Fermata

The band Fermata evokes a forgotten gothic era.  An era with a certain raw, earthy melancholy atmosphere permeating all it contacts. Upon consumption of their potent sonic brew, the listener is whisked off to a musical merry-go-round of passion and excitement. Vocal visions are painted for our ears to hear and see. As the visions clear, we find that these spellbinding tales are spoken through the various physical and musical voices of a far flung ensemble from Madison, WI.

After witnessing Fermata’s performance on Dec 15 at High Noon Saloon, time was set aside to find out more about this band. Now, through the modern marvel of e-mail, we have been granted a view into the workings of that which is Fermata.

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500 Miles To Memphis

Continuing in the great Ohio cowpunk tradition of artists like TWO COW GARAGE and DAVID ALLEN COE, Cincinnati’s 500 MILES TO MEMPHIS (named after the distance from their home city to the birthplace of rock n’ roll)  blends roots, punk, and country with influences like Green Day and Ben Folds to Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard. They just released their newest record, We’ve Built Up To Nothing on Valentine’s Day and are touring the country to support the release.

“It was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen”, says main songwriter and frontman, Ryan Mallot, is the first song that inspired him to be a musician. “I had a fake microphone and would sing Queen all day long and it just grew from there.” So he got the bombastic rock in right away, but started into Americana early as well. “When I listen to country it’s a lot of older stuff. When you first learn to play guitar it’s just way easier to play.”

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Faces For Radio

With a sleek, venturesome and well worn presence in the Madison and national music scene, the members of the capital’s resident rock supergroup FACES FOR RADIO see every show as a chance to show off their skills. Skills they’ve picked up over the past decades in some of Madison’s most successfully produced bands, namely Rapscallion and Last Crack. 

“Any opportunity we are given to play we appreciate it 150 percent,” says Chris Havey, who handles drumming duties. Havey is joined by an experienced lineup of musicians including singer Tod Schwenn, guitarist Jayme Poster, and bass player Todd “Reno” Winger.

Even though they started in 2006, their friendships are decades long. Faces for Radio marks a crossroads of the paths each of the members of the bands have taken. Winger and Havey enjoyed success in the widely popular Last Crack, which was signed to Roadracer/Roadrunner Records a label that now touts names such as CKY, Nickelback, Dream Theater and more. Last Crack enjoyed critical success nationally and worldwide, playing on and off over the last two decades, with classic albums such as Burning Time and Sinister Funkhouse 17, MTV videos, and shows that attracted thousands of people.

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Fear Factory

If you’ve felt discouraged with Fear Factory’s direction in the last few years, Mechanize (Candlelight Records) will bring your faith back. The L.A. Industrial metal masters have put out a record that many will say is the revitalization of a legend. Fan-favorite Raymond Herrera has left to pursue playing with Arkaea (E1/Century). He has since been replaced with Gene Hoglan (Dark Angel, Death, Dethklok). All the more exciting is the reunion with Dino Cazares. He’s back after nearly a 6 year hiatus from the group. Chris Fox interviewed Mr. Cazares, emphasizing the experimental side of Fear Factory…Don’t miss FEAR FACTORY The Rave in Milwaukee on Saturday, May 29.

The metal genre has such a vast array of sub-genres and categories that it is truly impossible to define a band with one term these days. FEAR FACTORY thrives on this grey area of metal, Dino Cazares explains, “we experiment so much that it is hard to put any kind of label on what we do. Death to industrial… the best way [to describe it] would be FEAR FACTORY. We are proud to be a band that helped define a bit of this genre.”

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Fever Marlene

Bubbling with a feverish energy layered in melodies, beats, and laid back rock and roll, Milwaukee band FEVER MARLENE ambitiously unearth the limits of where they can take their sound. From a big pop-rock debut to a minimalistic approach and now entering raw rock and roll territory, singer/guitarist Scott Starr and drummer Kevin Dunphy let the situation dictate where their band’s music goes.

“It’s important with us being a two-piece to not put ourselves in a corner with what we can do,” says Starr.  “We can’t force something that’s not really there.”

With this mentality, Fever Marlene has rapidly grown in popularity in their hometown and the Midwest music scene, constantly adding fans, bands (both local and national), and media memorized by how they create such big sound with only two members.  Brian Kramp, morning show co-host on FM 102.1 in Milwaukee, is just one of these people.

