The Fold (Interview)

We recently got a chance to send out some ques­tions to for­mer Tooth & Nail signees The Fold, dis­cussing their deci­sion to go the inde­pen­dent route, the mak­ing of their new album Dear Future, Come Get Me, their Miley cover, their past wis­dom and future plans. See what sets them apart from every band in the USA.

Denis@RRR: First off, thank you for tak­ing the time to answer our ques­tions. Please state your name, and what you do in The Fold.

Daniel, I sing and play gui­tar in The Fold.

Denis@RRR: If you had to describe the music of The Fold to some­one who has never heard any­thing by the band, how would you describe it? What are some bands that you think you’re com­pa­ra­ble to?

It’s kind of like if Jimmy Eat World and The Foo Fighters were hav­ing a din­ner date, and then Fountains Of Wayne came by for dessert.

Denis@RRR: Where do The Fold draw their influences??

Obviously, the above bands are impor­tant to us, but really when I go to write a song, I go back to the bands who, to me, are the sources of rock and roll. Bands like The Beatles, Billy Joel, and pos­si­bly some Elvis Costello.

Denis@RRR: For those who aren’t aware, you guys recently released a new album, enti­tled Dear Future, Come Get Me, in October. Guide us through the writ­ing and record­ing process for the album.

We were just released from our record­ing con­tract with Tooth & Nail Records, which was a wel­come but scary time for us. The album needed to rep­re­sent where we were at with that - I really wanted to make a bold state­ment. Once I wrote the song “Dear Future” I knew I had begun the process. I don’t want to be unsure or scared any more - life is too short for that. I just want to move for­ward with a smile on my face and con­fi­dence in my pocket. I think it’s a sen­ti­ment that America as a whole can embrace right now, with the econ­omy in the toi­let for almost 3 years now - we need to stand up and reclaim our lives by shout­ing “dear future, come get me. I’m ready now, for any­thing!”. Once we had our 13 songs, we went in with the pro­duc­ers we knew and loved (we had already worked together on Secrets) and we wound up com­plet­ing 11 of them [songs], since we only had a few weeks. All in all, I’m thrilled with how it turned out. I don’t know that I’m ever MORE happy in my band than I am in the stu­dio, it’s such a growth period for me every­time. I get to say EVERYTHING that is inside of my brain, it’s such good ther­apy for me.

Denis@RRR: What are some of your per­sonal favorite tracks from the new album and why? Favorite lyrics or instru­men­tal part?

I think “Midnight” has some great moments both lyri­cally and musi­cally, so that one stands out in both ways. My per­sonal favorite song over­all is prob­a­bly “I Know Where I’m Going” because it sto­ry­boards the rela­tion­ship that my Dad had with my Mother, and that I now have with my wife. I notice that my Dad and I tried/try so hard to be inde­pen­dent, but now [that] my Mom has trag­i­cally passed away from pan­cre­atic can­cer, with­out her he is left incom­plete. I sup­pose this song is some­what of a reminder to me to always love her with all that I have, and put my self­ish­ness aside.

Denis@RRR: I must ask this – what’s up with the cover art? It’s very… fluorescent…

Ha, I had the con­cept of the hand with the etch­ing “Dear Future, Come Get Me” on it, and through a series of attempts, we wound up with what we have. We noticed that Absolutepunk.nuts have been very vocal about their hate for our cover art, but hey – the beauty of music is that you can hate the cover art and still love the songs. =)

Denis@RRR: What do you believe are some of the pri­mary dif­fer­ences between Dear Future, Come Get Me and any pre­vi­ous releases from the band?

We’re learn­ing, all the time. We never want to stay where we were at on the pre­vi­ous release, and I know that’s noth­ing new, but for us, each release has been a step in the right direc­tion. We’ve pro­gressed musi­cally, I’ve got­ten more comortable lyri­cally, and it just feels like as a whole we’ve grown up. I like that, and it def­i­nitely will con­tinue on our next release, I can tell already from the songs I’ve been writing.

Denis@RRR: Speaking of pre­vi­ous records, I’ve heard rumors of The Fold hav­ing really old albums… releases called Feeling Like Failure Now and Not Of This World? What’s the story behind these, if there is one?

