Fireside Social - Booze, Balls, and Rock n' Roll: Meet Your New Favorite Band, Pt. 1

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

By Ric

Photos by Alejandra Lemus

Fireside Social doesn't take themselves too seriously. Cruising over their Myspace you'll find pictures from their recent Florida Tour, which includes plenty of partial male nudity, bromancing, and tour van snuggling. Or scenes from house parties they've played that they dressed in tidy whities and a dress shirt ala Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

Don't take that to mean they don't take pride in their music. Fireside Social reminds me of a punk rock back straight out of the 90's or early 2000's. They have sing-along choruses, riff based chording, and melodic, fast paced songs. I would even dare to call them "power pop" but I'd hate to put them in a category that has been so bastardized. They do it right.

Currently, the guys (Chris Ruppel - vocals/guitar, Eric Fontiluz - bass, Drew Walker - guitar, Kris - drums) are finishing up their first studio recordings. Last week I interviewed Chris and Kris, I'm going to be posting it in two parts. In Part I they talk about recording, their plans on releasing their songs, and how their tour got homo-erotic pretty fast. Part II has more to deal with Miami and their experiences in the Miami music scene.

This is a great group of guys. Their approach to music and their band should be a blueprint for other bands to learn about passion, having fun, and not being concerned with "making it" - play it because you love it.

R = Ric
C = Chris Ruppel
K = Kris Huseby

R: Unfortunately Chris is leaving Miami, but you guys are still going to be playing?

C & K: Yes.

C: If you ask Drew, tomorrow is our last show, but that's not true.

K: If you ask him while he's drunk. (Laugh)

R: You guys do have songs that are coming out?

K: Yea, we just recorded 10 songs at The Dungeon with Ryan Haft and I'm excited.

R: How'd it all go? Are you guys happy with it?

C: It's mostly just that we had such an opportunity to [mess] around in there. It's pretty good. It's just a lot of songs that we had.

K: It was fun man, we had 12 hours to do 10 songs, and we did it all live.

R: You guys have all been in other bands, so how did it relate to those other experiences?

C: I definitely thought it was a better experience than recording before.

K: This is the band that I've been a part of that I'm the most proud of. To do it in a really professional, legit recording studio (pause) it's the first time I've ever done that, it's always been a friend of a friend who has Protools or in someone's garage or the warehouse where we practice. Not to mention, it's The f'in Dungeon. Against All Authority recorded there, The Agency recorded there, Chris Carrabba, Dashboard [Confessional]. So 2 hours sitting at my drums, 14 microphones on my drums, it was amazing. And then to hear it played back after the first couple of songs, to just sit in the room and hear it. I think the first thing I said is that we sound like grown ups. This is a real, legitimate recording.

R: You guys are notoriously gay for each other... I think there are 4 naked pictures of Kris on your myspace. How does it effect the process and how you make and play music together?

C: Being gay for each other? I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say we're gay for each other. I mean, they're all gay for each other. (All laugh).

K: Chris calls no-homo before every band practice, so it makes it ok.

C: Yeah... I keep my pants on tight. There is definitely a chemistry there with most of us. It's fun.

K: It all started when we did the mini-tour. 6 of us in a van, it was close quarters, it got kind of gay kind of fast. (Laugh)

C: With me in the front seat.

K: [With] one of the bands we played three shows, called Criminal Culture, this whole game evolved where we were showing each other our balls... cat brains if you will. Like there was this time in Gainesville where we slept at our friend Nick's house, who is the bass player from another awesome band called Assassinate the Scientist, C.C. were all getting shit out of their van (everyone was just getting up and was either really hungover or very stoned) and when we opened the side door of the van, everyone that wasn't driving was just standing on the side of the van holding their balls, and [we] drove by and honked and everyone looked up.

So yeah, that game got kind of crazy.

R: I know you do have side projects, do you see Fireside as the main band, right now? What do you expect for what you are going to accomplish?

C: I think at this point, Kris and I have been talking a little bit, and my moving away isn't a bad thing necessarily, I think it'll just push us....

K: I'm expecting a private jet.

C: We'll just play shows out of Miami a little more, like Gainesville and Tallahassee, which are the hot spots for the kind of music that we play, really sweet spots... (laughter).

K: [W]e [plan on] doing a 4-way split 12" with Criminal Culture, Assassinate the Scientist, and Homemade Handgrenade. It should be like 2 or 3 of our songs. We haven't decided what we should do with the other 6 or 7 songs. My vote is to do 7 inches just to 7 inches and not put out a CD. I feel like CDs are so disposable. [With] a piece of vinyl, at least if I don't listen to it there is a lot of artistry that goes into it.

R: And there is a whole culture that goes into vinyl, more so than CDs.

K: I feel like CDs are pretty soulless. It's like this little cheap piece of plastic. I have seen a few CDs that you could make an argument for the other side of that. Like Homestretch, that CD, the layout, the insert, everything... it was just amazing. It was so well done, and so cool. Everything was hand screen printed.

That's another thing about the 4-way split, the brother of one of the kids in Criminal Culture works in a printshop and if we bring our own ink we can use all their supplies. So when the shop closes we can screen print all of our own covers. And we're going to do something like... if we print 200 copies, we'll possibly do that each band can get 50 copies and each band can be a different color or different color art. So it'll be a limited 50 different versions. Whenever I get something that's limited and not mass produced it's that much more valuable.

Part II coming next week.

LINKS

Fireside Social's Myspace Page (www.myspace.com/firesidesocial)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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