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KGRL Exclusive Blondfire Interview
The Alley Studio - 08.18.08
KGRL had a chance to sit down with Brazilian-American singers / songwriters Bruce and Erica Driscoll, from the band called Blondfire, for an interview right after their KGRL FPA Live Session held at The Alley Studio - 08.18.08.
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KGRL: Can you give us a background on who Blondfire is?
Bruce: It's me, Bruce, and my sister --
Erica: Erica
Bruce: Erica, on lead vocals. We are Brazilian Americans. We were born in Michigan but we spent a lot of time growing up between Michigan and Brazil, and then about 2004-ish, we moved to New York together and really started to take this band seriously.
Erica: We had been playing instruments and writing together since we were actually pretty young.
Bruce: Yeah.
Erica: Once we [had] moved to New York we started playing shows and released a record that we actually recorded, a lot of it in our parents' basement in Michigan, and produced it ourselves. [We] ended up meeting this guy named Andy Chase in New York and he mixed the EP for us.
Bruce: Yeah, he's from the band Ivy, which we were huge fans of in Michigan. I remember driving around in winter, snow everywhere, and listening to Ivy [thinking] "Oh wow, this sounds really cool. I wish we could work with this guy." And then we actually ended up working with him, so it was cool.
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KGRL: If you were to describe your music to someone who has not heard your music yet, how would you describe it?
Bruce: Intense Death Metal.
Erica: Yeah, right.
Bruce: No. Melodic Pop, European-influenced. Definitely. I think Erica's voice has that European sophisticated quality....It sounds a little bit like artists of that vein -- you know, Pet Shop Boys-influenced, [The] Smiths-influenced.
Erica: Yeah, a lot of our influences are bands like New Order and Depeche Mode and bands like that, but then of course a lot of Brazilian music like Jobim. So, I think it just kind of creates its own sound from all the different influences we've had.
Bruce: Yeah.
Erica: Of course Pop music like Madonna and stuff too.
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KGRL: How did the two of you got started with music?
Erica: When we were really young our mom put us to play piano when I was three years old, and then it was violin in second grade. So, ever since I was really young I've been around music. Then in high school I picked up a guitar -- my dad had an old classical around the house that he used to play -- and I just started learning chords and started writing songs in my bedroom. Then Bruce had started on drums.
Bruce: Yeah. Our mother, in the tradition of [sisters?] Monica and Erica tried to teach me piano, but I rebelled. I didn't like it at all, so I kind of took a break on music until I was about twelve and then I wanted to play drums really bad[ly] because I wanted to beat stuff so I had lessons in that.
Erica: Take your agression out.
Bruce: And then I got bored with that because there was no melody. She [Erica] had been playing guitar so I was like "Screw it. I want to play guitar too." So I picked up the guitar and never looked back.
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KGRL: Did you guys had any formal music education?
Erica: Yeah, mostly on piano, and I took violin lessons and stuff. On guitar I just kind of taught myself so I've never really had lessons on guitar.
Bruce: Yeah, just a handful of lessons in anything, like one music theory class. That's about it.
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KGRL: How about voice lessons?
Erica: I was in stuff like choir when I was young but not really so much private lessons or anything, mostly just singing along with the radio, I think.
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KGRL: Is music a full-time career for both of you?
Bruce: Until we run out of money, yeah.
Erica: Or somehow making it work.
Bruce: Right now it has been for the past few years. Things keep happening -- little things along the way that keep us--
Erica: --keep us going.
Bruce: Like a licensing in the new Nicholas Cage movie that's coming out, Bangkok Dangerous, and then iTunes sales when people buy an album on iTunes. Little things like that kind of keep us going.
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KGRL: Your band name used to be Astaire but you were forced to change the band name. How did you came up with Blondfire?
Erica: Well, we really loved the name Astaire, actually, and Fred Astaire's widow. We had just done this tour with Ivy and we were getting a lot of press so if you put the name Astaire in Google we were coming up before Fred Astaire for a little while, and I think that's how she caught wind of it. She wouldn't let us do any sound-alikes or anything so we basically had to change it. And it was really hard to find a new name because basically every name was taken as a band on Myspace.
Bruce: We were really reaching. We were going "What about Alaska?"
Erica: And there was a band called Alaska.
Bruce: And there was a band called Alaska. It took us a while. I think a former manager of ours actually mis-spoke trying to say "bonfire", but he said "blondfire" and we laughed and thought it was funny.
Erica: There was nothing on-line that was Blondfire.
Bruce: Yeah, there was only one thing that came up that was a blondfire thing and it was a porno from 1970.
Erica: But it was spelled differently and it wasn't a band, so we think it's safe.
