Dakotah from Electric Daze chats with Timmy Waldron from the New Jersey based band FV. They have an EP out called, “ Fake Love” and it has all the indie underground vibes you’ve been looking for. For only becoming a band at the end of last year, they sound terrific.
Electric Daze: Hey guys! Would you mind introducing yourselves and saying what you play in the band?
FV: Hey, I’m Timmy Waldron and I play guitar and sing in FV. Evan King plays bass and lays down some vox as well as Sean McCall who plays guitar and finally last but certainly not least Chris Kitchen plays drums.
ED: How long have the four of you been in this band together?
Timmy: We haven’t been together for that long actually. Sean, Evan, and I came together in November and couldn’t find a drummer who wanted to pursue this music. But then Chris and I ran into each other at a Japanese House show a month ago, I swear it was fate. He told me he bought a Roland sample pad and had no project he could utilize it in. The rest was history. Now we all barely go a day without seeing each other, so I feel like we’ve been a band for years.
ED: FV is such an interesting but simple name, how did you guys come up with it? Does it mean anything specific?
Timmy: FV is the initials of an old band name I had. I hated the past band name but loved the way FV looked next to each other aesthetically. It doesn’t mean anything and that’s what I now love about it. Unlike other band names that give you a predetermined feeling of what the genre will be, FV leaves it all up to interpretation. Which in a sense widens options when exploring new sounds. Plus, there is a lot of people who say you can’t name a band FV, so there is a petty side of me that just wants to prove them wrong.
ED: Congrats on your EP, “Fake Love”. I myself feel a lot of grunge underground vibes, I can picture you guys playing house shows in people’s basements and shit, which I love. Have you or do you play shows like that? How do you like playing live, what is your favorite part?
Timmy: Yes we have! We all grew up in a scene which was predominantly punk. Nothing but basement shows and DIY houses. Even though we want to explore other styles of music, those first three demos definitely capture the identity of where we all come from. My favorite part about playing live is definitely fully capturing the emotion of the songs. The slight deviation in a melody or more impactful lead live makes the live show genuine and not just a run through of the recorded material.
ED: Do you record all of your songs yourselves?
Timmy: Fake Love and Grandeur Eyes was recorded by my friend Jeff in his basement studio and Too Lost Too Late was done insanely lofi, I just had a snowball mic plugged into my laptop in a room of my house that had a good natural reverb. For the new songs however our bassist, Evan records them all. The man is a genius I swear. Sean and him handle the majority of the production side of FV now. It’s quite nice being able to record ourselves, it pushes us to constantly explore new sounds since there is hardly a time limit.
ED: What does your writing process look like? Is it a collective, “lets all get together and write a song” or does one write more than others?
Timmy: Well I wrote the Fake Love EP with an acoustic guitar in a bedroom, but that was before the band was even thought of. Now everything starts on a laptop. It doesn’t matter where we are if the idea comes our way we will set up the laptop, midi, and makeshift interphase and write out the idea. One of my fondest memories is writing one song on a long car ride to a show we played. We were using the car stereo as studio monitors and had the laptop on the dashboard. By the time we got to the venue we had a full demo. Another aspect of our writing process is the fact that we all write together, we are so lucky that all of our ideas clique together perfectly so writing collectively is our best bet. Writing alone is so boring, I can’t imagine not writing as a group anymore.
ED: I noticed you guys did a little east coast tour at the top of this year, how was that experience? Was that your first tour as FV?
Timmy: That was the first time the majority of us have ever been on the road, the entire experience was eye opening. The fact that there were people I’ve never met a day in my life showing up to see us play 100 miles away was mind boggling. The tour showed us that this is how we need to spend our lives and that these are the people we need to do it with.
ED: Any big plans for 2017? New music, tour, full length?
Timmy: Tons of new music, more tour dates and a new version of Fake Love accompanied by a music video. We have always wanted FV to be a cinematic experience and with the opportunities available to us now that will finally be able to happen.
Follow FV on facebook, twitter, and instagram, and on tumblr at @fvisaband.
Watching NB...l for the first time! Go King! #sydneyking #2018 (at Qudos Bank Arena) https://www.instagram.com/p/Br9M5KOAbBEbYklJ-UfRx5kObLDIkCJrc3MDvI0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1j48l83c4n8wa
