is always going to be me. The other three-fourths of it is going to be the other guys. I can't stop doing what I do naturally, whether I'm in The Gaslight Anthem or my own thing. It's just what I do, so I don't worry about separating it that much anymore.

NYDN: There's a heavy R&B influence on "Sleepwalkers," arguably the most on something you've done since (The Horrible Crowes') "Elsie." How did that happen?

BF: It was a timing thing. I felt I had enough of a grasp on it musically to be able to do it. Before I would try and little bits would come out, even on the early Gaslight records. That's not the kind of music you can just sit down and play. I felt like I was ready now to start to grasp it. I felt like I've only just touched the surface on it with this record. It's something I've always wanted to do and I wasn't able to in the past.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/brian-fallon-59-sound-new-album-sleepwalkers-article-1.3813277

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chasingferriswheels-blog · 6 years

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Brian Fallon interview on KTLA (2/12/18)

#interview #brian fallon

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chasingferriswheels-blog · 6 years

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Acoustic set at Vintage Vinyl in Fords, NJ (2/10/18)

Setlist: 1. If Your Prayers Don’t Get to Heaven 2. The Navesink Banks 3. Smoke 4. Spirit in the Night (Bruce Springsteen cover) 5. A Wonderful Life

#live #brian fallon #the gaslight anthem

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chasingferriswheels-blog · 6 years

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When Brian Fallon answers the phone from his home in New Jersey to talk about his new solo album Sleepwalkers, the sound of young kids floods the background.

"Sleepwalking is what you do all day long," quips the father of two. "This isn't even a record, it's more of a parenting manual."

As the lead singer of New Jersey quartet the Gaslight Anthem, Fallon gave rock fans their own wake-up call by tearing a page straight from the Gospel of Springsteen – crafting high-energy sing-alongs that both lamented and exalted the blue-collar life. When Gaslight went on indefinite hiatus in 2015, he took the opportunity to turn down the volume and branch out, opting for more nuanced indie-rock fare with the band the Horrible Crowes, and then favoring the fragile over the ferocious on his 2016 Butch Walker-produced solo album, Painkillers.

On Sleepwalkers, Fallon both returns to and embraces the muscular rock he flexed with the Gaslight Anthem on their celebrated 2008 breakout The '59 Sound, reuniting with that album's producer Ted Hutt, and adding elements of Sixties soul, doo-wop and sneering punk to create his most satisfying non-Gaslight project to date.

But he's also revived the Gaslight Anthem, with the band announcing a series of special shows tied to the 10th anniversary of The '59 Sound, which they'll play in its entirety on a world tour this summer.

Talking to Fallon, equal parts wisecracking and whip-smart, it's clear that despite all the late-2000s hype and pressure of being the next Springsteen (with whom he's shared a stage), he's comfortable in his musical skin.

"Everyone always says, 'We don't want to be pigeonholed.' But sometimes your pigeonhole is a great place to be," says the 38-year-old. "I would say that Dylan's got his pigeon – this is what Dylan does and no one does this except for him. Grunge became Pearl Jam's pigeonhole. They overtook it, you know? At the end of the day you can't reinvent yourself past a point, because you are you, and there are things that are inherently you that are always going to be there."

For Fallon, it's the Springsteen/Clash amalgamation that defined his work with the Gaslight Anthem and that, with an extra dash of Dylan, informs Sleepwalkers, whose title track could have fit nicely on Greetings From Asbury Park. Bolstered by horns from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band – Fallon recorded the album in New Orleans – the tune mixes the boardwalk R&B of the singer's native Garden State with the funk of the Crescent City. It's one of many standouts on the new album, along with the street-corner hymn "If Your Prayers Don't Get to Heaven" (his current single), the stark look at mortality "See You on the Other Side" and the love song "Etta James."

Fallon has a habit of referencing his heroes in songs. On The '59 Sound, it was Miles Davis; on Painkillers, he sang about Steve McQueen.

"I feel like all these characters carry a trail behind them. They leave a legacy," he says. "I got [the idea of referencing] from hip-hop. If you look at the Seventies and especially the Eighties, New York and East Coast hip-hop was always referencing the culture. With that song, I was saying I've got this feeling about this person and the best way I've heard it conveyed is through Etta James. Those references are bigger than my writing and bigger than the audience, but they're ingrained in the memory."