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Filter

Richard Patrick is founder and frontman of the band Filter. He also formed the supergroup, Army of Anyone with the DeLeo Brothers, Dean and Robert, of Stone Temple Pilots, and drummer Ray Luzier.

The first Filter album was released in 1995. The current album “The Trouble With Angels” features tracks busting with honesty that has became a sort of Filter signature. We caught Richard Patrick and asked him a few questions.

Maximum Ink: What do you think led you to become a musician?
Richard Patrick: The first thing every musician realizes is that they appreciate music more than others around them. There is always a great song out there, you just have to find it; or write it yourself. 

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Bradley Fish

Bradley Fish has become the ultimate nomad. It makes sense though, he’s been perfecting it most of his adult life along with his passion, music.

A musical chameleon with a music degree to match, Bradley left his native Illinois for the much more liberal Madison, Wisconsin in the mid 1990’s and literally lived in a tent in a friend’s back yard while giving guitar lessons to local students. He also played many a night on State Street and could always be spotted with a guitar, head full of dreadlocks and a tie-dye t-shirt.

Eventually, the success of lessons, shows and street playing allowed him to set up his own place and live life from music. His solo shows were “one man band” style, and he wore bells, shakers and other noise makers on his legs and feet and play guitar, dulcimer, Chinese zither and whatever other instrument he could find. Bradley is also part comedian and his laugh is infectious. Some of his videos on YouTube feature this “humor” with his controversial song “Jewish Girl Blues.” Totally tongue in cheek, the song pokes fun at the plight of Jewish men who are pressured by old tradition to find and marry a Jewish girl, only in this video, he marries a few to cover the bases.

Besides playing as a one man band/comedian, Bradley has been in a ton of bands. In the mid-nineties, Bradley enlisted the help of a plethora of local Madison all-stars to play in his band, The Aquarium Conspiracy, and record on his first album. After some success it was hard to keep the “band” booked as scheduling of “all-stars” isn’t so easy.

The late nineties put the hippy in Bradley out to dry when he hooked up with Rökker, Philly, Mike McGinnis and Jeff Muendel to re-package the old Aquarium Conspiracy music plus new songs to a heavier format… a ROCK BAND called Bradley Fish’s Electrifried Band. Zany publicity stunts propelled his popularity, but something still seemed missing.

Following his mother’s advice to visit Israel, Bradley sold off most of his belongings, shipped the guitar and Marshall amp to his new home in Tel Aviv where he would work for the high-level audio software company Waves as well as get signed to Sony Records to sell CD’s full of loops. But Tel Aviv didn’t suit him so off to Jerusalem he went where he started a recording studio in his apartment just off the market. But the nomad in him would strike again.

Before he sold off all his belongings and shipped the rest back to the states, Bradley recorded his new album “Time To Rise”. Set to be released on October 12th at the High Noon Saloon in Madison, “Time To Rise” will take Bradley across the country as he promotes and tours in total DIY fashion. You see, Bradley purchased a big, purple van which you can’t miss. Instead of the tent, or an apartment or home, he has trimmed his possessions to the minimum and uses a fusion of old and new technologies to make the “Purple People Eater”, his fond name for it, into a mobile home/office, decreasing his lodging expense.

Bradley also went back to his one-man-band show but this time it’s a complete mix of analog and digital as he uses the laptop to control the layers of his improvisational playing on the many different instruments in his possession. Guitar and dulcimer remain his favorites while he incorporates bass, drum loops and “other” sounds into his repertoire.

Here is my conversation with adventure looping musician Bradley Fish. He is back in the Midwest after his 6 year residence in Israel and touring this fall with a new album.

Maximum Ink: Bradley, Are you a one man show or would you rather mash with others?
Bradley Fish: I love playing in bands. I must have been in a few hundred of them, practically every style you can imagine and have learned from a ton of great musicians over the years. The thing is, bands have a 99.9% chance of breaking up and solo acts are the inverse of that. So in a business that’s already known for being very unstable, being a solo act lets me enjoy a certain degree of stability. Plus, as a solo act, I can decide to rehearse spontaneously at 4 in the morning, make radical changes in a musical direction, or play a freaky gig for naked desert-trance-hippies for gas money and organic yogurt - without consulting or convincing anyone and still keep the act together for years on end.

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