Interviews

Fake Problems

Interview with The Band on Jul 29, 2007 by Archive Bot

Quite a few bands take themselves pretty seriously. Fake Problems is not one of those bands. Their current tour with Look Mexico is called Cheese Fest and is promoted by posters featuring a maniacal three-headed mouse. Both bands wore matching baby blue tank tops through their sets and ended the show with a free-for-all version of the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn.” So Fake Problems may not be serious, but they are seriously good. They tore up Ronny’s Bar in Chicago—which actually is less a bar and more a garage with a bar next door. Before the show, I got to sit around in their unmarked white van with a voice recorder and a piece of scrap paper filled with questions.
 
By: Michelle Stoffel
 
Do you guys just want to introduce yourselves for the sake of the recorder…
 
I am Derek
I’m Chris
I’m Sean
And I’m Casey
…and together, we’re Faaaaaaake Problems.
 
Chris: We learned that from Nsync.
 
So how was the drive from Minneapolis?
 
Chris: Pretty tense…we broke it up through the nights and the days.
 
You guys have pretty much been on tour all year. How’s that going?
 
Chris: It’s been good; it’s been awesome.
 
Casey: Better every day. [sings] Getting better all the time.
 
How’s this tour compared to your tour with Against Me?
 
Sean: It’s a hair smaller.
 
Casey: Attendance is up, but hospitality is down.
 
Chris: Yeah. We’re able to see the results from the Against Me! tour on the past couple tours. This is the second tour we’ve gone on since that tour. It definitely gets better every time, more people are coming.
 
This is a stop on your tour with Look Mexico, and you guys are all friends…
 
Chris: Yeah, best friends.
 
Derek: That’s the thing about this year with us, is that we’ve just been strictly touring with like, really good friends or bands we really love. And then at the end of it we become really good friends. Like, we toured with Gaslight Anthem and we didn’t really know them but we know that they were awesome cause we heard their record, so we’re like, “Totally, we’ve got to tour with these guys.” And so we did and now we’re best friends. It’s phenomenal being with the best, or what we think is really good.
 
How is How Far Our Bodies Go translating live? Since you guys have a lot of different sounds on there like horns and strings…
 
Chris: It goes over really well. Some of the horn or string parts we just transcribed and then played them on the guitar.
 
Derek: The violin, or the decrescendo or the me-me-me-me-me…in “Maestro [of the Rebellion]” I took that over on bass.
 
Sean: All those songs were just written just by us first, before we put anything on them so if anything we can revert to that.
 
Would you consider this a concept album?
 
Chris: Yeah, pretty much…it’s more just a themed album. It doesn’t really follow a character or story or something. It’s very theme-oriented.
 
What would you say the theme is?
 
Chris: I guess just constant traveling and living and dying.
 
Sean and Chris: “Staying and Leaving…”
 
So you guys mentioned you’ve seen the results of the Against Me! tour at shows. Do you think that impacted the buzz generated around this album?
 
Derek: We recorded the album last August. So that record was recorded before we even released Spurs & Spokes. The tour was awesome in the sense that it could generate that kind of buzz for it [AFOBG]…and I don’t know where I was going with that…it didn’t so much reflect on the record because we made the record so long ago.
 
Are you already sick of it?
 
Chris: Yeah
 
Really?
 
Chris: We have our next album completely written.
 
Derek: We’re gonna demo the whole thing right when we get back from this tour. And we hope to have it all recorded by the end of January.
 
Wow. Are you guys gonna stick with the same label [Sabot Productions]?
 
Chris: We don’t know. We’re working with…whatever.
 
Derek: Right now, we are.
 
The band started off as Chris’ solo stuff and then merged into a full-fledged band. How did that happen?
 
Chris: Well I started when I was in a different band, so it was just like a side project. That’s why it was like a “solo project.”
 
Derek: I also think people kind of get the wrong impression of the solo thing. When I think of a solo project, I think of a guy with an acoustic guitar like…
 
Sundowner?
 
Derek: Yeah, Sundowner, but with Chris it was more—wait, this Chris—he would record full-band stuff on the computer. It wasn’t like an acoustic with voice.
 
Chris: It was always meant for full-band. It was never supposed to be a one-man thing.
 
Were you guys the original members?
 
Sean: Derek was. Casey was. I wasn’t.
 
Do you guys think there’s a Florida scene going on? With you and a few other bands making more folk-influenced music, do you see yourselves involved in an emerging scene?
 
Chris: I definitely feel like there’s been a scene in Gainesville—the punk kind of thing. We never really felt so much a part of that.
 
Derek: It’s really an alienating scene.
 
Chris: They’re all like old dudes and they don’t like us very much. So I guess we just kind of wanted to do our own thing and not try too hard to be a part of what was already going on. So we’ve just kind of been compiling bands that we love.
 
Derek: We grew up on a completely different set of music than those guys too. We love Blink-182, where they laugh at Blink-182. Cause they were in their twenties when Blink-182 came out and we were…
 
Chris: 14.
 
Sean: Right…we were impressionable.
 
You guys kind of get flack for being young. Does that bug you or make you feel like you have to prove yourselves?
 
Chris: I’m gonna get to live a little bit longer than they do.
 
Derek: The flack comes from them being mad.
 
Chris: Whatevs…[sighs] We don’t let it get us down.
 
Derek: Age is a big America thing. We were just in Canada and everyone out was 18 and 19 drinking in bars and stuff. Age isn’t a big deal…the big divider is that, 18, it’s not like if you’re over 21 or under 21, that’s the big schism I feel like here.
 
What do you guys count as your influences besides Blink-182?
 
Chris: Bright Eyes, Cursive, The Good Life, Rilo Kiley…real indie shit.
 
Sean: We like Saddle Creek a lot.
 
Chris: A lot of older country, like Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams.
 
So, it’s late night and you’re drunk—what are you singing, out in the streets?
 
Chris: Hrm…let me think. We song lots of techno songs when we’re drunk, I think. That awful…doot doot doot [band sings along]. And that “We Like to Party” song. [band sings “We like to party, we like, we like to party…”] Eiffel 65, that blue song.
 
Casey: We make up a lot of our own songs. [band sings “My insides are made of coleslaw, my skin is made of ham.”]
 
Sean: Lots of stuff like that.
 
Chris: That’s the kind of shit we like to sing.
 
Anything else?
 
Casey: Sean for President. Sean 2008. Write him in.
 
Derek: Also that we’ll be on tour from now until eternity.
 
Just keep it going.
 
Chris: So come see us play.
 
Yes, come see Fake Problems play…Request the coleslaw and ham song though. It’s a good one. I’d like to thank Fake Problems for giving me their time and the front seat, as well as Ian here at punkbands and Vanessa at Fat Wreck for setting this up.
 
www.fakeproblems.com
www.myspace.com/fakeproblems
www.sabotproductions.net