That’s crazy! I noticed in your review (thank you) that you said we were tour­ing for almost 8 years. I raised an eye­brow, but now I see what you were say­ing. There WAS an orig­i­nal ver­sion of The Fold that came about when my old band Showoff basi­cally kicked out our singer, moved me from drums to vocals, and changed the name to The Fold. The whole thing seemed a bit sud­den and forced to me, so I backed out right away. That’s where the Feeling Like Failure Now EP came from. When I left the band, I didn’t know I’d ever play music again but I DID love writ­ing the songs, which was a first for me. Shortly after, I found God. Not Of This World was in essence my solo album, where I was try­ing to say all that had hap­pened dur­ing my musi­cal hia­tus. The Fold REALLY started full time in 2006 with This Too Shall Pass and our sign­ing to Tooth & Nail Records, so in that respect we are nearly 4 years old this com­ing February. Sigh, that was a long story - did you like it?

Denis@RRR: Recently, you guys did a (bril­liant) Miley Cyrus par­ody. Where did the idea come from? How did you go about chang­ing the song, and indeed, mak­ing the video?

We were on the WORST tour of our lives (I’m hear­ing sto­ries like this across the board from my friend’s bands as well, atten­dance sucks and kids just aren’t com­ing out to see national tours) when our tour man­ager said “You guys should do a Miley Cyrus cover, kids would really love that!” We all kinda chuck­led to our­selves, and I thought “Sounds like some­thing every other band in the USA would do.” Our drum­mer thought of the idea to change it up, like a Weird Al kinda thing, and make the song about all of these goofy trends we see. It seems like every show we play there’s always a local band with auto-tune BLASTING through their lead vocal, and some ter­ri­ble drum loops play­ing on a track while the drum­mer pre­tends to play. Since I had just writ­ten a par­ody to a John Mayer song, I thought it would be fun to try and re-write Miley’s lyrics. I thought I got to say some fun stuff, and we all laughed in the van as I bounced lyric ideas around- but we really had NO IDEA that any­one else would get the joke. It’s obvi­ously taken on a life of it’s own, and we’re just hon­ored. Our live show has changed quite sig­nif­i­cantly with the intro­duc­tion of this song into our set, and it’s really made us real­ize that peo­ple want to ESCAPE through music. That can be done in a num­ber of ways, but first and fore­most, we may have been lack­ing the FUN fac­tor. When we play this song live, it’s an all out party and we’re gonna make sure it always stays that way!

Denis@RRR: You guys were signed to Tooth And Nail until ear­lier this year, when you split with the label. Why was this?

For us, we were just done with that label for a few rea­sons. First, we were just fin­ger­point­ing at each other, and it was wast­ing time and not achiev­ing any­thing. We found our­selves doing all of the cookie cut­ter things a new band has to do for no other rea­son than “it’s what bands do”. It’s like, “Ok The Fold, go spend $40K with this old dude because we say he’s a great pro­ducer.” Hmm really? Are you sure? “Yeah, and go make a high bud­get video that no one is gonna see, too…” We always felt like, “why, will it achieve any­thing, or is it just what we’re sup­posed to do?” The path of the strug­gling band is becom­ing more and more frus­trat­ing, and labels don’t have the answer. It’s easy for them to blame the bands, and the bands to blame the labels. Meanwhile, we weren’t get­ting any younger, and to be hon­est we were just feel­ing like more and more of a fail­ure. We’re done with that, it was unhealthy! Someday a label with gen­er­ous bud­get for a radio cam­paign could be a great next step for us, but with­out that there is absolutely NO rea­son for The Fold to be on a label.

Denis@RRR: You’re going the inde­pen­dent route now.. how’s that going for you? Would you ever be will­ing to sign to a record label again?

Yeah, we’ve been hav­ing a blast, part of it was just good luck and “right place at the right time” kinda stuff, like get­ting on the new Tony Hawk game, and the YouTube thing blow­ing up. But even aside from that, some big advan­tages have been that the peo­ple really are root­ing for us. The strongest fans have become very vocal on our behalf, so it’s almost like they’ve taken the place of our label and dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. Are there dis­ad­van­tages? Probably, but I can’t really think of any given the cur­rent state of the music busi­ness. With com­pa­nies like Tunecore and tools like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace the con­nec­tion is in place and it’s real, no need for a label to get involved and sully up the process. It would have to really be the RIGHT sit­u­a­tion for us to go there.

