The KBEAR dudes interviewing your favorite artists!
The Artist Interrogations podcast. How are you doing? Good. Literally, just woke up. Currently somewhere in Oregon.
Somewhere in Oregon? Okay. Oh, really? Yeah. Because I know, like, you guys were, on tour, and I saw California where your next 3 stop next 3 to 4 stops, I should say.
Yeah. I think, San Francisco got canceled due due to reasons I don't know. I don't make the rules, but I think that the next show is in Sacramento. Ah, nice. Yeah.
I'm from Seal Beach, California, the southern coast near Los Angeles, that area. So that's awesome. Lucky you. Come out to East Idaho to do radio, and it's totally different. Totally, totally different.
Yeah. I mean, like, here's the thing. I didn't realize Idaho was, like, honestly so close to, like, California and all those states. Yeah. They're, like, borders it.
Right? No. California is between or the California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho. That's right. That's right.
Mhmm. So it's like so, like, borders it borders Oregon. Right? It borders, yeah. It borders Oregon.
Yeah. I think I've always get And Washington and Washington all the way up to Canada. Mhmm. Right? Yeah.
I get Oregon and Washington, like, mismatched sometimes. I think Oregon's the topmost state, but it's Washington's the topmost state than Oregon right above California. Wasn't good at geography. Yeah. Yeah.
We weren't you know, I wasn't great at either. I'm learning it that that we, go. Right. Yeah. Exactly.
So, no, thank you for doing this. Nice to meet you finally. And, of course, we'd love to talk about, we've been playing Plastic Heart quite a lot, and I've been introduced to you guys with that. And I've been listening to, of course, all the other tracks, and I love all the different top 40 rock renditions. But then I go to your website, fame on fire is not a cover band, and I just love that headline there.
Yeah. You know, we've been working on on changing that. I still don't know why we haven't changed it yet. You wrote that a while ago. Uh-huh.
But, but, yeah, we're not a cover thing. Yeah. No. Blinding Lights was perfect. I love the especially one right now.
I've been listening to that one just nonstop, and I just love hearing, like, that that beat to it. And are you guys, like, heavily influenced by top 40 music when it comes to your own thing? Or you're just kinda, like, hey, we'll cover this song because we like it sort of thing, or what's the tactic? I think they, I think it's more of a we cover it because it's gonna sound good, from us covering it. If it wasn't gonna sound good, we wanna cover it.
But, we're definitely influenced in a way that's, like, we learned how to write good songs by covering the best songwriters. You know what I mean? Mhmm. So that's how we learned how to write really good songs, in my opinion. Is, we would we would do a cover of this top 40 pop song and understand what made it so good.
So when it came to writing our own music, we understood how to make our own music good. That's awesome. Yeah. Because I've been listening to Levels came out in 2020, I think it was. Mhmm.
Yeah. That that was cool. And then, of course, that was the whole pandemic year. So were you guys just doing your own thing while that was going on? Or the out the Levels was finished, like, at the end of 2019.
And then, you know, you gotta gear up for, like, release and things like that. So we were gearing up for release, and then COVID hit. And we're, like, okay. Well, what what do we do now? We have we have no idea what we're gonna do.
And then we waited, like, 9 months, and we're like, okay. Screw it. We need to release this album. Like, by that by the point that we released Levels, we're already working on a second album. So we're like, we need to just get this out there because it's gonna feel very dated to us by the time it's released, which it already did feel gated to us by the time it was released.
It did great for us, but, like, you know, we already had a lot of new material ready to go by the time it released levels. And I I love the cover. You the the Donkey Kong on the TV, and I've been listening to interviews from previous times that you were talking to people, and you you you're heavily into video games and anime and all that those 2 fields. Yeah. I love the well well, so what do you play video games on?
Just PC, Xbox, PlayStation? What is it? I am a, PC master race kinda guy. I'm a legitimate gamer. So, yeah.
