Exclusive: Falling With Style Interview

It's that time of week the again! Here's an Interview I recently conducted with Falling With Style's guitarist, Reyes. We talked about everything between the band's history and a blink-182 cover they'll be releasing very soon. If you're into fellow locals, Same As Sunday and Facts Of Life, definitely check these dudes out, and vice versa.

So how did you guys.. get hitched? What's the story behind the band? How long have you been together for?

Reyes: I (Reyes) started playing guitar with my buddy Chris (our other original guitarist) 6 or 7 years ago wanting to start a band. The main reason we didn't start sooner was because of how hard it was to find members. good members, to be exact. Once we graduated from high school, we ended up taking a chance on a vocalist who turned out to be better than we could have hoped for. Our frontman Josh has been friends with Kyle Martin (who is the guitarist of the local Indy band Same As Sunday) since high school. They were originally in a band together called My Cinderella Story before Kyle had joined Same As Sunday. Our bassist Eric has been my best friend since we were kids. Chris and I convinced him to pick up bass and help us start a band in high school. I had met our original drummer, Jordan, at some shows earlier on in high school. We had a fair amount of mutual friends and then we finally managed to meet up a few times and jam. Since he was essentially the first drummer that I had ever played with, I was overwhelmed with excitement that a band was falling (with style) into place. During Fall/Winter '09 we played our first show. As the months went by during the first half of '10, Chris decided that the band thing wasn't really for him. We accepted it and just tried sticking with me on guitar and Eric on bass. While these months were passing by, we had all noticed how Jordan's performance and work ethic had begun to slip. Come the middle of summer, we decided we couldn't keep giving him more chances. We removed him from the band in about July '10. This was probably the hardest time for the band because we had to scrounge to pick up fillers for shows that we had set in stone previously before taking Jordan out. Thankfully, we had Andy Heck and Kyle from Same As Sunday filling in on drums and guitar to help us to finish up our summer shows. We were also lucky enough to have Cray Wilson from Facts Of Life (another insane Indy Pop Punk local) fill in for drums during the biggest local show of the summer. After the summer had ended, we decided to take a break from the band to catch up on school/work, which the remaining of us were all involved with. At the beginning of Winter, we came across Neal. I met him at a party through a friend a few months before. I eventually got a hold of him and set up some jam sessions. I liked what I saw and then brought him to practice with the guys.

Typical but interesting question; how did you guys come up with the band name? Does it have a particular meaning or reference to anything?

Reyes: Originally, our name had no relation with our music whatsoever. The summer after graduation, we had been brainstorming band names and just couldn't think of anything that was noteworthy. Our good friend, whose house we practice at, had been playing a lot of N64 during that summer. One week he began playing the Toy Story game and then it clicked with me. Toy Story had played a big role in my childhood because I watched that movie practically every day (as I'm sure most kids did). I had recalled the line from the movie that wasn't flying, that was... falling with style. So I ran the idea by the guys and everyone seemed to have a pretty good liking to it. As time as has passed, the name has eventually gained more and more sentimental value to me and the band itself. The whole idea of falling with style between buzz and woody, to me, is that you can't let someone tell you how to be yourself. you know who you are better than any other person. there's no reason to change the way you are just because someone may think you're out of place or doing something wrong. themes like that are pretty prevalent throughout the movie, but the main idea sticks out most in this scenario. The relevance of this theme has become a pretty big reality, in terms of the band. Most recently, I have realized that a lot of people seem to think of a band as foolish for giving their music away for free. The band has also received some shaking heads from people that have learned that we don't plan on being anything more than a local band who plays for fun. In this situation, we're Buzz haha. We'll consider the music scene Woody. I think there's an enormous problem with people becoming infatuated with the idea of "making it" in the music scene. People may think that we are, in fact, "falling with style," but in actuality we're just making music and having fun the best way we know how to. Not one person who tells us different is going to change that.

The From Beneath The Trenchcoat demo had an overwhelmingly positive response when we posted it on the blog - how did this make you guys feel? What sort of feedback were you expecting, if any?

Reyes: To be honest, I was shocked. Eric and Josh were incredibly stoked to hear such good news after months of inactivity with the band. I stumbled upon the blog and took interest in the fact that you post albums relevant to a very receptive genre. When I saw that its as easy emailing your demo to the site, I figured why not. I didn't think it would be posted so fast and immediately get feedback. I personally am not too fond of the CD because I know it could have been much better. I didn't think of it as a very good representation of us as a band, but that's just me. I figured if our demo had gotten posted on the site that would either get no feedback, or get made fun of. Either way, I didn't care so I gave it a shot. We are incredibly thankful to have received such a good response from our beginning works.

