Interview
by Rebecca Lower
Shayne O’Neill: Hey Rebecca. We'd love to answer some questions. Fire away!
RJL: Okay, I'll start with the basics. Are you all from Raleigh-Durham, or did some of you come from other places?
Shayne: Liam and I moved around a bunch when we were younger- Dad's job kept relocating him- but wound up in NC in 1988. We mostly grew up in Chapel Hill, which, musically speaking, was an awesome place to grow up.
Liam O'Neill: Screw Raleigh-Durham, I'm from Chapel Hill. I wasn't born here, but I did grow up here.
Shayne: I moved away after college but couldn't find anywhere I liked better, so I came back. A few years ago I moved out to Durham, because there were some really interesting things developing out here: a young music community that is super supportive and very DIY. And because I was dating Catherine [Edgerton] and got sick of commuting.
Catherine, Kym [Register] and Colin [Booy] had been living in Durham for a while (Colin is a grad student at Duke; Catherine and Kym grew up here). Matt [Surgeson] is from the Midwest (Ohio/Michigan), and lives in Chapel Hill now.
Dan [Kinney]: I’m from Ohio, but have spent more than half my life in NC.
Shayne: I'm going to do my best to answer [the rest of your questions] and get them back to you. I'll farm a few of them out to the [others] so that they can still be a part of this conversation though.
FKoN live- March '07- "Lather, Rinse, Repeat"
RJL: When did FKoN start?
Shayne: FKoN was born out of a solo project that I was doing unsuccessfully for a few years in 2003-05. By the end of 2005 I was tired of playing shows by myself, so I starting recruiting my friends to play with me.
The line-up was fairly fluid, with people joining in when and if they could. Kym and Catherine started playing horns and other instruments with us in the spring of 2006. FKoN and Midtown Dickens did a two month tour of the east coast. But we didn't really get serious as a band until we started working on this album.
At that point, it was mostly me and Dan Kinney staying up way too late in the studio, trying to flesh out the songs that I had been playing for the past few years. Several people came in to play different parts on various songs, and we added Liam and Matt to the full time line-up just as the album was wrapping up.
RJL: Were any of you in other bands, or playing solo before this?
Shayne: I used to play in a Chapel Hill punk band called Screwtape. Dan played guitar for The Dirty Politicians and Ender, as well as provided lead vocals for Mr. Coffee and the Creamers, a Motown cover band.
Matt has played in a number of bands, including The Haynes Boys and The Jive Turkeys. He has also appeared on a number of albums, including Tim Easton's "Special 20".
RJL: Who came up with the name "Future Kings of Nowhere", and what does it mean to you?
Shayne: The name is sort of a self-deprecating joke. In December of 2005, when I decided to start pulling in other band members, I realized that I needed to come up with a name for what we were doing. Looking through some old lyrics that I’d written, I came across this line: "Someday, I'll close my eyes and be the king of everything I see." It made me laugh, so I decided that we should call ourselves "The Future Kings of Nowhere."
RJL: And the photo on the album cover...is that area a reclamation project, or do you hope to build on it?
Shayne: The picture on the album cover was taken in Chatham County, about 15 minutes south of Chapel Hill. It's on the way to the Haw River, which has some of the best rope swings ever, and the Sugar Lake rock quarry, which has an awesome 20 foot cliff that you can dive off of into deep deep water (although, technically-speaking, it's trespassing).
While we were taking that shot, I was attacked by ants. Their bites are just now fading from my arm! My friend Rebekah [Meek], who plays with Colin in Eberhardt, took the pictures.
RJL: Describe your typical weekend night in Durham. Where do y'all like to go eat, watch bands, etc? Are there a handful of bands that you make an effort to see live?
Shayne: The best part about being a musician is getting to be friends with a bunch of amazing bands. We try to go out and support local music whenever we can. There are so many great bands: Midtown Dickens, eberhardt, Megafaun, Beloved Binge, The Wigg Report, The Bowerbirds, The Drowsies, Cantwell Gomez and Jordan, Charles Latham (although he has recently relocated to Pennsylvania), Red Collar, Hammer No More the Fingers, Americans in France, The Embarrassing Fruits, Caltrop, Barbarella...
It's tough. As we get busier, and as the local music scene gets better, it is harder and harder to get to all of the shows that we want to.
As far as good places to go, there are a bunch of great small venues around the Triangle: Bull City Headquarters, The Cave, Local 506, The Nightlight. Alivia's, Hell and The Federal are good places to relax and grab a drink.
