Below is a transcript of a phone interview I had today with Joe Fikany, guitarist of the Los Angeles-based Natives Of The New Dawn. The band is formerly of Detroit.
The hip-hop-rock group will perform at the end of March at Bell's Eccentric Café, and will be featured March 26 in WOW.
Seems ancient. We formed in 2003 over a bunch of people living around the Detroit area. A couple of guys actually met through Craigslist. And the singer, the keyboardist and myself are cousins. The three of us met the guys that met on Craigslist, and started jamming in Ferndale actually in our MC's basement.
We'd been around playing, and we were playing a show in Lansing when we were 3 months old. Someone from Vans Warped Tour was there and saw us and asked us to tour. Which was really shocking for us. We only had 45 minutes of mate-rial, and we were like, 'We can't do a national tour without any merch to sell.' So we had about three weeks to get in the studio and do our first record. We had three weeks to record it, edit it, master it, press it. We went on tour and it went really well and since then we've just kind of been on the road a lot.
THAT'S PRETTY COOL TO GET PICKED UP ON THE WARPED TOUR AFTER JUST THREE MONTHS.
It was probably one of the most exciting, gratifying moments for me on this project.
WHAT WAS THE NAME OF OF THAT FIRST ALBUM? WHEN WAS IT RELEASED?
It was called "Sunshine Chronicles," released in 2004.
YOU GUYS HAVE ANY OTHER ALBUMS?
Yeah. We live in Los Angeles now. We recorded another album before we left called, "Need Something," (released in 2006). We toured on that one for awhile and then went out to L.A. and got news from the Warped Tour that they were bumping us up to a bigger stage. And so we were sort of in the same situation as the first record. So we quickly recorded another album called "Bliss," (released in 2007). That's the one we're touring on now.
And we're actually working on new album now, which we hope to be released in the fall. That one has no name yet. The new name should be, "Stressful."
ARE YOU GUYS ON A LABEL?
We're completely independent right now. It's been good now, you know, we've toured with a lot of bands who are on big labels and just because of the way the whole industry is upside down right now, it just … I mean, it's good to have a label and to have the support of the label behind you and the marketing, but these major labels don't have money anymore. I mean, we've been touring with bands on major labels who are touring the exact same as us, getting the same kind of promo-tion. So we've just been kind of laid back on the whole label thing.
I HEAR THAT FROM A LOT OF OTHER BANDS.
"Yeah, I mean, with all marketing can do online, with all the widgets and Twitter and MySpace and Facebook, you can do all these things labels are paying tens of thousands of dollars worth for promotion and it's right at your fingertips for free. Not that we wouldn't consider a label if it seemed right, but right now we're doing okay just going it on our own."
WHERE DOES YOUR GUYS' SOUND COME FROM? YOU HAVE A VERY UNIQUE SOUND, THAT STANDS OUT, CERTAINLY FROM MOST OF THE BANDS WITH YOU GUYS ON THE WARPED TOUR.
It's funny, I mean, when we got asked to go on the Warped Tour, it was on a hip-hop stage. When we first started, we were doing a lot of hip hop stuff, actually. The three original members have completely different musical influences … Vince, our MC, is really big into the hard rap things, but he likes a little Motown, too. And Tony, our keyboard player, he's really into the old school rock stuff like Led Zeppelin. And I'm really into the rock like Guns 'N' Roses or Zeppelin. Anyway, when we first started, the three of us would just sit there and maybe I'd write a rock song, and then Vince would start rapping over. You know, we'd have this rock riff or whatever and then we'd just put over It what the other guys would do. I'd write a heavy riff and Vince would just start rapping over it or Tony would start singing soulful over it. So our sound just has all these different influences built in.
We've toured with hip-hop bands, we've toured with metal bands, we're kind of like chameleons. We let the show decide how we're gonna play, it depends on the bands we're playing with. That first Warped Tour we played more hip-hop stuff and sometimes we're in Detroit with rock acts and we're more rock-oriented, and then like at Bell's we're going to have a three hour set so we'll get to kind of stretch out a bit. Our sound kind of depends on the show we're at."
HAS THE UNIQUENESS OF YOUR SOUND BEEN A HINDERANCE OR HAS IT HELPED YOU? I MEAN, OBVIOUSLY, YOU'RE DOING PRETTY WELL.