I'm a PC, and I play and I have my Switch. And that those are the 2 things. I have a I have a gaming laptop that I bring with me on tour. And, last night instead of going to the bar and hanging out with everybody, I, came back to the bus and, I sat down by myself in the bus and played Overwatch for, like, 5 hours. That that's exactly what I would do if I was in a band too because I'm I'm just playing video games nonstop.
Whenever I'm not in here, I I'm I I have an Xbox 1 and it's slowly dying, and I'm like, I wanna make the switch to the Xbox Series X, but it's so much money, and I'm just like, I can't PCs are incredibly expensive. Our our morning show guy, Victor Wilt, is buying his own and already prebuilt and he's dropping a whole bunch of money on it and his wife isn't happy about it. But it's funny just to, like, the PC type of the PC, if I could do it, I would, but I can are you good with keyboard and mouse gaming like that or do you use a controller? Yeah. No.
I literally have a mouse right next to me. I I game only with a mouse and keyboard. Nice. So yeah. So I have, like, a little setup.
So when we're on the road, we have a we have, like, a studio setup. So one right now, like, we did that cover on the road. We reported that on the road. And so that studio setup, I also use to game. So I have, like, a mouse pad, and I have enough mouse space to, play games.
Now you can't play while driving because it's impossible, especially with, like, in shaking. You can't aim. But, yeah. I, look. We're if we're parked up somewhere you know, we're usually driving when we're sleeping.
I mean, we're driving right now, but everybody else is sleeping because it's only, it's only 9 AM here. But, yeah. I just, whenever we're parked up and I get a chance to game, I'm I'm gonna be I'm gonna be gaming. I also noticed on the website too, you guys built your own studio or is that kind of outdated too? Like, I noticed, like, you guys built it says you self produced, even mixed your own album, and even built your own home studio.
Yeah. No. That's true. Everything everything is, like, so I built it's it's it's a me thing. It's, like, I built my own studio.
You know, I've been running a studio for years now. I've been doing it since, 20, like, 10. So I've been doing it for a long time. And, yeah. So, you know, being releasing of the band, took it upon myself to record and make them do literally everything for the band.
So, yeah, we have our own, like, warehouse that we practice out of, that we have a studio out of, that we have a, a psych wall for shooting videos. So, yeah, it's a it's a really cool setup that we got going on. Yeah. I bet you guys just have a lot of fun in there because that's what I'd be doing. Whenever I'm in here, I'm just messing around with different things.
Do you guys just kinda do that, like, mess around and, like, oh, that sounds pretty cool. Let's see if we can build something out of this. Totally. We're we're pretty, we're pretty like, we run it very business esque when we're, like, getting down to it. It's, like, okay.
We're gonna book some time in. We're gonna we're gonna get in. We're gonna we're in that, like, mentality of Oh, it just completely froze on me. Let's see. There we go.
So the whole Zoom just kinda crashed there for a second. No worries. No worries. It's it's just it's just because we're moving. Yeah.
I get it. And I and I have the hot I have hotspot on my phone. Gotcha. Well, yeah. Well, so thank you for doing this, for driving, you know, touring, getting interviews, doing that sort of thing.
Plastic Heart, we've been playing that on KBR quite a lot, and, obviously, I would love to know the origin of that song and how you guys developed that and created it and all that fun stuff. Yeah. Totally. And really appreciate that, by the way. So Plastic Art was one of those songs where we had a bunch of material for the songs.
And, I remember I left for 2 weeks, and I was going through some, like, crazy mental ups and downs, and, I left. And I was not part of the writing process or anything for 2 weeks. The whole album got kind of put on hiatus for a minute, and I came back hating everything we did up to that point for the second album. And it pissed some people off because we, you know, we're we were already working for 6 months on this album, and I said, no. We need to scrap everything.
Like, this is all I hate all this music that we're working on. It just sounds like an extension of levels. I don't want it to be an extension of levels. We need to write something that is very out of the box and is totally different from anything we've done before. And maybe one of the main songwriters and Blake being one of the main songwriters, Blake was very upset with me, rightfully so.