"Brian is the consummate student of rock & roll," says likeminded singer-songwriter Dave Hause, who will open a string of shows for Fallon this month in Europe. "He's studying, listening, trying always to get better. He's the proof that the student almost always becomes the master."

Hause's words are brought to bear in Sleepwalkers' lead single "Forget Me Not," perhaps the song on the LP that most subscribes to the Gaslight Anthem '59 formula: "Old White Lincoln" pre-chorus, gang vocal harmonies and a Fallon scream to open each verse.

Prior to production, Fallon, Hutt and his frequent collaborator, solo artist Matthew Ryan, talked at length about how much of the Gaslight aesthetic to let seep into Sleepwalkers. They decided not to fight it.

"Even though it's not necessarily [a Gaslight Anthem album], one-fourth of the band's sound is always whatever I brought to the table. That's mine, in anything that I do. It'd be like saying, 'OK, I'm not going to use my left arm,'" says Fallon. "I'm just going to embrace everything I do and not hold anything back, because I like this sound."

In May, Fallon will join the other three-quarters of Gaslight Anthem – Alex Rosamilia, Alex Levine and Benny Horowitz – to mark the 10th anniversary of The '59 Sound with shows in Washington, D.C., Chicago and New York, where they're part of the lineup of the Governor's Ball Music Festival. Fallon admits the decade milestone was one that he and the band didn't know if they wanted to commemorate at all.

"Do we do something? Do we ignore it?" he recalls. "The big thing between us was let's just do what's fun. So if it's heavy-handed and not that cool, then let's not do it. But we all feel that this is an important record to not only us, but to the people that love it. I would not be on the phone talking about my Sleepwalkers record had it not been for The '59 Sound."

Fallon says it was the pressure and all those Springsteen comparisons that led the group to split in the first place. "We released two records, and all of a sudden we were playing with Bruce Springsteen, and there was all this, 'You guys are going to be the next Boss.' And we were like, 'Whoa. I don't know.'"

While more U.S. shows may be added to the summer tour – it'll also hit Europe in July – Fallon cautions against expecting a new Gaslight album. "I think Green Day's American Idiot is probably the best comeback or mid-career record that any band has done. So if I was sitting on American Idiot level stuff, then I might push for the, 'Hey guys, maybe we should try these songs out.' But I'm not sitting on that. I don't have a Born to Run in me."

Fallon is looking forward to the big stages of the Gaslight Anthem tour, which he'll work in between his own solo shows, but he's ultimately content to make a living in theaters, communing with fellow hopers and dreamers. To Fallon, there's something inspiring about New Jersey rock & roll.

"It has a sense of there's something just over the horizon, and I can see it and reach it," he says. "If we can survive long enough."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/brian-fallon-talks-new-solo-album-gaslight-anthem-reunion-w516547

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chasingferriswheels-blog · 6 years

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“Hell,” the poet and public performer Robert Frost once observed, “is a half-filled auditorium.” Brian Fallon—frontman for New Jersey proto-punk outfit The Gaslight Anthem and newly minted solo artist—can relate. But as concert nightmares go, there can be worse things than a sparse crowd. Much, much worse.

A couple of years ago, just after the venue-packing Gaslight Anthem had gone on head-clearing hiatus, Fallon was playing San Francisco’s swank Great American Music Hall, backing his first solo effort, the eclectic, folk/soul/country/heartland-rock mashup Painkillers. It was a dramatic step forward for the raspy-throated composer, into the stylistic big leagues of one of his home-state heroes and longtime supporters, Bruce Springsteen. Backed by a sonically adept group that included guitarist Ian Perkins, his partner in the 2011 spinoff combo The Horrible Crowes, Fallon was there to prove himself with diverse new material. But Bay Area Gaslight fans apparently had not recognized his name on the nightclub marquee; although diehard followers were there in force, the place wasn’t sold out and was instead littered with the insensitive type of ticket-buyer that would give the unflappable Frost himself pause. This is what happened inside.

Perkins had jut emerged from the tour bus parked out front when two drunk tech dudes from Silicon Valley demanded to know who the night’s star was at the box office, and then, shrugging, threw down the money for admittance. The guitarist sighed and shrugged, too. The knuckleheaded duo would repeatedly heckle Fallon, who would drift onto reflective raconteur-ish tangents to “Shut up! Shut up and play the hits!” Even though they had no idea what said hits were. A cellphone-brandishing couple at the back kept framing and filming two songs at a time before returning to the bar to review their latest footage. Other self-congratulatory millennials, talking in hyena packs along the floor fringes, took selfies featuring the band in the background.