Reyes has shown me a few demos that I personally am stoked to hear the final versions of. I also understand you guys are working on a self-titled full-length with the goal of releasing it early this summer - how many songs have you got for that so far? Are any of the demo tracks being be re-recorded?

Reyes: Since I am the main songwriter, aside from lyrics and vocal structures, I had begun writing as soon as we finished recording our demo in early February '10. Over the course of 12 months, I had come up with a total of 16 ideas. Some rough drafts, others were mostly laid out ideas and structures. This past February I had taken all the ideas to the cutting board. I immediately removed anything that didn't feel like it had what it took to be on our next CD. I have narrowed the last of the ideas down to about 5 or 6. There is still one song that's hanging on the fence. There are also 2 songs that will be re-recorded. Linking Verb and Banjo were our favorites (or the ones that I thought sucked the least haha), so we decided to revamp them with better vocals and a couple extra guitar parts and some production effects.

Are you currently in the writing or recording process? Are you doing everything yourselves?

Reyes: As previously stated before, I have been working on pre-production for the past year. We have worked out a deal with a local producer, the one who had recorded our demo, where we record everything ourselves besides the vocals. That producer will mainly be doing our vocals, production, and mastering while I track our guitar, bass, drums.

You guys are also working on putting out your take of blink-182's Dumpweed - what made you choose this song in particular?

Reyes: Since FWS' style is pretty open, ranging from Pop Punk to Post-Hardcore, I thought it would be fun to implement more synth and electronic work into our music. After messing with synth ideas for a few months, I became pretty comfortable with having it in our stuff. I have been a blink-182 fan since I was a little kid. I probably wouldn't have given half as much of a shit about being in a band if it weren't for them. During the time that I was messing with synth sounds and ideas, I decided to do a little cover of Dumpweed (going off of Four Year Strong's cover but with small changes here and there) to test how it would sound in our music. It turned out well enough to the point that I decided to throw the idea to guys about covering it. No one had a problem with the idea, so we adopted it. This also saved us a lot of trouble on picking a cover song. I mean, every band and their Mom is doing a cover song. But in all honesty, it's for the sake of fun - not because we're trying to get somewhere with it.

The band is quickly being offered several prestigious, if you will, shows with bands like I Call Fives, Rust Belt Lights, and Kid Liberty - what kind of advice would you give to other bands starting out, striving to achieve this kind of coverage?

Reyes: Truthfully, we're lucky to have local people that like us enough to throw us a good show when it comes through. Most bands will tell you that you have to bug the crap out of a promoter or people to get them to notice you. Let's get real, no one gives a shit about you or your band. Just play the music you want and if you're lucky someone will take notice of your sincerity and ethic with music. The best way to do this is to practice as much as possible. Meet people in the music scene wholeheartedly. None of that band guy bullshit. If you really like the people and the music, let them know. Tell them why you liked the music or like how the promoter runs the show. But seriously, don't be a band guy. I can give you a perfect example of a band who puts this to practical use. Our buddies in Facts of Life practice 3 times a week, if not more, for hours on end. They get involved with the scene by keeping up to date with other locals, even outside of their genre. For this, they've earned shows that most locals can only dream of within such a short period of time.

How would you describe your music to someone who hasn't heard of you before?

Reyes: Screamin' nonsense is something I usually like to tell people. I typically do my best to ramble about us being a Pop Punk band that plays Post-Hardcore structures.

Individually and as a band, what're your biggest musical influences?

Reyes: like I said before, blink-182 is my biggest influence musically. As far as the rest of the band goes, Eric has essentially the same influence as I do. Josh grew up on Pop Punk as well.

Outside of the music you guys make, what other interests or hobbies do you guys have?

Reyes: I play video games, design, jerk off more than any human being should, do photography, make non-FWS music, and work (yes, I enjoy working haha). Eric is very involved with school and is taking his education to the next step by studying abroad in Japan sometime later this year. Eric plays an insane amount of Pokémon and also Yu-Gi-Oh. Josh is a very busy worker at his construction company that he has recently been promoted at. He has his wonderful wife, kid, and home that he is constantly providing for and tending to. He also has his 2nd kid due this Summer. Josh is also a gamer, like myself.

Thanks for your time and we wish you the best of luck for the future. Anything else you'd like to say?

Reyes: I may be beating a dead horse saying this, but thank you so much for giving us a chance by reading and posting this. I know bands like us are a dime a dozen, so I hardly ever want to waste my time reading something like this from a band I hardly know about. If there's one thing that I would want people to take notice from this band, it's that we show you can have fun with music without being so serious. You can treat music like business just as long as you have fun with it.

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