Welcome to a feature where we sit down and talk to bands and artists about their latest albums to find out all about it. Today we speak to the band Famous Strangers about the debut self titled album.
Hello, nice to meet you! Tell us about yourself.
Hello, nice to meet you as well, thank you for having us. We are Famous Strangers, a heavy rock band from Sherwood Park, Alberta, and we came together three years ago by accident. We’ve all kind of known each other for twenty plus years, playing in separate bands together and seeing each other at shows.
Three years ago we just came together. The three boys were already jamming and creating art and playing in other bands together, and I just showed up to sing a bunch of cover songs with them, and the energy was right. We really bonded and connected, and they showed me all their original tunes, and it lit a spark in my soul. The rest is history.
Tell us about the new album.
We’re very excited. It’s got seven tracks, and it’s on vinyl, and also on all the streaming platforms. It takes you on a journey, heavy rock and roll, with a pinch of metal, a dash of blues, and a side of punk. It’s got all the different genres, because we love to genre bend and just play whatever we’re feeling that day.
A lot of the songs were written and put in the vault by Beej and Jeff, and later Braden, they’ve been in the vault for a good ten years, so it’s really neat that these boys have witnessed all the phases of life of these songs, and now they’re in their final form.
The album’s theme is a lot about self-worth and self-love, and a lot of hype songs that pump you up and want the listener to feel special and realize how amazing they are. Then it gets a little fun with a punk song about alien abduction, and really vulnerable and emotional with the blues track. It’s all over the place, and we’re very excited about it. We just released it this past weekend with a double album release party, and it’s been so amazing, the feedback has been overwhelming and we’re so grateful for all the support.
It was mixed and mastered and produced by Phil Anderson, Jeff Kittlitz, Joel Wanasek, and Maor Appelbaum, and we’re so excited to have that team with us. Art Szabo made all the artwork for it, and I think it really pops, the black and white, the white vinyl, it looks so cool. I’m really excited about it.
Favourite track on the new album, and why?
That’s a hard question, it changes all the time, but I’ll say Fire Inside, which wasn’t always my favourite, and Please Her. They both have a really fun part to them. Fire Inside is really in your face and inspiring, I’m singing the words out into the world trying to get people to realize they’re incredible, to pump them up, to know they’re going to make it through today. When I hear it, I’m hearing it for myself too. It just fires me up and gets me through the day, and listening to the production of it makes my heart happy, I’m really proud of the boys, and proud of us and what we’ve accomplished.
I’ve always loved Please Her too, it’s definitely a sister track to Deep Star, I think it’s very similar. It’s a sexy song, and I love how raw and almost naughty it is. It is a bit sexual, but I kind of like that, because I’m a free spirit, an open book when it comes to my writing nowadays, since I’m just writing all my experiences. That one’s a bit vulnerable and a little embarrassing maybe, but whatever, I’m just writing what’s coming out of me. I’m really enjoying those tracks, and I’m enjoying the whole album.
Tell us a bit about the recording process. Was it fun to do?
It’s always fun, but also very challenging, long days. I feel for Beej, our drummer, because he had one day to hash it all out in the studio with Phil Anderson at the audio department. He didn’t have much time, you get one day to lay down all the tracks, which is usually the case. The rest of us were honoured to go into the basement with Jeff at our jam studio, and record there, with the luxury of, if I didn’t like the way I sang a word, going back and changing it, which isn’t usually the case.
So it was so much fun to track the album, and amazing to be at the audio department, because there’s so much inspiration and motivation in there, music all around you, so all you want to do is make music. Sometimes at the jam space there are distractions, a bed, a TV, a couch, all the puppies at Jeff’s house. So it’s good to be in the studio, that’s for sure.
The process was also pretty challenging and vulnerable at times, but so fun. Sending it off to Joel and Maor Appelbaum, it was exciting to get the songs back and hear what they did with them, transform them into these beasts. It was such a beautiful process. The studio always teaches you a lot too, because it’s your music under a microscope, you learn a lot, and it doesn’t sound the same as when you’re just jamming.
What inspired the album name?
It’s our first album, and it’s not the first time I know this has happened, I think Order of Chaos’s first album was self-titled too, so maybe that’s just the theme. When we sat down to talk about what the album should be called, that just came up, why not just self-titled, since it’s Famous Strangers, our very first vinyl, our very first album, let’s just introduce it like that. I couldn’t really think of any other album names for it, it would be cool to hear ideas from others on what they’d name it.
I think the inspiration came from just, this is who we are, raw and authentic, and it’s just Famous Strangers. I feel like we’ll get more artistic with names on the next albums.
Tell us the idea behind the album cover.
We were very honoured that Art Szabo captured it perfectly, he designed everything. It came from a still shot of the very first promo video I made of the band, the three boys walking around, I used Jeff’s phone and a black and white cartoon style filter. I get a lot of visions in my mind, and I had this vision of Braden in the field smoking, it was winter, so the smoke is billowing in front of his face. I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to have that, the whole thing black and white, and the vinyl white, I’m kind of obsessed with the white vinyl, it really pops. Art did such a good job and really captured everything. Black and white has just become the theme, our colours as a band.
It’s kind of neat, there wasn’t really a metaphor behind it at the time, but now it’s like, that was the first video, that was the very beginning, and here we are three years later with everything we’ve accomplished. We’re really proud of it and excited.
Which one of your songs on the new album do you think will be the most difficult to rehearse for a live audience?
That changes, but I feel like the blues one, we’ve been playing it a lot lately, and it’s definitely not what we’re used to. We’re used to playing in punk and metal bands, fast and crazy, and this is the first one where you have to get right down into it and completely open yourself up. We don’t always put it in the set, depending on who we’re opening for, we try to match ourselves to who we’re playing with. At the beginning I was really nervous to play Rain, because it’s not metal, and we’d be opening for really heavy metal bands and then bust out this blues song. But the reactions have been so amazing, and I’m thankful people are open to it.
Even when I’m singing it, I sit right down on the stage, because that’s what my body wants to do, it’s a very emotional, vulnerable song for me and the boys. Even Jeff comes and sits down beside me, because it’s completely us, and it gets very quiet, there’s nothing but the song. I’m not used to that, where you can hear every little thing, so that’s a challenge for sure. It’s getting easier and better, and I think the boys would probably choose that song too, maybe not Braden, since he’s already in so many bluesy folk bands and loves that part. But that’s the one I’d choose.
Why should people listen to the album?
If you’d like to listen, we’d be honoured, we always want to hear feedback, good and bad, because we want to learn and grow and be better. We’d love for you to journey through the album with us and see which songs get into your heart and soul, especially metalheads, since that’s our foundation, that’s where we come from, that’s where a lot of our friends are.
It would be really intriguing to hear what a metalhead thinks of it, because we’re not really a metal band, we tried to start out as metal, but in all seriousness we’re a heavy rock band.
Like Jeff says, it’s going to give you a little bit of everything. Every day isn’t all happy and butterflies and rainbows, so this album can take you wherever your emotions are that day, whether you’re at the gym wanting to do another rep and you need something fast to get hyped up, or you’re at home in bed and you need something more vulnerable and sad, or you’re feeling silly and want a punk song about aliens.
It gives you a little bit of everything, and we hope everybody gives it a listen, just to see what they have to say about it, because we love all of it.
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