The bad vibes finally reached the typically rollicking Fallon when he was discussing a drive that afternoon through Oakland. “Silicon Valley is where the money is!” the inebriated techies barked, high-fiving each other. Fallon explained that he was from New Jersey, prompting a man near the stage to spit back a sneering, “New Jersey sucks!” And that was it. Enough. The gig squealed to a halt, and Fallon had a spotlight beamed onto the interloper, whom he addressed in a prickly before pulling out his wallet and offering the man a cash refund. Shamed, the fellow wisely demurred—peanut-gallery commentary was not free, he learned. And who wants to get thrown out of a concert by the headliner? That’s something you’ll never live down on YouTube.

Such were the indignities Fallon faced in his quest to go solo. But looking back, he says he was ultimately unfazed by what happened that night. “I think if you took one person from any band, like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin, there’s no way he’s selling out the same places that Zeppelin did. It’s a smaller thing, so there’s bound to be a reduction,” he rationalizes, cheerily. “In the end, you’ve got to just play for the people who are there to receive the music and enjoy it with you. You’ve got to find and section off the people who are there for the love of it and play for them.” He pauses, chuckling, then adds, “But at the same time, I’m not above engaging someone in a funny way. If someone yells, ‘F you!’ I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah? Okay!’ And if you’re not having a good time, then you should get your money back.”

Decades ago, when Springsteen’s audience grew exponentially with Born in the U.S.A., discussion arose over just how much the artist was responsible for a sudden influx of lowbrow listeners who mistook a grim, Vietnam-vet-inspired dirge for a triple-kegging, YOLO party anthem. Fallon doesn’t buy into that. Frat rockers can appreciate his material the same as the Great American Music Hall fans who crowded the stage that night, singing along to every new Painkillers track. “And that was awesome, and the thing that you have to look at and take away from that whole experience, because anytime a band plays new songs, that can go down really bad,” he admits. “And even if you’re losing some people, you’re not losing everybody.”

On Friday, Fallon released his sophomore solo album, Sleepwalkers, and he’s ready to retake San Francisco. “Most people are actually receiving what you’re trying to put out there, and here’s your proof: We’re a few months out from the Sleepwalkers solo tour, and the show in San Francisco is already sold out,” he says. “So something went right with those people that night, because they liked it enough to tell their friends.”

Fallon, 38, also feels a certain responsibility to defuse live-wire situations before, say, a fight breaks out. What if you mouth off from the safety of a crowd, but the bloke next to you just lost his job, or has imbibed one too many? “So I have to manage that from the stage as best I can,” he says. “And if it costs me 25 or 30 bucks to handle it—to say, “If I’m bumming you out or you feel like you’re at the wrong show, I’ll be happy to return your money—then that’s fine by me. If someone’s trying to get you or frazzle you, the minute you respond in kind you’re giving them permission to take away your place of solace, your serenity, and your show. I used to allow that a bit more, but I got hip to it, that I was the one giving away that permission. So I don’t allow it anymore.”

As Fallon tells it, he’s gotten wise to some existential truths leading into Sleepwalkers. The Gaslight Anthem’s final effort together, 2014’s pain-wracked (and aptly dubbed) Get Hurt, found the composer lyrically dealing with the breakup of his marriage, which ended in divorce in 2013. The fallout continued into Painkillers—suddenly, he was living on his own again, without the defining comforts of a band and a family, trying to redefine himself as a songwriter. So he threw out the rulebook and just wrote songs that made him happy. It was easier said than done.

“It was tough, because I was going through a phase of ‘What do I write about?,’ and there was nothing to say, because I was just sitting here at home,” he recalls. And he was at last content with his home life—he had gotten remarried and had a daughter, now 2, his second child. “So I had to go and sit with myself and talk to friends and do that overly analytical psychosis thing. And I changed a lot. I changed big stuff, like my attitude and my entire outlook on things, and I had the time to do it.” His conclusion? He was no longer the aggro mid-20s punk from The ’59 Sound; he was a family man, a huge fan of classic ‘60s soul singers like Sam Cooke and Etta James, and he should stop over-thinking it and craft his work accordingly. Producer Ted Hutt, who worked on The Gaslight Anthem’s 2008 breakout sophomore album The ’59 Sound, was happy to follow him down the retro rabbit hole.