But what happened out of that was that we, you know, everyone, you know, kinda got put their heads together. Like, okay. Well, let's let's come up with something that we all can enjoy then. So we were working with our producer, Arcaius, and we were sitting down, and we were just shooting out ideas. And Blake came up with that, like, intro synced melody that.
He came up with that, and and right away, everyone's like, this is very, very cool. Let's work on this. So right from there, we, you know, we threw drums and guitars on it and just started, like, jamming, like, with this riff. Because that song started out way heavier than it is right than than it is today. It was a it was a 4 and a half minute song.
So from it being a 4 and a half minute song, you know, having, like, this, like, heavier intro riff where, like, okay, let's just cut it down and let's see what what melody is being thrown over it. So from there, like, and I came up with the the melody and the concept of classic art and just, you know, it's basically just, like, I I used for the song, but the gist of it in my head was watching somebody change into something that they are, like, a person you can no longer recognize. And obviously, it's a it's a love interest in your life. So for me and and really quick, when it comes to writing lyrics, like, we all won't spit some out on the spot, like, we'll just spit out a line, like, plastic card was one of those lines that we just spit out on the spot. So we'll spit out something on the spot, and then I'll take it back and, like, go over the lyrics again and again just to make sure everything is perfect the way that I want it.
We got the hook down. The hook didn't actually change too much from what we, like, originally freestyled. Went in there, did the demo vocals, and then Blake told me he was like, yo, how sick would it be if you were, like, to rap on this song? And I was just like, I don't I don't rap. Well, I don't know.
I don't know what you're saying to me. And he goes he goes, yeah. But, like, you could just try something like this. And he kinda did the like, he kinda broke it down, like, what he he heard or rhythm wise in his head. And I was like, okay.
I mean, like, that sounds cool and all. Like, the rhythm's really cool, but, like, I'm gonna sound like the whitest white boy ever trying to do this rap. And and he's, like, he's, like, just give it a shot. Let's, like, let's get some lyrics down. He's, like, I know you can do it, but you just gotta, like, definitely try and be confident with it.
And I said, you know, after a little bit of back and forth, I said, okay. Well, let's do it. So I went in and hit these rappers. The lyrics were a little bit different than what they what the final is. But, yeah, I hit it and I said, okay.
You know, if I practice this, I can definitely get it down really well. So I hit it and it came out really sick and then, we sent the, demo over to our label after sending them, you know, countless demos of all these other songs and everyone was, like, this is awesome. Whatever you guys are doing right now, do more of this. And so, plastic art was kinda like the start of what is helping too. You know, after 6 months of writing, we kinda scrapped everything, and Plastic Heart was the start of that new Phantom on Fire sound.
Yeah. It was fantastic because when you started rapping or you you rapped in the song, I was kinda like, oh, okay. Like, he's experienced this before. I never would have thought that you were new to doing that because when you said whitest white boy trying to do it, that's me trying to do that sort of thing. I could never never do did you did you watch, like, Mike Shinoda and, like, try to copy his style when learning to do this sort of thing?
Or no. But I've definitely listened to the funny of Mike Shinoda. So I didn't I didn't don't know the how my reference was. I just didn't wanna sound like the the stereotypical white boy rapping. I don't know.
And that was the big thing for me. I wanted to make it, like, very cool sounding, and I wanted to sound cool doing it because, I care about that. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely. You seem like a guy that wants everything to be 100% perfect, and I I kind of think of the same thing. Like, if if I'm off one day, then I'm like, oh, that bugs me the entire rest of the day until tomorrow. That sort of thing. So you, obviously, you have Plastic Heart, then you have, what was it?
Lost in Doubt? Was it that one? Like, so is is this now the build up of another album? Because I know you just said you released the one back in 2020. It was done at the end of 2019.
Are you guys gearing up for another album with Plastic Heart, Lost in Doubt? Yeah. Totally. We're we're totally gearing up for another album. Release date, don't really know when it's coming out yet, but I will tell you that the album is done.
