New York-based singer, songwriter, and the guitarist for the indie rock band, King Falcon. This past Friday they released an eleven-song, self-titled album, with mixing by a 12-time GRAMMY nominee. (A white vinyl version of the album will be released on December 1st.) On August 30th they’d released a music video for one of the songs from it, with that video already having gotten over 60 thousand views on YouTube. The band is currently touring, and in March and May of this year they’d released singles that are also off their new King Falcon album, with one of the songs peaking at number 5 on the Submodern Singles Chart. This guest has built a truly impressive collection of one-of-a-kind guitars, each with its own story, which he talks about here.
“It’s customary, obviously, for, sometimes you work with a new writer and they kind of expect you to expect them to have a song done and they finish something before you get there.”
“We’re a rock band and I’ve been writing songs my whole life, so if I am not part of the writing process personally, I feel a little bit removed from the song, it has to be kind of about something personal.”
“One of our biggest things that we stick to in the studio is you have to be ready to quote unquote ‘kill your babies,’ meaning, if you have a part of a song or a riff or something that you really like and it’s just not working, you have to be totally okay to nix it, and if that’s the whole song and you gotta start over from scratch, sometimes you gotta do that too.”
“I always say we are a New York rock band and being from New York means that you have to be no nonsense and you have to be right to the point and I think our music is kind of the same way. It’s all about the songwriting, there’s a lot of hooks, but there’s also a lot of musicality, but not overly so, it’s not nine-minute-long guitar solos or anything like that. It’s all very kind of smart and purposeful.”
“Knowing that there are so many other guitar players who are amazing guitar players on this label and the chance that they might actually hear our music kind of pushed me to make sure that all the guitar playing was killer.”
“I really like filming music videos. They’re a lot of fun and I think all the guys have a lot of fun, you can tell just by watching the video(s).”
“I can’t say that when we make our music videos we really think about the individual clips. It’s more about the journey of the video as a whole. However, if you shoot anything well enough and you get good angles, you’ll get good content out of it.”
“I knew from the very beginning, even when I was a kid, the second I picked up the guitar, that I wanted something that I made on vinyl.”
“I got my first electric guitar when I was, like, nine or ten (years old). I think I started at School of Rock about a year later and I was there until I was, like, 15, 16.”
“I have too many guitars, frankly. I think at the moment I have somewhere around fifty.”
(regarding songwriting) “It’s very collaborative… Being the lead guitarist and being the voice, being the lead singer, I usually steer the ship, however it’s really a team effort.”
“Rabbit Gets the Gun”
“Everybody’s Down”