Bruce: Yeah, what the heck. A name is a name and hopefully people--
Erica: Yeah, hopefully it will become something when people think of the name.
Bruce: We've had a pretty good response from the name from people. No one that I know of has come up [saying] "Dude, that name -- you've got to change it. It totally sucks." We haven't had that yet. We like it.
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KGRL: So, after all the trouble of them having you change the band name in the middle of your National Tour, you had to put Fred Astaire's name in the credits section of your new full-length?
Bruce: Yeah, [in] our thank-yous on the inside of our CD, the last one is Fred because I don't think Fred would have cared so much.
Erica: I don't think he would either.
Bruce: Not knowing Fred I can't really speak for him, but I just give a shout-out to Fred Astaire, wherever he is.
Erica: I know, and I think in a way that was reminding people in a positive way of his existence. Even at shows young people would come up and go "How do you spell your band name?" and I'd be like "Like Fred Astaire." They would go "Who?" And I would go "You don't know who Fred Astaire is?" So in a way it was like keeping him going.
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KGRL: What was the first song you two ever wrote?
Bruce: It's so distant.
Erica: I don't even know.
Bruce: You know, I don't know but it was probably really stupid.
Erica: Because we're brother and sister, we've been writing together for so long we have so much music recorded, probably enough for three or four double discs right now, that we just haven't released.
Bruce: Yeah, we could release box-sets of music. We just have a lot.
Erica: We have so much, so I don't know if I could say what the first song was but I'm sure it was probably pretty bad.
Bruce: I think when we started out it was primarily you writing songs with Monica. We had another band called Nectar years ago when we were little kids.
Erica: We were really young.
Bruce: So, she and Monica would write songs. Then I kind of came into the band as I started to get better on guitar and then we got a recording system, a little four-track. Then I'd come up with music and then Erica would come up with a vocal and lyrics and stuff and we'd figure it all out. That's kind of how we got started writing in the style that we write now for the band.
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KGRL: Can you tell us how your songwriting process is?
Bruce: It's different for each song.
Erica: Yeah, it is very different because sometimes we'll be in the studio and Bruce will put a drum loop down and we'll just start playing different instruments. Maybe I'll be on keyboards and Bruce will be on guitar and we just start messing aroound. Sometimes we get an idea that way, or one of us will have a guitar-based idea that they'll just have and bring it and we'll just add on to that.
Bruce: Yeah.
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KGRL: How long does it usually take for you to finish a song?
Bruce: The best ones usually come very, very fast.
Erica: Very fast.
Bruce: And we'll even finish recording them very quickly.
Erica: The song L-L-Love -- actually I dreamed that phrase, l-l-love. When I woke up I thought "L-l-love -- I have to write a song called L-L-Love today." Then I went to my parents' house where we had a little studio set up in the basement and Bruce took this guitar and put it backwards. We seriously wrote that so fast. It was already written in my head, the melody.
Bruce: Yeah. It had this Boston-sounding snare drum. "Oh, let's make a Kylie Minogue beat out of it." "Okay, let's put that together." "Oh, that's pretty cool. That sounds cool. I'll do this here." "Okay, that sounds good."
Erica: It was so incredibly fast. It was one of those songs. That song has been so great for us because it's been licensed a lot.
Bruce: Yeah, it's number one. If anyone's using anything in any movie or any TV show it's that song.
Erica: That's been out [since] our first album, so it's been out longer, but that song has been really good to us.
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KGRL: A full-length was planned since you were known as Astaire. All in all how much time did it take for you to finish this full-length, My Someday?
Bruce: Finishing the record when we actually were like "Okay, we want to finish this"? We were signed to EMI for a little bit. We kind of got -- We were always this close to finishing the record and we always got a little derailed because we have so many songs. All we really had to do was sit down and mix the ones that we thought were the strongest together, so when we actually decided "Let's just finish this" we mixed it ourselves with a little help from a couple of other people, and got it out relatively as fast as we could. But the songs were all kind of there, written over years. Like, for instance -- what's on the record?
Erica: What's on the record?
Bruce: What songs are on my album?
Erica: My Someday.
Bruce: My Someday we wrote when we were signed to EMI, in a hotel room.
Erica: We wrote that in a hotel room in London. We were just trying to write for the record. They wanted us to keep writing songs. We had some portable gear in the hotel room and we just recorded it there, and that's the version that ended up on the album. We just added a couple of things and mixed it, but the basis of it and the vocals were done there.
Bruce: Aluminum Stars, the last track on the record, is a very, very old song.
Erica: Yeah, that's very old.
Bruce: [It's] dating back from the year 3BC. No, it's from our parents' basement. That was a Michigan song.