Sleepwalkers opens on the finger-popping old-school R&B of “If Your Prayers Don’t Get to Heaven,” which hearkens back to Gaslight’s most stylistically adventurous set, 2010’s underrated American Slang. Then it bounds into the power-chorder “Forget Me Not,” the hushed ballad “Etta James,” another mandolin-buttressed love song “Proof of Life,” a rat-a-tat-rhythm “Little Nightmares,” the swaying saxophone-laced title track, a Bon Jovi-ish coliseum-rocker “My Name Is the Night,” and a jangly acoustic mortality themed closer, “See You On the Other Side.” It’s a great continuation of the high standards set on Painkillers, which found Fallon no longer relying on certain words and phrases—like “wound” and “bandage”—as he’d often done with Gaslight, and upping his lyrical game. (He realized he’d fallen into a wordplay rut a few years ago, he laughs, when overseas fans had numbered cards they flipped over in concert every time he sang the designated magic word. “At least they were really listening, paying attention to what I was singing instead of talking,” he sighs). He has quietly, studiously become one of modern music’s most important and enjoyably consistent songwriters.

What does Fallon hear, listening back to his latest magnum opus? No recurring poetic themes or metaphorical messages, he swears. “I just hear us having a good time, goofing around and trying to find some good sounds that made us feel inspired,” he says. “Like, with ‘If Your Prayers Don’t Get to Heaven,’ I was listening to The Jam, and I thought, ‘Man, they’ve really got that Motown beat in there on ‘A Town Called Malice.’ Maybe we should look into that. But I have different influences than Paul Weller, so that beat was there, but American soul music kept creeping in.”

As rewarding as the search for solo fulfillment has been, Fallon is excited to play larger venues again on the upcoming ’59 Sound reunion tour. “We talked about it and said, ‘Hey, the ’59 Soundis turning 10, that’s pretty cool. And probably none of us would be standing here if it weren’t for that. So maybe it would be fun to just go out and play the record, because we never did that before. A bunch of people will probably be really excited, so let’s do it’,” he says. “And then?” he teases with a pregnant pause. “Hey, that’s it. People keep asking me, ‘What’s next? What’s next?’ But nothing is next. We’re just doing this on our own time, because I can only put one foot in front of the other, because right now I’ve got my record, and I’ve got The ’59 Sound turning 10. And to go out and tour my record, then ’59? Hey, sounds like a fun year to me!”’

With, of course, no half-filled auditoriums on the itinerary…

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/02/brian-fallon.html

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chasingferriswheels-blog · 6 years

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I think it’s always important to have some sort of hero. Sometimes you look too hard at celebrities or musicians or writers or artists, and I don’t think they’re equipped to be heroes. I almost think that in this day and age, you’ve got to find your own heroes in the people that are around you and support you, and the people that stand up for the right thing. Those people are what I would consider to be heroes.

Brian Fallon (Upset Magazine 2018)

#quote #brian fallon

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chasingferriswheels-blog · 6 years

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Brian Fallon has never known how to be anything other than himself. As the frontman of punk rock outfit The Gaslight Anthem, he made the transition to a purveyor of heartland-tinged Americana almost seamlessly on his 2016 solo debut album ‘Painkillers’.

The Gaslight Anthem have got 2018 off to a pretty brilliant start by announcing their return from hiatus to celebrate the 10th birthday of their breakthrough album ‘The ’59 Sound’, but when it came to creating that fabled ‘difficult second album’ of his standalone career, the New Jersey troubadour was faced with something of an identity crisis.

“I think when I sat down to write the record I was more nervous than I had ever been,” he admits. “I had to call a few of my really close friends, so I called Ted [Hutt, producer] who produced the record, and I spoke to a friend of mine, [singer-songwriter] Matthew Ryan, and I was just saying about how I don’t know what’s next or how I follow this up, because people really liked ‘Painkillers’.

“The funny thing was what they both said was that you have to just be yourself. That sounds so small to say, but at the end of it, you have to let things go because the reason people ever wanted to listen to something you did in the first place was because you were just being yourself.

“There was no audience in the beginning, so when you do it this time, you have to go back to that same mindset, you have to force yourself back there.”

