Links:

thecolorfred.com

myspace.com/thecolorfred

  

The official announcement that you were leaving Taking Back Sunday came just a few weeks before The Color Fred album was released. How long had you known that you wanted to do TCF full time before you let the band know, and then before it was officially announced?

I didn’t really wait to tell the band.  It was too obvious.  They actually broke the news a couple weeks later.  I let them do it out of respect for what they were going to do next.

 

Had anything happened for you to want to pursue TCF full time, or did it feel like a natural progression for you, that you had been doing it on the side for so long and you wanted to step it up a bit and work solely on TCF?

It was a slow change of heart.  I was working on Bend to Break and I had 40 different songs that I was working with.  At the same time, we were supposed to be writing the fourth TBS record and it just wasn’t flowing the way that it did on the last ones.  I knew the risks of leaving a band of that level but I couldn’t see being happy if I stayed.

 

At what point in all this did deciding the name, The Color Fred, come about? Do you think it was then that made it all really final for you that this is what you would be doing from now on?

The Color Fred has been a name of much question.  I had a couple names in mind back three years ago and I put them up online and asked TBS fans to vote.  They picked the name which was also my favourite.  I get questions about it sometimes because it’s a name that makes you smile or smirk.  I’m not one to take myself too seriously and if you hear the record, I think it fits. 

 

Do you think you would have released Bend to Break even if you hadn’t decided to leave TBS?

Yes.  That was the original intention.  It was a side-project that took on a life of it’s own.

 

How was the transition for you between being in a band and working solo?

When you’re in a band, you write songs and each person gives their opinion and it’s very much like putting your song through four or five filters.  When you’re on your own, those filters are removed and the songs are much truer to what they were the moment they were written.  On the other hand, it’s been so much more work, but I’m really having a great time with it.

 

All the focus is just on you now, the music, the songs, the live shows etc. Before the pressure/focus would have been on the whole band, but now it’s just you. How does it feel to have all eyes on you this time round?

I’ve always fronted bands in the years before I joined TBS and I think I’m most comfortable doing that.  I also really enjoy being the one who delivers my own lyrics.

 

Do you think a lot of TBS fans are also TCF fans?

Obviously, those were the first people to hear about what I’m doing.  Since I’m not doing the whole acoustic guitar/harmonica solo record, I think they will still relate to Bend to Break.  These songs were written while I was in TBS and some of them were even left-over from the Louder Now writing.  So, it sounds very much like a band and I even used Lou Giordano, who produced Where You Want to Be.  The thing that makes this a solo venture is that I did the writing and played all the instruments except the drums, but I enjoy writing loud rock music more than anything else so that’s mostly what I did. 

 

You started working on your solo work when you were in Breaking Pangaea, which was quite a few years ago now. Bend to Break is the first release you’ve had of that work; you must have had a lot of material when going into the studio? How did you narrow it down to the 11 tracks on your album?

The song, I’ll Never Know was one of the songs that came from the BP years which is mostly why that is one of the few acoustic moments on the record.  That said; I wound up picking mostly newer songs that were just a year or two old.  I started to notice that these newer songs were telling a story.  I wasn’t very happy at that time and so the things that I wrote during that period had a similar mood.  It just seemed like a story that I needed to tell.

 

What is your writing process? Do you think it’s going to be different now? You will be writing for a set purpose, to release as an album, where as before there was less of a set goal for the work.

I always have written the same way since I was about 11.  An acoustic guitar and a notebook.  Sometimes, I don’t write for weeks and then it all comes at once.  I don’t sit there and try to write.  I’m just driven to do it because it’s me counselling myself. 

 

Who would you say are your musical influences, and have they altered through the years from Brody to Breaking Pangaea, then Taking Back Sunday and now Color Fred?

The musicians that I love have changed over the years but everyone I’ve ever listened to has influenced me in some way.  I was listening to other solo artists when I was making this record.  Just for inspiration not for the style.  I was trying to listen people that told great stories in their songs like Bob Dylan, Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Bjork, Bright Eyes and The Hold Steady.

 

Is the band you’re touring with at the moment the same as the band that you recorded with? Do you think that the current Color Fred line-up will remain the same in the future or is it open to change?

My drummer, Steve Curtiss is on the record but I played the other instruments.  I love the guys I’m playing with live.  I’ve known them all for years so I expect to have them around.  We’d like to add a fifth member at some point but the four of us have such good chemistry that we’re having trouble letting someone in on it.

 

Two years ago you were in TBS. Did you imagine that two years on you would be doing this? Where do you see yourself and The Color Fred in two years time?

All I know is that back then, I couldn’t see two years ahead with TBS, but now I can see ten years of sticking with this.