The First To Fight Interview
Q: Can you talk about your musical history
A: I started writing music around 2008 when my parents purchased my first electric guitar. I’d write pop songs on my acoustic and punk on my electric. I had two friends that would push me to keep writing and I honestly gave up. One of the friends passed away due to cancer and it made me look at myself and it made me realize that I didn’t have anything to contribute to society. I couldn’t understand what adults do when they graduated high school and college so I grabbed my guitars and a piano and just started writing because in my mind I felt that music was the only thing you could mess up and people would still understand that’s what music is. I kept a focus on the genre I wanted to do by listening to Sunny Day Real Estate, David Bowie and even The Dammed but as I graduated high school, I got more into bands like The Wonder Years, Jimmy Eat World and Brand New and my sail caught that wind. I played a few bars or did some showings to management before getting on stage and I had feedback telling me I was too loud or too weird for a saloon so I went back to playing in my room. I did a few gigs with cover bands until a friend told me to get back to writing so we could play music together. I took about ten years to figure out musically what I was and if I didn’t have the support I wouldn’t be who I am today.
Q: What are some topics and themes you explore on some of your recent release The Saddest Champion?
A: The main story to The Saddest Champion is that I’ve accomplished the only thing I ever wanted and I feel alone. The album was supposed to represent a thank you to my stepdad because out of all of the phases I went through in high school, he still showed support no matter what idiotic thing I did. The final song on the album was supposed to be a thank you to him but unfortunately he passed away before completing the album and the song became more of a send off. Other than that, every release I’ll do under The First To Fight will be focused on a holiday (I like to keep a plot to anything I write) and with this one being about New Year’s Eve, the album was originally about a year of reflection, and then as time went on, it became about the years between making the album. The album focuses on suicide, death, hating yourself and basically overcoming that destructive outlook on the world. Like I said earlier, I did something that made me understand that I was loved and I just couldn’t see it. In reference to the other songs, I finally was the king of the hill, but it felt like it was because I was the only one left playing the game. I didn’t know how to convey what emotion I was feeling, but I did know how to say it, I am The Saddest Champion.
Q: How do you approach songwriting?
A: I’m usually taking a shower at the end of the day and a riff or a sentence gets stuck in my head and I’ll try to write it out in my thoughts until I pass out in bed. If I wake up and I still remember it I know I have something. I don’t always come close to what I have mentally because I don’t have any musical training, but I’ll always try to make something I understand, something poppy with major chord overtones and then I snap it in half and try to write the song a different way. Instead of making a song using the verse chorus verse style or quiet loud, I’ll just do most of the song loud and even change the key from major to minor like in “1926.” Sometimes I’ll just change the chords from 5ths to 7ths like in “Almost A Win” and that opens me up into a new world of options. Sometimes I’m minding my business and realized I made a song in two hours like I did with “Shakespeare or Pure.” Songs like that come out easy if I have a constant flow of lyrics, I can write where my fingers are struggling to push out what my pen is doing. Explaining writing music is kinda hard to break down because sometimes you can just hear rain fall, or you just eat some Ben & Jerry's and you just made up a new song.
Q: Can you talk about your musical history
A: I started writing music around 2008 when my parents purchased my first electric guitar. I’d write pop songs on my acoustic and punk on my electric. I had two friends that would push me to keep writing and I honestly gave up. One of the friends passed away due to cancer and it made me look at myself and it made me realize that I didn’t have anything to contribute to society. I couldn’t understand what adults do when they graduated high school and college so I grabbed my guitars and a piano and just started writing because in my mind I felt that music was the only thing you could mess up and people would still understand that’s what music is. I kept a focus on the genre I wanted to do by listening to Sunny Day Real Estate, David Bowie and even The Dammed but as I graduated high school, I got more into bands like The Wonder Years, Jimmy Eat World and Brand New and my sail caught that wind. I played a few bars or did some showings to management before getting on stage and I had feedback telling me I was too loud or too weird for a saloon so I went back to playing in my room. I did a few gigs with cover bands until a friend told me to get back to writing so we could play music together. I took about ten years to figure out musically what I was and if I didn’t have the support I wouldn’t be who I am today.
Q: What are some topics and themes you explore on some of your recent release The Saddest Champion?
