http://www.farewelltypewriter.com/ftweb/

Watching a Wreck

Video Link:
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=farewell+typewriter

Upcoming Shows:
12/02/09 Elbo Room (San Francisco, CA)

Band Members:
Grant Shellen: Guitar and Vocals
Jason Countryman: Bass and Vocals
Steve Slater: Drums and Vocals
Audie Roldan: Keyboards, Guitar and Percussion

Tech Industry Affiliations: Hewlett-Packard and Thing Labs (makers of Brizzly)

SVR: Tell us about your band. How did you get started? How long have you been playing?

Grant Shellen: Steve and I had played together in high school. Years later, we both wound up back in our hometown and started playing together. We recruited some friends of friends (Jason and Audie) to join us. We’ve been playing with this lineup since January 2007.
Jason Countryman: We’re awesome. We would videotape rehearsals but we don’t want to hurt the children. Steve and Grant played together, then found me, then we got Audie sent to us mail order. He’s been great. We’ve been playing… 3 years? I seriously have no idea. I know we were the Flying Eyes, then we recorded, then we were Farewell Typewriter, then we played a lot of shows. A lot of shows. And Grant took his shirt of once, I remember that.
Audie Roldan: Saw Farewell Typewriter at a show once and said to myself, “Wow! What an act: A circus drummer, a bearded lead singer, and an emo bassist. Where do I sign up?” Actually, saw one of their first shows and was quite impressed. Then one day, I was browsing through Craigslist’s “casual encounters” section and they had posted an ad saying their threesome needed another guitarist/keyboardist. Turns out we also shared the same studio facility. A few days later, I showed up for audition, did a couple Michael Jackson moves, and was hired. The fact that I couldn’t play my instruments didn’t matter. The rest, as they say, is history.
Steve Slater: We are all barbers. One day, while cutting hair, we decided to play instruments instead. That’s how we formed. This all happened last week.

SVR: Who are your major influences?

GS: Our tastes overlap, but we all listen to vaguely different things, which is great. Somehow, we wind up writing dancey, beat-driven stuff, but melodies are very important to us. Stuff we like in the same vein would be Phoenix, Minus The Bear, Bloc Party, XTC, Crystal Skulls, The Dismemberment Plan, etc. Personally, I listen to mostly rock, but I’m always seeking out new stuff. Some of my favorites are Pedro The Lion/Dave Bazan, The Long Winters, Death Cab for Cutie, Howie Beck, Elliott Smith, The Beatles, Sondre Lerche… how much time do you have?
JC: I think the band sounds like Spoon, Nada Surf, The Posies… maybe some old Weezer with some sprinklings of other stuff. Grant and I both listen to a lot of Dave Bazan. Trying to edge more into the dancey stuff… maybe OK Go and CSS are becoming influences? Maybe I’m the only one listening to CSS.
AR: If I said Yanni, would you laugh? I’d also add to this list Nirvana, The Cardigans, Gin Blossoms, The Cure, David Lanz, Brian Eno, The Crystal Method, and Smashing Pumpkins.

SVR: What’s your ultimate direction for your band? Are you seeking fame and fortune in the music business?

JC: That would be nice! You are more than welcome to make us famous and fortunous. We would like that. Mostly we just like to play and record and, honestly, drink and dress up in ties, occasionally taking trips to do shows and recordings, but if you can give us the other stuff that would be great.
GS: We know that the whole fame and fortune thing is not only hard to come by, but not even necessarily the greatest option these days, so our fantasies are much smaller: we’d just love to keep making records and playing shows as long as we’re enjoying it. If we could pay the bills just by being a band, why that’d be fabulous. We think that a lot of people would like us if they heard us, so a tour is probably in order soon.
AR: To me, being famous is a bonus. My goal is make good music, share it with people, and really just have fun doing it. If we get noticed and become famous doing it then great! I’m fortunate, though, to be part of a talented group of individuals who make really good music that people like.

SVR: What are your day jobs?

GS: I work for a startup, Thing Labs, which makes Brizzly, a Twitter and Facebook client. I do community management, product marketing, writing and editing for them.
JC: Steve and I are full-time musicians (who, as per standard, are also private music instructors).
AR: I work as a web marketing designer at Hewlett-Packard headquarters in Palo Alto. And yes, we have other products besides printers!
SS: Barbers.

SVR: How does your music influence your work or vice versa?

