Project Description

Interview With

RED FANG

Interviewer: Kelsey Hentschel

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The American sledgehammer stoner metal giants RED FANG are returning to Australia in May. RED FANG, in its own nutty fashion, turn distortion rock into an imperious form of Rock Theatre, at times with its tongue rammed as far as its cheek muscles will contain it.  Amnplify writer Kelsey got a chance to chat with Aaron Beam(Bass/Vocals) about the upcoming tour.

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You guys are returning to Australia in May which is so cool, last time you came here you did the Australian Soundwave Festival so a little bit different to what you’re doing.

We’ve actually been back since then for a headline tour, which was super cool.

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Did you? That’s awesome! When was that one?

It t was more than 2 years ago. I think it was… Soundwave was 2013, right? I think we were back there, it was 2016 or maybe it was 2015.

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Oh, awesome! So you must like us then?

Yeah! Definitely!

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Are you excited to be coming back again then?

Absolutely! We’re very excited that there’s enough interest to bring us back because I love Australia. I actually spent an extra week there last time we came down and learnt how to scuba dive while I was there.

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No way! That’s so cool!!

You guys have this thing, I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but there’s this thing called The Great Barrier Reef that’s real close to Australia.

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Oh yeah, I think I’ve heard about that haha. So you did scuba diving there, that’s awesome, that’s like one of the best places to do it!

It was incredible!

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So, how do you find that the Australian crowds differ in comparison to the U.S. because a lot of people do say that we’re a little bit crazier over here…

There’s definitely that sort of like little feeling of danger, a good feeling of danger if that makes sense. So, we started out as a band playing basement parties, that was literally like our first show was actually in David’s basement that’s where we practiced and we just had a party there. Our music is sort of geared towards that kind of vibe. We write for basement parties a lot of the Australian shows, you know, even in proper venues they have a sort of feel, even the people at the shows feel like they’re just, you know, they just feel just like way more like home or something and not like your out at some bar where you have to be careful that they’ll break the glasses or something

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We’re pretty prepared with that, plastic glasses everywhere, we’re ready for it. So you’ve got Drunk Mums joining you on tour so that’ll be really cool, have you guys worked with them before? Did you get to choose your support?

We did get to choose, I’d never heard of them before but when we were setting up the tour, Destroy All Lines who were setting it all up they sent us sort of a list of a few different ideas for opening bands and they were the ones that stuck out to all of us right away. I’m really excited that this time round we get to have more of a little package, I feel like it always works better when you know what to expect for the whole bill.

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So you’re playing Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and then you’ve got a few regional dates in Newcastle and Geelong as well… That’s quite unusual for a tour. What prompted those regional shows?

I don’t know about Newcastle but last time we came down we played Geelong and it was actually really great, it was a great show and I know we’re not doing Perth this time which is sad but I also know that Perth gets the short end of the stick a lot of the time because they’re so far away. So yeah, I think that I’m probably guessing that it just came from demand. It’s people, if they express enough interest to you coming back to their town or coming to their town for the first time then you’ll do those shows. I’m excited that Geelong wants us back; I’m excited to come check out Newcastle for the first time. We’ve been to Newcastle in England a bunch of times now so….

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I think ours might be a little bit different!

I think it is!

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So with this tour coming up, are there any particular shows on this tour that you’re really excited for, like you mentioned Newcastle because you’ve not been there before. Is there any of the other shows that you’re looking forward to?

I mean, you never know, I know that Melbourne is going to be good because it’s… Actually Melbourne, I have said this before that the very first time we came down, for Soundwave and it sort of became even clearer when we were there this last time, or when we were there a couple years ago because we spent quite a bit of time in Melbourne. Melbourne is really a city that’s the most like Portland than any other city that I’ve been too in the world, for better or for worse. But, I love Portland so it kind of has that real similar vibe to me so I just enjoy that city a lot because it’s so close to that type of place that I chose to live.

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So, it feels a lot like home! That’s awesome! I’m from Melbourne so I like to hear that! Can you give any hints as to what fans can expect from this tour?

I mean, if you’ve seen us before then you know what to expect so we don’t really stray too much, just what our normal, we’re really just like, we’re really just a band that started but you know like I was saying before we’re like a band that started out playing basement shows so we kind of as much as possible try to bring that same energy to the club shows we play or even like when we play festivals on a huge stage we still have that sort of basement thing in mind so I think that’s the main thing that you can expect is just like, less of, there’s not a lot of partying.

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Yeah, cool! So your live presence and like your shows are such a massive part of your brand and like who you guys are as a band, so do you guys take into consideration how you’re going to play your live shows, like how you mentioned the really basement sounds. So, obviously that’s a really big focus on when you’re recording.