Lots of good times happen on our porches, too. We're talking about organizing a local porch crawl: moving from porch to porch, stopping for a few drinks and moving on. Also, summer is a great time in NC to go out to the swimming holes on the Haw and Eno rivers. There is a wonderful mix in this area of cultural entertainment and DIY, make-it-up-as-you-go kind of fun.
RJL: From the outside, it's tough to understand the love-hate relationship amongst the cities in the Triangle. What's that all about? Is there a musical rivalry or something?
Shayne: There has been a lot of talk recently about the different 'scenes' in the three towns. It never affects the inter-band relationships though. Nobody in Chapel Hill ever hears of a band from Raleigh and says, "Oh, they're from Raleigh- whatever." We all support each other and are proud of each others' accomplishments.
Especially since Durham is pretty new as a viable place for music (unless you go back fifty years or so), and Raleigh is starting to struggle somewhat. I think it's a typical cycle in cities that have suffered from urban decay. Crime goes up, rent goes down- so starving artists move in and create a strong arts culture, etc. The music scene in Chapel Hill is entrenched and unshakeable, just because they had a big boom in the 90s. Places like the Cat's Cradle are solid musical landmarks.
People who live in Durham are generally proud (and a little sensitive) about their underdog status. There is a perception that you’ll get shot or robbed if you go to Durham. But it has a very strong DIY music culture that the other cities don't have. There’s been the sense that we are all building the music scene together, and it is a fun and exhilarating task. It's part of why we started Bull City Headquarters (a non-profit art/community space) or why something like Scene of the Crime Rovers (an experimental marching band) can exist.
You can't find things like that in Chapel Hill and Raleigh. Which isn't to say that those towns don’t have their strong points, too. They've got the big venues, labels and recording studios. Part of that is because there’s more money [there].
Bull City Headquarters, grand opening, March 10th 2007: see end of article for band links.
RJL: Casually, I mentioned the record label (307 Knox) and its roster to some friends who live in Raleigh. They've never heard of y'all. You know who the Patty Hurst Shifter is, right?
Shayne: There are a ton of bands around here, so it's not surprising that someone would know some bands and not others. I've seen Patty Hurst Shifter's name a lot and heard their stuff on the radio once or twice, I think. But I haven't had a chance to go see them play.
Side-note: After hearing the Midtown Dickens' record ‘Oh Yell!’, I wrote them some fan mail (MySpace messages). And YouTube videos of both “What a Bore” and “A.M. Dial” are in heavy rotation on my MySpace page (at time of publication). Honestly, I love their record more than anything else from the other Durham bands I’ve heard.
Shayne: I'm glad you like the Midtown Dickens CD so much. It is a fantastic piece of beauty, much like Midtown Dickens themselves. I hope you get a chance to see them play live sometime, because it's a completely different experience from the CD. I don't think I've ever seen a band who has as much fun playing music as they do. I love when I get to go play [trumpet] with them.
“AM Dial”- Feb. ’07, Duke Coffeehouse
“Tetris” –March ’07, Cat’s Cradle
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RJL: So, tell me about songwriting. What works for you? What doesn't? Are you a night owl or do you write in the early morning, before the day starts? Do you find that the words or the melody more likely to come to you when you pick up a guitar?
Shayne: Usually a song starts out with a line that I like, and that will usually come with a melody attached. The first verse is usually easy, but then it's a long laborious process of trying to fill in the rest of the song and make sure that I'm saying what I want to say, without veering into cheese, emo-isms, or vagueness.
Sometimes I'll have an idea for something that I want a song to be about and try to create a song about that thing. Those ones are really hard to do and can take a long time to get right. It usually takes me a few months to write a song. But sometimes, I'll start one and it'll be years before I'm able to finish it. I've been trying really hard to write lyrics that sound the way that people talk. I love the process of writing new songs. It's one of the most rewarding parts of this whole "being a musician" thing.
Lately, I've been writing while I'm in the car (usually if I'm on a long drive), but I think that's because it's pretty much the only time that I'm alone anymore with nothing else to do.
RJL: You said the band you put together helped you flesh-out some songs you'd been performing on your own. Which ones do you feel benefited the most from that process? And did you write newer songs also, once most of the band was in place?