It definitely goes both ways. When we when first started, It definitely helped us a lot becausee people were just like, "What the hell is going on?" Which is cool, if someone is seeing us for the first time, it takes them a songs to get into it because it's kind of confusing. It's helped us stand out. We won one national and one international battle of the bands. In a case like that it may get us a little farther because of the uniqueness, you know, it puts above other bands, helps us stand out.
But at the same time it can be tough because we don't fit into a certain style. When touring with certain bands it's hard to work out a way to promote and sometimes you can clash with the people who show up. I mean, when we're touring with emo bands, it's hard for us to be all happy jumping around on stage, you know. It's got its pros and its cons.
HOW DO YOU GUYS GO ABOUT WRITING SONGS?
There's never really been a certain format. A lot of times traditionally what happens is Tony the keyboard player or myself on guitar, I'll come up with song or the structure of song. I don't write words, Tony doesn't really write words but he has been more. Then we sit down and everybody writes their own parts. It's never like one person comes in with a song and says, "You have to play this exactly like this." Everybody handles their own parts. Everybody puts their own little spice on it. Or it'll be reversed, like, Tony will come to me with the words and then we write the music on that. We just kind of go off of everybody.
IS IT EVER HARD TO FIT ALL THE DIFFERENT INFLUENCES INTO A PIECE THAT MAKES SENSE?
Sometimes, I have found it hard if I'm writing something really, say I'm more on the rock side, sometimes it's hard to influ-ence the hip-hop side of stuff. But on this new record we're recording we're doing it a little differently. Sometimes the way we write music is getting a little more predictable where we have music and words and everything comes together.
But yeah, you've gotta be careful. You can't have have like an acousticy Dave Matthews-type song with a Chuck D from Public Enemy sound on top. Sometimes that kind of thing happens becausee everybody's got their own input, but we've always been able to tweak it enough to where it makes sense in our eyes.
WHO WRITES MOST OF THE LYRICS?
I'd say Vince writes 90 percent of the lyrics.
WHAT ARE MOST OF THE LYRICS ABOUT? WHAT'S THE CONTENT?
It's a lot of positivity, it's a lot of fun. When we write, we write in the mind not just, "Let's write a great song," but, "Let's write a great song to perform live and have people get into."
We are a better live band than an album band. We're really about the live show and the energy, especially at times like these where everyone's so depressed in the country. It's like, you know, music is never going to go away, and entertainers, just like in the World Wars, it's our job to give 100 percent of our positivity and energy and help people forget about the fact they just got laid off from their job or that their house taken away.
WHAT DO THE SONGS MEAN TO YOU GUYS PERSONALLY?
Some mean more than others; some have really personal … some more personally to one person than others do. But it just becomes so natural to us, it's just kind of like what we do. We all love it, we're all very into the music still, it hasn't gotten old to us. When a certain style or a certain song gets old, we have a tendency to adjust it. Sometimes you've gotta step back and say, "It's not really about you. It's about the people listening to the song."
Like, there's this song on our first record called "Mama Said." It was one of our very first songs we ever wrote. And every time we go to Detroit, everybody's singing it back to us. But we've been playing it so long and we don't want to get bored with it, so we sit down and rehearse it and find little changes we can make to make it fun and new for us without changing the way it sounds.
WHAT ARE YOUR GUYS' ASPIRATIONS? HOW MUCH FARTHER DO YOU HOPE TO TAKE THIS BAND, HOW DO YOU HOPE TO GET THERE?
We're big on setting goals and it's always, "Hey, we wanna do this by this point, go here by this point or tour Europe by this point." But especially in this industry, you can set goals, but there always will be winds and twists along the way. You can't play it too far ahead, because stuff always pops up for us.
You've gotta keep your schedule very open, which is frustrating as hell, but good things do come from it.
But we do want put this record out, we've got big tour planned in the fall. But just like that, we had a tour planned to go from here (L.A.) to our shows in the Midwest, but another band called and said, "We've got to opening for us in Chicago." So now we're going to fly to the Midwest and hit the other states later on.
It's really tough living out here when most of our fan base and friends and family is in the Midwest.
WHY DID YOU GUYS MOVE TO L.A.?
All the people we're affiliated with on the business side were out here. We had some really good contacts out here and we got sponsored by Ernie Ball and it just made sense to be out here for business.
So we came out here and we definitely got our teeth kicked in for a year … but we've gotten around and it's definitely made us a stronger project.
WHEN DID YOU GUYS MOVE TO L.A.?
We moved out here in 2006, but we're doing shows in Detroit all the time. Our bread and butter is in Michigan.
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