I mean, it’s a little bit less for recording because when we record there’s just, as much as possible you just want to bring that same energy into recording that you do to a live show if you’re a band that your primary focus is playing live, but there’s just no way to get that – there’s no way to ever be exactly the same so you do different things in the studio like you put different instruments on there. You do different kinds of over dubs to add a different style of excitement to the recordings so Ross Robertson, the last guy that we recorded with he’s really focused on as much as possible making the recording capture what it’s like to see a band live. There’s some pretty interesting interviews of him about that about how apparently he gets really angry when he sees bands play live and play like with more fire than they did in the studio, it brings out this competitive edge to him. So we try to do that as much as possible but you can’t really do it 100% the same so we do our best.

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What’s something that you’d like to achieve career wise that you’ve not done yet?

I mean to be totally crap, honestly I would love to get to a point where we actually didn’t have to be on the road quite as much. I have an 8 year old son who I adore and my girlfriend lives, she lives about two and a half hours away from me so the time that I have for spending with the people that I really love and care about back home is pretty precious to me. If there’s any way to ever actually get to a point where you know, we could be playing shows for like $80,000 to pop and then we’d only have to play like 30 times a year or something. I love playing live but it’s just the balance. Aside from that I don’t really have any specific career goals for the band, we’ve already done a lot. I would just love to keep writing songs that feel like they’re accurate expressions of the feeling that I’m having at that point in my life so, I just want to keep writing music that feels like… whether it connects with people or not that it’s something that I feel like is really saying something about myself

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You guys released ‘Only Ghost’ in 2016; do you have any plans for new music?

We have been writing seriously so we’ve got lots and lots and lots and lots of riffs and we’re starting to boil them down into songs we have like 3 or 4 new skeletons of songs plus songs that are totally finished and recorded but we don’t have plans to actually be in the studio to record a new record yet, we’re going to just feel about for the next couple of months and see how it’s going

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Was there ever a specific event or a time where you could pin point that music was exactly what you wanted to do and something that you wanted to make a career out of?

It was clear to me real early on that it was something that I wanted to do when I was, I think I was in the third grade I was about 8 or so when I actually approached my parents about signing me up for piano lessons so I always loved and I think all kids love music right but I loved it to the point where hearing my friends complain about how their parents were forcing them to go to piano lessons, I was like ‘that sounds kinda cool’ and so I actually asked my parents to sign me up for piano being sort of like crazy to all my friends. So yeah, right about 8 is when I think I got real focused on trying to do music and then you know as soon as I was old enough like 14-15 years old to realise people like me could potentially make a living actually doing it, it was like a distant, distant fantasy but I never really thought it would become reality, it took 20 more years after that before it did.

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That’s cool! You kept at it, which is always good! Now you guys have got such an extensive list of material behind you with all the albums and everything, does it get really difficult to decide what songs make your set list and what doesn’t? Or are there like crowd favourites that you always try and incorporate?

It’s more like that, it’s more like there’s a definite stock, a definite good set of songs that we basically feel like have to go in every set always and so then its which of the newer songs are we more excited about at the time and how do we fit those into the set and we’re always, always adjusting the set even while we’re on tour we’ll be adjusting it to make it feel like to everybody because the flow can be really pretty drastically changed to when you switch one song out for another one, but there’s always going to be ‘wires’ on the set, ‘prehistoric dog’ is always going to be on the set so there are some that will never leave, unless we sue ourselves or something

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What is one song that you would recommend to someone if they were thinking about listening to your music, something to kind of start them off with?

Probably stairway to heaven by led zeppelin, no, I guess I would say I mean probably the one that was probably the first song for a lot of people would be prehistoric dog but that was one of the first ones, the first single, if you want to call it that we ever put out. Or Wires would be another one

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Do you have any goals for 2018 in terms of your music?

Really just trying to get as many songs, new songs written and like completed to the point where we can play them live that probably the main thing, just trying to get a whole bunch of new music written. I have so many riffs in my mind where I feel like I’m getting to the point where I’m just forgetting them unless we start turning them into songs you see what I mean?

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You need to voice record them! 

That’s a really good idea!

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Looking back, is there anything that you would’ve done differently musically like at the start of your career? Or are you pretty happy with how things have gone?

Absolutely not! No, I’m very happy with the way my life has turned out and for all the like suffering and years and years of not having people care about my band I feel like that was all necessary for me to get to the point where I am today and for me to love things as much as I do, no, I wouldn’t change a single thing

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That’s wonderful to hear that! Lastly, if you weren’t in the music industry, what do you think you’d be doing instead?

Fretting about what to do with my life and how to make money!

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That’s a good one! Thank you so much for having a chat with me! Enjoy the rest of your day! 

Thank you very much, you too!

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