Denis@RRR: How does your faith affect your lives and influ­ence your music?

I know what God did, and con­tin­ues to do, in my life. It’s the basis of all that I am, so from a lyrics stand­point it will inevitably spill over into my songs, but does that mean that we’re a Christian Rock band? Absolutely not. I think that’s the way it should be; nat­ural, gen­uine, can­did. I shouldn’t feel the need for every song to men­tion God. As for the band – I’d say it’s def­i­nitely the sole rea­son I started this band, and it will always be a mis­sion for me to know our fans, and reach out to them per­son­ally in regards to their faith, when­ever it’s appro­pri­ate. I take that very seri­ously - but on a case by case basis. We’ve never been a band to preach from the stage, because I don’t feel it would be gen­uine. I’d much rather talk to each kid per­son­ally once I’m off stage, and make sure that they really get the atten­tion they deserve.

Denis@RRR: Do you guys have any tours planned? Warped maybe? The Glamour Kill Tour has passed.. shame

There’s always next year! =) We’re def­i­nitely going to be tour­ing next year, but the imme­di­ate plan has been build­ing things up on a local level, which is some­thing we’ve always ignored when we were with Tooth & Nail Records. Once you have a solid thing going at home, the rest is just appli­ca­tion. Warped would be great, we’re cer­tainly hop­ing to do that in 2010!

Denis@RRR: Speaking of tour­ing, can we hear a really awe­some tour story please?

Last night we got a visit from Santa Clause (well kinda, we re-named him “Scene-ta Clause” after dous­ing him in neon from head to toe). Apparently he was out late last night (Christmas) at a Metro Station con­cert, and now he’s got glow sticks and neon bal­loons for the whole sold out crowd! It was a total party, I know at least we had a blast…

Denis@RRR: What is the most reward­ing part about being a part of The Fold?

Seeing things “work” is always so sus­tain­ing for me. I remem­ber just as the Plain White T’s were gain­ing suc­cess, I sat down with Tom [Higgenson] at cof­fee, and we tried to fig­ure it out; Is it the man­age­ment? The agent? The songs? The fans? It’s all of it, you can’t really pin it on any one thing. It took years, but I feel like that it finally start­ing to hap­pen for us. Why now - right after we left our label? I don’t know, but it feels great, and I wouldn’t change the past. Our old man­ager Nate Albert told me some­thing that I think about every day, and it’s sound advice for any band: ‘You can’t guar­an­tee suc­cess, but you can make sure that you deserve it.”

Denis@RRR: What should fans be expect­ing from the band in the next 6 months or so?

Content con­tent con­tent. That’s one of the coolest things about being free to do what we want, we make the time­line, and we know that the fans need STUFF, lots of stuff. It needs to be cool stuff too! If we want to shoot a video, we do it! If we want to col­lab­o­rate with Glamour Kills and make a t-shirt, we do it! If we write a new song, and we just want to see what you think, we post it! Along with that, of course we want to tour our butts off, bring our party to each and every city in the whole world, and meet each and every poten­tial fan - but first and fore­most we want to make sure we deserve suc­cess and engage our audi­ence, that’s really all that we can do.

Denis@RRR: What are your favourite records of 2009, and what 2010 releases are you most excited about?

I loved the new Tegan and Sara and a few songs from the new Weezer record. That’s really about it for me. I’m kind of an oldies guy, I guess…

Denis@RRR: Thanks again for tak­ing the time to answer our ques­tions, is there any­thing you’d like to add?

For us, just see­ing a sales num­ber on a piece of paper, or a num­ber of Twitter fol­low­ers is not what being in a band is all about. We want to know you per­son­ally, so make sure you hit us up in any way your com­fort­able. We want to live life with you, and make a real con­nec­tion and relationship.

http://www.twitter.com/thefoldrock
http://www.myspace.com/thefold
http://www.facebook.com/thefold
or hey, just email me dan@thefoldmusic.com

The Fold’s new album Dear Future, Come Get Me is out now, inde­pen­dently. If you need con­vinc­ing, read our review, oth­er­wise, just buy it.