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I’d given up on the interview and decided to just kill some time before the start of the show. The battery in my blackberry was dead, I hadn’t eaten, and the interview had never materialized. I was pulling into a Wendy’s to grab something before the show, when miraculously, my once dead phone vibrated and it was an e-mail from Richard, saying that I could still get my interview.

I gunned it out of the parking lot and almost side swiped a delivery truck as I swerved into traffic and pointed the nose of my car back towards the Opera House. Traffic was light and I made it there quickly. Jumping out and telling my buddy to park the car for me, I half ran, half slid across Queen street and knocked on the door to the giant bus sitting outside.

I’d like to be able to describe down to the finest detail of the tour bus, but I honestly didn’t notice anything as Richard led me into the back room and introduced me to Matt Davies and Darren Smith.

I tried not to sound like a fan as I casually pointed out that tonight would be the fifth time I’d seen them live, and asked how it is that they can have so much energy on stage.
After a few jokes about drugs, pain killers and a strategic work out regiment that involved movies and video games, Darren got down to the more serious side of the question. “We always wanted to be a band that was going to perform and put on a show, rather than just stand there and play our instruments. You might just as well listen to the cd at home if that’s the case. It’s just about putting on a bit of an, a vision of something that’s exciting to watch as well as the music.”

Matt picked up where Darren stopped, adding, “I think you can simplify it even further and say that the music even does something to you when you’re playing. It affects your attitude, your emotion and you just play you just rock out. I don’t think about what I’m doing on stage. Sometimes I think I’m just standing still. But people will say , “Oh, you were fuck’in animated. It depends show to show it’s all different, the mood the audience everything plays apart in how much energy we put across.”

Looking around the Opera House, just moments before the band came out on stage I had to wonder what sort of crowd this was. Was it going to be the sort of crowd that got FFAF’s energy up, or the kind they would spend all night struggling to connect with.

The stage lights came on, and the first notes rang out, and the crowd immediately burst into a frenzy of movement, jumping, pushing and shoving each other all over the place. The band tore through the song, and as it came to a close, Matt did the usual introductions, say hello to Toronto, who responded with screams and shouts.

Back in the tour bus before the show, I had asked Matt and Darren about their latest album, Memory and Humanity. It had been planned as an EP, but had emerged as a full length album, a good one at that.
Darren’s take was, “the writing session went from initially planning four songs. We wrote, quite quickly and ended up with something like seven songs and then we realized that it isn’t much further really to a full album.”

I had to laugh, They made writing an album sound easy, which, I know it isn’t. Matt added a more business like opinion to the new album. “And then we didn’t want to wait that long. If we did put the EP out, then we’d be putting out the album this year instead of last year. We broke away from Atlantic, then we thought that if we had this seven or eight songs we thought that it made more sense to work on the album.”

“We can tour more places on an album than we can on an EP.” Darren added mater of fact.

I’d already heard about Funeral cutting ties with Atlantic records. I’d heard that the people they were dealing with there had changed, and even that someone had told Matt that his lyrics were too intelligent, which is something no artist would be comfortable hearing from someone who was managing their career.
I had to ask what had actually led them to leave Atlantic and start Join Us, their very own label.

Matt started, “It was basically, our option was up with Atlantic really. They wanted to go back with us but-“

Matt trailed off and Darren was there to pick up the slack, “They wanted to renegotiate. Because the music industry changed so much, they wanted to include things in the contract that we weren’t prepared to give up and it meant we sort of came to a stale mate really, and we just felt that sort of because of that reason it made much more sense for us to take more control and attempt to put our own label together.”

“I think that one of the deciding factors was the way we felt the label handled our last record. We were so excited about that record and they seemed really excited about that record, and then after we did the first single everything was like shut down. We were touring the world, and it’s like, no one doing anything to support the record.” Mat said.

Darren added that, “They weren’t promoting it.”

Before Matt continued, “and it sucked. It was very disheartening to see something you worked so hard to create and to produce be treated in such a way and we really didn’t understand it, and when the option came, with all those factors coming into play, we decided to separate from them and start up our own label and it gave us the time to focus and promote ourselves in the way that we feel we should be promoted and marketed and developed without having to have someone over your shoulder telling you that this is how it should be done. We know how it should be done, we’ve been in the business for a long time.”

Darren picked right up where Matt’s train of thought ended, and I couldn’t help but see why they were so good together on stage, as they seemed so in unison about a lot of what we were talking about. “We’ve learned a lot and that was another factor towards not being too afraid to go the own label route. We learned a hell of a lot and learned a lot of things not to do as well. It could just be a waste of money cause I think that major labels are very prone to spending a lot of money on things that are just not going to work and if they actually asked the artist if they think it would work, a good percentage of them would say that that’s just a waste of money, that that’s just not going to work. That was another thing I think, you know, in the UK up until the album before this one, we had a healthy kind of relationship with Atlantic records, it was only in America that we really felt let down. They just didn’t want to prioritize us at all, and kind of push us hard enough”

“It was like we were just left on their doorstep,” Matt added.