Oh, very cool. That's terrific. I like that. Yeah. It's it's like, that's awesome because I'm excited for I know listeners, we always love introducing them to especially to newer bands, and Victor does an amazing job of finding out, you you know, who's breaking through and I'm glad you guys are getting the recognition for all your songs because it's it's it's so it's funny to see these bands go Fame on Fire.
Fame on Fire is not a cover band and you do all these covers and then it, you know, but then you also come up with your own original content and you just do your own thing. I just love the whole, like, do your own thing type of style. Yeah. You know, it's really interesting, like, there used to be, like, a massive stigma around doing covers, like, no more than, like, 5 years ago. Like, even less about it, like, there was this massive stigma around doing covers.
And as the, industry has evolved and as, you know, TikTok has become a very prevalent thing, fans don't care. Like, bands don't care if you're doing covers or releasing originals. They just wanna hear your music. So, it's been that's been really cool for us because we're able to, you know, hit all these little covers on TikTok. Even things like one right now, we're we're not gonna do music video for it because there's no reason to do music video for it.
We're gonna hit a really simple TikTok video. I'll set up on TikTok and then drop it on Spotify. And, you know, it doesn't it's one of those things where, like, we thought about this. It doesn't affect our image in any way because it just it just goes to Spotify. The people that wanna hear it, they're gonna hear it.
The people that are in for the originals and wanna see the original content and the imagery behind the original content, they're gonna get them on the YouTube, you know. We're gonna promote the hell out of our originals, you know. The covers are kinda just like, hey. They're up on TikTok. They get 100 and thousands of views on TikTok, and then people are gonna go check them out on Spotify.
So and and people don't hold that over our head anymore because there was definitely a lot of gatekeeping with us where they're like where a lot of people are like, yeah, you guys just do covers. That's it. You guys are a cover band. And it's like, well, you know, there's more to us because, you know, while doing these covers over the past 5, 6 years, there's been originals alongside them the entire time. Absolutely.
Yeah. And I think you hit something really really heavy there about, like, the future of, like, not even, like, music videos, just putting your songs on TikTok because I was talking to, Kyle from Black Light District who's also like who who found his career based off of, Minecraft YouTube videos. He put his music on those and people started listening to them and, of course, I think you just said somebody, of course, you said TikTok, putting your music on TikTok, and Kit and younger people are now, like, oh, what's this band going to your music directly on Spotify? Is that the tactic you think that's gonna happen for all these future bands? Yeah.
I think it's the most powerful social media website right now. There yeah. There's there's nothing more powerful than TikTok right now. Facebook is just it's cringey. Instagram is, pretty cringey as well.
A little bit less, but it's still Facebook. And, TikTok is just one of those platforms that, like, people can instantly consume what you are producing. They get it instantly. They don't have to click on it or anything like that. They just keep swiping through their for you page.
And so if you're lucky enough to get on somebody's for you page, they'll find your music. And you know the best way to do that is, like, keep putting out more and more content. So I think it's the best way to get fans. Anybody that anybody that refuses to do TikTok, I honestly think it's just growing. If you're not if you're not doing TikTok, basically, I I don't know what you you are doing.
That's so funny because I I have, like, a giant dread of doing TikTok videos because we have to post here and try to get some I'm like, what are the kids even doing? I feel so old using TikTok. I'm like, what do I do to get our things to go viral? But I did, like, some anti request because one listener was ragging on 5 finger death punch. And I was, like, okay, let me go ahead and put one of their songs on and say, oh, this guy requested it and got, like, 11,000 views and I felt famous.
But I think you're right there with TikTok, you know? There you go. Yeah. So we'll Yeah. It's it's it's the most powerful platform ever.
Perfect. That's it. Thank you so much, and thank you for joining me today. Awesome. Yeah.
I really appreciate it, man. Awesome. Nice talking to you. The artist's interrogations