A: The main story to The Saddest Champion is that I’ve accomplished the only thing I ever wanted and I feel alone. The album was supposed to represent a thank you to my stepdad because out of all of the phases I went through in high school, he still showed support no matter what idiotic thing I did. The final song on the album was supposed to be a thank you to him but unfortunately he passed away before completing the album and the song became more of a send off. Other than that, every release I’ll do under The First To Fight will be focused on a holiday (I like to keep a plot to anything I write) and with this one being about New Year’s Eve, the album was originally about a year of reflection, and then as time went on, it became about the years between making the album. The album focuses on suicide, death, hating yourself and basically overcoming that destructive outlook on the world. Like I said earlier, I did something that made me understand that I was loved and I just couldn’t see it. In reference to the other songs, I finally was the king of the hill, but it felt like it was because I was the only one left playing the game. I didn’t know how to convey what emotion I was feeling, but I did know how to say it, I am The Saddest Champion.
Q: How do you approach songwriting?
A: I’m usually taking a shower at the end of the day and a riff or a sentence gets stuck in my head and I’ll try to write it out in my thoughts until I pass out in bed. If I wake up and I still remember it I know I have something. I don’t always come close to what I have mentally because I don’t have any musical training, but I’ll always try to make something I understand, something poppy with major chord overtones and then I snap it in half and try to write the song a different way. Instead of making a song using the verse chorus verse style or quiet loud, I’ll just do most of the song loud and even change the key from major to minor like in “1926.” Sometimes I’ll just change the chords from 5ths to 7ths like in “Almost A Win” and that opens me up into a new world of options. Sometimes I’m minding my business and realized I made a song in two hours like I did with “Shakespeare or Pure.” Songs like that come out easy if I have a constant flow of lyrics, I can write where my fingers are struggling to push out what my pen is doing. Explaining writing music is kinda hard to break down because sometimes you can just hear rain fall, or you just eat some Ben & Jerry's and you just made up a new song.
Q: Have you played this music live and if so how does it translate with an audience?
A: I had the opportunity to play a lot of the songs on the album live with our first show being in a house, and that gave us the opportunity to play large venues. With my lovely wife being in the crowd recording, I can hear people saying what they think of the music, and sometimes even hearing people singing the songs. Our last show was the album reveal party and I got to hear probably the largest amount of people singing along to the songs since I started and it really takes me back to when I was just a kid, alone in my room when during a heatwave and just thinking if anyone would even like this. I could be making songs about love or something easier than writing about being a hermit or not understanding humanity. Hearing people sing it back to you is just the most humble feeling in the world.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: The Saddest Champion did have few hiccups, the major one was that we lost the masters to the album before we could mix it and I was just lucky enough to have mp3s of the songs so a lot of it feels unfinished. I ran out of recording money and time to record a few times and that stretched something I could do under a year into almost four.
I feel like I thought about that a lot but overall I think the album sounds better than what I could do on my own and just having friends that were willing to help out made the world of a difference.
I do have a few songs ready for recording but I think I’ll be using what I’ve learned from the recording process by not bitting off more than I can chew by making an EP this time around, and I even have a single Idea I want to get out by February. After seeing the positivity in the album I think it makes me want to go the distance and see what I can accomplish in the next few years.
A: I had the opportunity to play a lot of the songs on the album live with our first show being in a house, and that gave us the opportunity to play large venues. With my lovely wife being in the crowd recording, I can hear people saying what they think of the music, and sometimes even hearing people singing the songs. Our last show was the album reveal party and I got to hear probably the largest amount of people singing along to the songs since I started and it really takes me back to when I was just a kid, alone in my room when during a heatwave and just thinking if anyone would even like this. I could be making songs about love or something easier than writing about being a hermit or not understanding humanity. Hearing people sing it back to you is just the most humble feeling in the world.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: The Saddest Champion did have few hiccups, the major one was that we lost the masters to the album before we could mix it and I was just lucky enough to have mp3s of the songs so a lot of it feels unfinished. I ran out of recording money and time to record a few times and that stretched something I could do under a year into almost four.
I feel like I thought about that a lot but overall I think the album sounds better than what I could do on my own and just having friends that were willing to help out made the world of a difference.
I do have a few songs ready for recording but I think I’ll be using what I’ve learned from the recording process by not bitting off more than I can chew by making an EP this time around, and I even have a single Idea I want to get out by February. After seeing the positivity in the album I think it makes me want to go the distance and see what I can accomplish in the next few years.