As his forthcoming second album ‘Sleepwalkers’ evidences, ‘being yourself’ for Brian means being a man of many tastes. The opening beat of ‘If Your Prayers Don’t Get to Heaven’ is evocative of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Part-Time Lover’, while the guitars on ‘Come Wander With Me’ give off vibes not dissimilar from ‘Rock The Kasbah’ by The Clash. It’s a record which dabbles in Brian’s life-long love for soul, R&B and British rock ‘n’ roll in ways you never thought possible for the man to do.

“When I had the first idea for the record, I watched that documentary about The Jam called ‘About A Young Idea’. One of my friends said, ‘you’ve gotta watch this documentary’ and showed it to me because they knew I love The Jam. I watched it and it sort of set me off on a trip.”

This trip sent him off to rediscover continents and cultures which Brian has embraced since childhood, long before he re-planted his roots in grittier soil.

“When I was a kid I used to listen to Desmond Dekker and Laurel Aitken and The Bodysnatchers – before ska was ‘ska’ you know?” Brian says enthusiastically. “It was pretty much R&B music from Jamaica, and they brought it over to England where it became this other thing. I was letting everything like that in, and my R&B influences and my punk influences kind of gave me a foundation to build from that.

“When I wrote ‘Come Wander With Me’, I had a lot of songs written already, and I took a little bit of a risk with that one. I did the riff first, and it’s a very dub riff. I didn’t know whether I should sing over it because I’d never approached a song like that before. That was when I went back to The Clash, and you know how Joe [Strummer, The Clash singer] almost talks his lyrics? He’s not rapping, but it’s like hip-hop because it falls on the beat. I was just getting very inspired by that, and just said what I felt, and that’s what came out.”

Despite all this influence having a very profound effect on the more electric sound of ‘Sleepwalkers’ compared to its predecessor, it’s still unmistakably the handiwork of Brian Fallon with a sincere doff of the cap to familiar pastures of sun-kissed heartland rock.

“I wouldn’t say this is a very challenging record to anybody,” he assures. “There are some bits from The Gaslight Anthem; there are some bits from [blues side-project] The Horrible Crowes… It’s just a natural record for me, and I’m not trying to push any boundaries with it. I’m not trying to make any big statements or reinvent the wheel – I’m just trying to say, ‘hey, this is all the different things that Brian Fallon likes’.

“I’m proud of the whole thing, I think it’s a really solid start-to-finish record, but I would say that I’m proud of some of the rhythms we got and some of the soul and R&B beats that I’ve tried to do for a long time.”

After he came to the rescue around the writing of ‘Sleepwalkers’, Brian reunited with Ted Hutt to produce the album in New Orleans. It had been no less than seven years since the pairing had worked together on The Gaslight Anthem’s pivotal third album ‘American Slang’ and The Horrible Crowes’ ‘Elsie’ record.

“I’d just got home from the last tour for ‘Painkillers’ in Europe and I got a phone call the next day from Ted, and he hadn’t called me in a while,” Brian explains. “He was just calling to see how everything was, and then immediately the idea struck me about getting back in the studio with Ted.

“It had been a long time, so to get back together and to be able to just have fun again was really cool,” he adds on working with the man who also sat behind the desk for the making of The Gaslight Anthem’s ‘The ’59 Sound’ nearly a decade ago. “He’s the guy that brought all that stuff out of me about how you can let go and be yourself and not worry about people making fun of you, because that’s the biggest thing when you’re making a record.”

Returning to the studio with Ted for the first time in what felt like forever restored a feeling that Brian had struggled to embrace when his old band were at the peak of their powers, but also at their most scrutinised.

He recalls: “I don’t think any of us [in The Gaslight Anthem] were prepared for what ‘The ’59 Sound’ did, so when we recorded ‘American Slang’ there was definitely a heavy weight going on in the studio, which is probably why a record like The Horrible Crowes record was a reaction to the pressure.

“That’s why I went away and did that record because it was like I had to make music where no-one’s looking at it, and you’re not living under that lamp, because that’s a tough lamp to live under. It’s like everybody tries all their life to be successful, and then when you’re successful, you better know what you’re asking for.

“No matter what you do, someone will always have another side and another point of view, so you can’t worry about that, you have to just be you. I felt that recklessness in the recording, in just singing and yelling and screaming.”