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KGRL: What were your inspirations in writing the songs for your full-length?
Bruce: You know, it's one of those things [that's] different for everyone. Our inspirations I'd say were primarily our influences, the bands we like and taking away what we can from them in terms of the way they wrote melodically and just getting together and making sounds that we really like. I think the majority of the time with us the sounds come first, and the beats, and the rhythms.
Erica: Melodies come to me really fast, I feel. That's like the main thing for me, and then words kind of appear and come together. I usually don't write the lyrics first.
Bruce: I think that's the way...that the Bee Gees wrote.
Erica: That's good. I like the Bee Gees.
Bruce: Not to compare us to the Bee Gees, but I think that they would get the groove going and the little riffs and everything happening and the melody....That's kind of similar to us.
Erica: [We're] also just trying to do something that hopefully will stay with people and will be catchy but different to them, not just the normal thing you hear on the radio but still catchy. Bands that had an effect on me were like The Smiths and Depeche Mode. Their melodies are amazing but it's something a little bit different.
Bruce: Yeah, they have a unique approach to Pop.
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KGRL: Has it been hard for you being an independent artist?
Bruce: Definitely you have to remind yourself, "Keep doing it. Keep doing it. You like this."
Erica: It's hard.
Bruce: "You like music. You like playing guitar. Just keep going."
Erica: The hardest part is just keeping going because everything costs so much money. Without the backing it's hard to really do a lot, so you've just got to keep trying new ways and meeting people.
Bruce: There are things we'd love to be doing right now that [lack of] a label's funding is the only thing preventing us from doing, for instance touring. Touring is very expensive but we'd love to be on the road. We've only been playing shows in LA and New York because that's where we live, and Brazil. If we could, we'd be playing all over the world and releasing things more often too, because [while] we have so much music, it takes money to get it pressed and do photos and a master, and stuff.
Erica: Yeah, that's probably the hardest part: the financing.
Bruce: But it's nice, especially now. [In] modern times, for musicians it's easier than it would be back in the day, I think. Like I said, we can make money on iTunes.
Erica: Yeah.
Bruce: There are little things now that I think bands take for granted that you wouldn't have been able to do back in the '90s, or something like that. Music is changing and I think that while there are certain things preventing us like a label's funding, I think that we're still able to do a lot so it's kind of a balance.
Erica: We've still been able to reach a fair share of people too, especially with iTunes [which] has supported us a lot.
Bruce: Yeah, iTunes [has] been a huge fan, which is a huge help. They gave us the Free Single of the Week with the L-L-Love song we played earlier...and the exclusive acoustic EP.
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KGRL: You used to be signed to a major record label and then got dropped. Has this situation scarred the both of you? If you both were offered to sign under another major label would you take it or would you rather stay independent?
Bruce: I think we would take it--
Erica: I would want the terms spelled out--
Bruce: --as long as the terms were spelled out.
Erica: --like the record's coming out by this time. There were so many good things about it. We met so many nice, great people -- actually musicians -- that we worked with and that we've been in contact with, so it wasn't a bad experience. Thankfully we got our masters back. It was just a bad time. EMI had gotten bought out by this company called Terra Firma so they were laying off tons of employees...and also letting bands go. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
Bruce: Everyone we worked with would work with us again. We liked all of them a lot. We got a record label advance for a year. That wasn't a bad deal.
Erica: Yeah.
Bruce: You get to live and write music and have a company--
Erica: --and travel. We got to be in England a lot, which we really liked.
Bruce: Yeah, going to England was fantastic.
Erica: And, we worked with some great people like Richard Axe, who [had] worked with Annie, and Paul Harris and some really great people.
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KGRL: We noticed that the song L-L-Love, which was included in your previous EPs , carried on to the full-length. Why did you decide to bring back that song and not the other ones?
Bruce: I think that song is kind of our speed. If someone were to hear that, it sets the bar for what is around it. That's a song somebody can listen to and be like "Okay I like that, and if I like that I'll probably like all these other songs." And so it kind of fits in[to] everything we do. Like we said earlier it also gets licensed a lot because people tend to like that one, so we figured that if we didn't include it we might be shooting ourselves in the foot a little bit. At the same time I think it sounds like us. That one is really us.
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KGRL: Which of the songs you wrote is your favorite?
Erica: It changes every day. It seriously does. I love playing Pretty Young Thing live. It just has such a nice energy with the track behind it. But it really does change. How about you?
Bruce: On the new record I would say maybe Oxygen. I think that song is very strong lyrically and melodically.
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KGRL: How about you Bruce, which song do you love playing live?