GS: There are plenty of ways they influence each other, but in both arenas I try to take risks. You never grow either in music or business if you’re afraid to try new things. Sometimes having a particularly productive or creative period with music will inspire my work, and vice versa.
AR: Music is a form of therapy for me and an extension of my creativity. My job requires a certain degree of creativity and often melodies and harmonies in my head can easily translate into colors, websites, and cool campaign ads. However, I feel that the teamwork involved in creating music can also easily translate into how you work with people on projects in your day job and vice versa. The importance of collaboration, sharing of ideas, good communication, and constructive criticism is essential to both making music and working on projects. As such, work and music for me tend to influence and complement each other. To be able to work with your team to create something from scratch and come up with a final product that you are able to share with the rest of the world is a very satisfying feeling.
SS: Our work has nothing to do with music — we cut hair.

SVR: Why is music education important?

JC: Well, it’s important because it develops different parts of the brain, provides you with a different type of creative thinking than you would otherwise be exposed to… but that’s pretty obvious. I think the clearest example is that it gives you a craft or discipline that shows direct results — the more you put into music, the more you get out of it — it’s a direct relationship. If you put in more time, you will get results — the more time you spend exploring your instrument and your musical abilities, the easier it gets, the better you perform, the more confident you are on stage, the more expressive and emotive the music you play is, the more people you meet, and so on and so forth. And those are things that effect your self-esteem and your abilities and comfort zones outside of music. That and it’s freaking weird stuff — bizarre nomenclature, complex technical jargon and slang… and you’re using your ears and memory in ways you wouldn’t otherwise, blending them with your ability to move your fingers, your hands, maybe your feet on the drums, or your mouth on a trumpet, and then putting all that esoteric knowledge in context, framing it in the culture and history of music, using that to bring out the style of a piece. Every musician is part historian, part archivist, part technician, part promoter, part actor, part foreign language specialist, part artist. I think all of that is great for everyone to be at least somewhat familiar, even just on a conceptual level — it’s not just helpful for musicians or future musicians.
GS: Both Steve, our drummer, and Jason, our bass player, are music teachers. They were both music majors in college, which is what I started as, but wound up changing. None of us would be half the musicians we are today without the experience of having someone, whether a private instructor or band teacher, help guide us. School music programs are especially important because it’s an opportunity for kids to have a creative outlet, learn some things, and show off for parents and peers.
SS: It’s not. We have Guitar Hero and Rock Band now.

SVR: What was your own experience learning music as a kid? Who flipped that switch in your brain?

GS: I joined the school band playing tenor sax in 7th grade. I’d never really played a musical instrument (other than recorder) before, but my mom liked to sing and her dad had been a professional musician. Music was already really important to me. A friend of mine picked up guitar shortly after I’d started learning saxophone, and I dug up my mom’s old nylon-string guitar she’d bought for $30 in Hawaii 30 years earlier. With a little help from my friend and the transcriptions in the back of Guitar World magazine, I taught myself guitar. I had good band teachers, but I probably taught myself the most just from listening to music and playing with other musicians.
JC: Turns out my great grandmother had perfect pitch, and her father was a well-known piano tuner — I don’t have perfect pitch, but I’m sure his genes have helped a lot to push us toward music. Really, though, my mother used to sing and play piano, and we always had pianos around, so I guess that’s the beginning ultimately, because if they weren’t there it wouldn’t have happened… I probably would’ve gone into the visual arts or psychiatrics. It helped that my brother started playing sax seriously when we were all in junior high — we’re all very competitive, so my sister and I got serious too. Now we’re all professional musicians, each into their own thing. I think because all three of us did it, my parents became immersed and indoctrinated into the whole thing, and therefore were very supportive — without that, if it had just been me, I don’t think I would’ve gotten a whole lot of encouragement. As it is I still get occasional advice to go be an insurance salesman or something (I think they worry I won’t be able to afford the future grandchildren that I owe them). It helps that I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area too — lots of culture, lots of music.
SS: Well, it was hard without video games. We had these people at school that would teach us things like notes, scales and rhythms. All useless when you are in a rock band. That’s why learning on a video game is better, it’s more realistic.
AR: Let’s be honest — I got into music because of girls! I wanted to impress girls and my friends. Eventually that developed into a deeper obsession that went beyond impressing people. However, at the time, I just didn’t have the patience and the time to learn an instrument. Fortunately though, my dad really pushed me to get into it. That dude showed me how to play the piano and the guitar, and although he sucked, it got me started. After all, if he can impress me with his crappy playing, I too can impress people with my crappy playing. At the time, though, we didn’t have enough money for me to take formal music lessons so a lot of what I learned was self-taught. Hopefully, I’ll have enough time to get formal music lessons someday. For now, I’ll just keep faking it.