“Especially America and even through Canada no one really gave that much of a shit as far as record labels go. They weren’t really pushing hard or trying to make us more successful through marketing streams and stuff.”

It was true, I had to think that outside of magazines like Alternative Press, there had been very little mention of Tales Don’t Tell Themselves, Funerals third full length, and to date, only concept album, despite it being their highest charting album to date, making it to number three on the UK charts.

On stage, Into Oblivion (Reunion), the lead track from Tales, proved to be one of the strongest songs of the night, as FFAF kicked it up a notch and played a harder version of the song than can be found on the album itself, with the lyrics becoming almost more poignant live than they ever could be through my earphones.

“Now that I’m coming home/will you be the same as when I saw you last/tell me how much time has past.”

As that lyric circled through my mind, it occurred to me how similar the lives of a touring rock band and a sailor really are. You’re away from home for a long period of time, stopping off in different ports, and missing your home and families, but knowing that the whole reason you’re doing it is to provide for them.

I’d asked Matt and Darren about home, and more specifically about how the music scene in their home country of Wales had changed since their first release in August of 2002.

“There’s a lot of bands that, given the success of the first wave, I guess we can consider ourselves part of the first wave,” Matt looked to Darren to confirm their inclusion in the first wave, and once he’d gotten it, he continued, “It has definitely given a light for loads of other bands to realize that they can go somewhere and get somewhere with their music. There are loads of bands that we are friends with and even bands that we’ve had on tour with us, up until recently even, that are really gaining recognition. We’re all about shining a light on the hot bed of talent there still lying in wait to be exploited by whatever bloody record label chooses to get their grubby mitts on them. It’s a thriving multi-sonic scene really, so many different kinds of bands I think it’s the healthiest it’s been in a long long time. And I think it’s continuing to develop and grow.”

“Not just in Wales,” Darren added “I think across the whole UK it’s a very healthy time for music”.

Funeral For A Friend rocked their asses of for us in the Opera House, pulling songs like Water Front Dace Club, Maybe I Am?, Rules and Games and You Can’t See The Forest For The Wolves from Memory and Humanity, and Into Oblivion from Tales Don’t tell Themselves. Streetcar and Roses For The Dead from Hours, and going back to Casually Dressed and Deep in Conversation for Novella, Escape Artists Never Die, She Drove Me To Daytime Television and the highlight, for me personally, and for a lot of long time fans, Juneau, with almost the entire crowd singing along with Matt during the chorus of “I’m nothing more, than a line in your book.”

The set list had been what Matt promised when I’d asked him earlier what it would look like on this tour.

“I think it’s a bit of everything. We’re playing stuff of the new record cause that’s why we’re here, so we’re playing a bunch of songs of that. But we’re also trying to incorporate a wide selection of music from out older records for the benefit of those people who may not be that familiar with us and even those people who have been with us since first record but have never had the chance to hear us play so we want to play a wide variety of songs, as well as showcase where we are right now as a band, cause you can’t keep living in the past. No matter how many people may want you to do that, you’ve got to progress and move forward. I think with each record you pick up a new fan base and you do convert older fans to the direction you’re going in anyways, and it’s nice to have a set that fits together so nicely the new songs really go hand in hand with the older stuff quite neatly.”

Darren’s thoughts on the question of what to play were very in tune with Matt’s, “We’re proud of everything we’ve done.” Darren started. “We’re not one of those bands like some are that might have a hit song that they detest playing it. I know some bands that omit songs from their set just out of spite, because they don’t like it whether their fans want to hear it or not. It’s just stupid I think, as well as kind of conceited. Even though with every record we’ve changed and developed and progressed with our sound, we don’t ignore what we’ve done before. We just want to try different things and make it as interesting as possible for ourselves as well as the listener.”

They’d definitely succeeded there, as there was no one leaving that night who seemed dissatisfied with the performance they’d just seen. Funeral For A Friend poured themselves into the show, and as always had brought their A-game. For my part, the fifth time I’d seen them was awesome and I’m sure the seventh will be as well.

Full Interview Transcript

Funeral For A Friend – Waterfront Dance Club
Funeral For A Friend – You Can’t See The Forest For The Wolves

Tags: Aaron Long, Casually Dressed And Deep In Conversation, concert, Funeral For A Friend, Hours, Interview, Memory and Humanity, Opera House, post-hardcore, Tales Don't Tell Themselves