Shayne: All of the songs benefited from having the band behind them! When I was playing the songs before, I was hearing some of the other instruments in my head (usually the drums and the horns). Getting it to a place where other people can hear those parts has been wonderful. I have been really, really lucky to get to work with these guys and ladies on this music. They each bring such an incredible amount of talent. The songs are so much better with us as a band than they ever could have been without everyone participating.
A lot of the reviews that have been written about the album focus on the songwriting. I sincerely appreciate all of the nice things people have said. But without the rest of The Future Kings of Nowhere, the songs would not be worth talking about.
In particular, “Emily” and “Like a Staring Contest” have grown the most while we were recording the album. When all of the instruments come in at the end of “Emily”, it still gives me chills. And Catherine's harmonies on “Like a Staring Contest” elevate that song to a completely different plane than it was on before.
Dan and I spent a long time making sure the arrangements on the album sounded the way we wanted them to. He deserves a lot of credit for the work that we did together on that. [And Dan’s] drumming is what makes the songs rock, more than just some dude with an acoustic guitar in a coffee shop somewhere.
RJL: "I'm Still Waiting" is like your rock 'n roll philosophy rolled up in a song, isn't it?
Shayne: Haha, it's like you've been reading my instant message conversations! Liam and I were just talking on Friday about a review that went up on allmusic.com last week:
Liam: I like how they they have “I'm Still Waiting” in it.
Me: I know. I get so happy when people notice that song, and “What You Don't Know Might Kill Me” and “Emily.”
Me: But especially that they notice that “I'm Still Waiting” is like our theme song a little bit.
Yeah, I wrote that song shortly after deciding that I was going to pursue music seriously, no matter what. I had been working as a waiter and wanted to try to draw this picture of myself: working some bullshit job and trying to make ends meet, but dreaming about when I could finally quit my day job and just play music.
The fact that that day is closer now than it has ever been constantly fills me with wonder. I have to stop every once in a while and think, "Holy crap, this might actually work!" Of course, Catherine reminded me earlier today- whether we get to that point or not- that it's important for me to remember I’m already living my dream, by getting to play these songs for other people.
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He’s referring, of course, to Catherine Edgerton, one-half of the Midtown Dickens (the other half is Kym Register). More on them later. But here's one last question for Shayne…
RJL: Speaking of [the Durham music scene]: there used to be a blog on 307Knox's page, posted around the release of 'Oh Yell'. (It's been taken down now.) But something a fan posted there was really succinct. To paraphrase, she said: Midtown Dickens are the foundation of the current Durham scene. Does that statement surprise you?
Shayne: Ha, not at all. They are such a perfect picture of everything that is right about Durham. They are an incredibly friendly, approachable, out-going, energetic pair of women who care an enormous amount about the people and community around them. I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that I am constantly trying to live up to the example that they set about how to be a good human being. This would be a very different scene without them around. It would definitely be a lot less fun.
You can’t argue with that.
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Afterword:
Once our interview finished, Shayne turned the tables on me (as he put it, his chance to play interviewer!). Here's one of our exchanges:
Shayne_FKON: Who are the bands to check out up your way?
Rebecca: Of course, I highly-recommend Travelers of Myths. (I sound like their PR person on my blog, if you read that. But that's only half-true. LOL)
Funny enough,the Travelers might be your neighbors in another few years. Why? Their bass player lives in Raleigh, and the rest of the band hopes to follow suit. It's good to know they'll find such a welcoming and vital atmosphere nearby.
Shayne_FKON: Oh my god! I went to check out your blog- sorry, I hadn't taken the time to do that earlier- and I'm looking at the band picture and there's my friend Kent (the bass player for Travelers of Myths). Kent and I used to work together out in Raleigh. And Liam is working with him now.
What a small world! I know of a couple of other bands that he's in, but I didn't realize that he was in that one, too.
Oddly enough, when we were looking for a bass player for FKoN, Kent and I talked about having him come play with us. It didn't work out because he was already pretty busy with his other bands, but he's a really great guy. I'm glad you wrote about his band.
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FYI:
307 Knox http://www.myspace.com/307knoxrex
In order of appearance on Bull City HQ Grand Opening video:
Eberhardt http://www.myspace.com/eberhardtnc
The Future Kings Of Nowhere http://www.myspace.com/thefuturekings
Beloved Binge http://www.myspace.com/belovedbinge
Mandarin Dynasty http://www.myspace.com/mandarindynasty
BCHQ http://www.myspace.com/bchq
Also:
Midtown Dickens http://www.myspace.com/midtowndickens
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