Bruce: When we have a drummer and a bass player with us, I love L-L-Love. That is a very fun song to play.
Erica: Yeah, it's really fun to play with a drummer and bass player. We would probably play [it] more if we could afford to take them on the road.
Bruce: Yeah, we have a very good drummer and bass player in New York City right now. Hello guys.
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KGRL: Have you gotten tired of any of your songs?
Bruce: Since we're fans of ourselves, not really.
Erica: Since we love it--
Bruce: Yeah. I listen to us a lot. I make our music because sometimes I get bored with the other music out there and I just want to listen to some stuff I like.
Erica: That's true.
Bruce: That's why we work together well: because we like the music that we create and we listen to it. I'm sure if I went through my iPod of songs of ours I could probably be like "I don't want to listen to that right now" but nothing is really jumping out at me.
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KGRL: What was the best show you've had so far?
Bruce: I would say the Troubadour show on the Ivy tour.
Erica: Yes. We played at the Troubadour with Ivy and during our set Morrissey came and he watched our show, which was a big honour to us because we're such big fans of The Smiths and Morrissey. So it was pretty cool that he was watching us play.
Bruce: Yeah, he came in with a little guy who looked exactly like him. And Morrissey is very tall and he has that coiffed hair and so did that small man, the gentleman with him. It was interesting. It was like mini-Morrissey and Morrissey. It was pretty cool.
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KGRL: You both have done co-writes and co-production with other artists. How comfortable are you both with collaborations?
Erica: I love it. It's really fun. It's always a new challenge and a new experience, writing with different people. You go in a room with them, and you might not even have met them before, but you meet them that day and then you'd write a song. It is really fun.
Bruce: Songwriting is kind of intimate too so it's like you get thrown in with someone very deeply very quickly.
Erica: Yeah, but I really like it actually.
Bruce: Yeah. I enjoy writing with different people.
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KGRL: Are there any particular people you'd like to work and write songs with someday?
Erica: That's a good question.
Bruce: I've got to go with my [The] Smiths thing and say Johnny Marr. He's my guitar hero, so if I could sit down in a room with him and just come up with guitar riffs I think I would have a lot of fun.
Erica: I'd love to write with the Pet Shop Boys. They have such cool melodies.
Bruce: Yeah, they're really brilliant melodically. I think a lot of people write off their records as being "'80s and they've got these cheesy synth sounds" but if you actually put the songs on guitar those would be some of the most brilliant songs ever written. And they are. Chris and Neil, if you're out there, I hope to one day record an acoustic album with you, of all your songs. So, just on the record, I'll be there for you dudes.
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KGRL: Do you have any new artists you both listen to? Or are you both influenced by any new artists?
Erica: Oh, I don't know new artists. I've listened to so much old stuff it's pretty funny. I'm just so influenced by music from the '70s, '80s and '60s.
Bruce: I do like a few new bands. I really like this band from New York called Leavey.
Erica: They're good.
Bruce: Fantastic. Their new album -- Glorious, I think it's called -- is [unintelligible].
Erica: They're really good.
Bruce: What else? Let's see here.
Erica: I've been listening to that new Santogold record a little bit. It's pretty cool. I like Management, MGMT, a lot.
Bruce: Yeah, I heard a little of that yesterday. It was good.
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KGRL: You both have a lot of songs written. Are you planning to write more songs for a follow-up record anytime soon?
Bruce: You know, I don't think we actually have to write for the new record.
Erica: We might. We'll probably write a little bit more because we have so many songs alre ady written, but I'm sure we'll write some more, probably soon actually.
Bruce: Yeah, [we'll] keep it going. We're planning on releasing, at some point, a remix LP of...remixes of the new album....We're getting friends involved now, trying to get them to do some fancy shmancy remixes. Hopefully those turn out cool.
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KGRL: What do we expect from Blondfire in 2009?
Bruce: I'd say another release, at least another EP of another five songs, [and] trying to play more shows.
Erica: Hopefully, being able to get on a tour would be our goal.
Bruce: Yeah. We'd also like to put the word out now that we are looking for a tour with any band, small or large. You can be a Reggae band from Jamaica, but if you're touring the US and playing some cool venues give us a call. Let us know. We are in on that.
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KGRL: Any last words for the KGRL listeners?
Erica: Just, thanks for listening to us.
Bruce: Yeah, thanks for listening. I'm Bruce.
Erica: I'm Erica.
Bruce: Thank you.
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A special thanks to Bruce & Erica Driscoll for being awesome and for making all of this possible.
Transcription was done by our good friend, Flour (E.S.).
Blondfire Links:
Official Website: http://www.blondfire.com
Myspace Page: http://www.myspace.com/blondfire
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