The moment on ‘Sleepwalkers’ that signifies Brian stoking the fire in his belly is the single ‘Forget Me Not’, an upbeat folk-punk rager driven by the singer-songwriter’s most fervent vocal performance in years.

“There’s a bunch of vocal moments where I just got to let it out,” he laughs. “There’s a couple of tracks like ‘Etta James’ and ‘Watson’ where I really got to sing. I felt like I was Aretha Franklin for a minute, it was cool!

“We had so much fun just screaming that one ‘yeah’ in the middle of ‘Forget Me Not’, but it was just complete yelling madness. We were like, ‘let’s just make it as much like The Who as we can’. I must have done about 50 screams, and I was surprised because I could still talk afterwards. It felt good to sing like a 25-year-old again.”

Despite feeling more than ten years younger in the vocal booth, ‘Sleepwalkers’ comes around at a time where Brian admits that, as a 37-year-old father-of-two, he has started considering his mortality a lot more.

“The whole record is pretty real about the age that I’m at,” explains Brian. “Where you realise that one day you’re not gonna be here, and you’ve got to deal with that. I have kids now, so that really comes and slams home, and you see life as not infinite anymore.”

As doomy and gloomy as the proposition of an album addressing the inevitability of death sounds, Brian’s sophomore solo effort altogether takes a more hopeful tone than we’ve possibly ever heard from him before.

“I’m with Noel Gallagher, I wanna live forever, but I just don’t that’s possible anymore!” he chuckles. “It’s scary, and for some people, you can run from it, but on this record, I decided to sort of face up to it but not in a morbid way. There’s a big theme on the record of dealing with yourself not being permanent, and then also dealing with the joy of the fact that there’s a life here to be had.”

Even with that realist mindset, the record also marks the start of a new era of positivity for Brian Fallon. Having dealt with the divorce from his wife of more than a decade at the same time that The Gaslight Anthem were bidding farewell to the world – for now – he is looking ahead to the next wonderful chapter of his career.

“Everyone has these transitional periods in their life where everything blows up; it just happens to everybody. I had that start around the time of [The Gaslight Anthem’s last album] ‘Get Hurt’, and I was working it through it between that record and ‘Painkillers’, and then on ‘Painkillers’, I was working through the residuals and the aftermath.

“I ‘levelled off’, I would say, and I found my footing in my personal life and was able to feel like a person again. I’m not who I was before, but I’m okay with whoever I am now.”

Even as he nears the often-dreaded milestone that is the 40th birthday, life is still proving to be a constant learning curve for Brian. At a time mired by cruel unpredictability – politically, socially or otherwise – finding your idols is increasingly difficult, but Brian believes that there is more than meets the eye, especially in the things and people right in front of him. As the old saying goes: not all heroes wear capes…

“I think it’s always important to have some sort of hero,” he says in a more contemplative tone. “Sometimes you look too hard at celebrities or musicians or writers or artists, and I don’t think they’re equipped to be heroes. I almost think that in this day and age, you’ve got to find your own heroes in the people that are around you and support you, and the people that stand up for the right thing. Those people are what I would consider to be heroes.”

With that in mind, who does Brian see as his personal heroes?

“I find my parents are more like my heroes now. Especially with having little children and looking around at the world, I kind of wonder [if] I set them up to be in this world that’s going crazy. But then I look at what my parents did with me, and then I can see that you’ve got to just raise them right and then just teach them to be better than those people that are driving the world into the ground right now. Hopefully, the next generation is the generation that changes everything, so I think putting your time and effort into being those kids’ heroes is really important.”

Brian has also invested time in learning on a more practical level – in 2017 he started taking piano lessons, an ambition he had long postponed and another skill which has lent him a refreshing change of perspective.

He laughs modestly: “I feel like I’m refinding music in general because it’s such a new thing that I’m sitting down with no concept of and I’m not good at. It’s given me this appreciation for all the people that are putting their mind to something and working at it, and that’s exciting to me because I feel like I’m stumbling in the dark with this thing.

“It’s a joy that seems trivial and stupid – all the really good things in life can be dismissed so easily by cynical people just saying, ‘that’s stupid’ or ‘I’ve heard that before’. It’s hard to do, but if you just stop for a second and enjoy something, there’s so much in every day that you can find to lift your spirits.”

http://www.upsetmagazine.com/features/brian-fallon-album-interview/

#interview

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