"Hartwell is a boring city," admits Fact Not Fiction frontman Zeke Sayer. "If you want to get out alive you need to do something with your time, so we made a band."
The yawns of rural Georgia aren't the only motivation behind them, but FNF's atmospheric screens of sound are only a dream away. The tracks on Conversations With Eyes Closed hum in a key below consciousness on a range from sweet and poppy to frostily haunting. "Perfect Altitude" hovers light vocals over Postal Service-esque electric beats. On the other hand, just a few tracks down is the much darker, raw and undeniably retro "Disappear."
Although in some ways notably diverse, the album as a whole has its own stripped, mellow, entrancing tone to it, and it is indeed best enjoyed with eyes closed and ears open.
The Overcast: What was it like recording Conversations With Eyes Closed?
Zeke: Very long and hot (laughs). We recorded it in a mobile home. It had no A/C and most of it was recorded and mixed from May 'til August so it got pretty hot in there. Most of the time I did mixing on the album from midnight 'til 5am just so it wouldn't be too hot to work. But I was just glad that we could go into a 1960s trailer to record and put out an album that has gotten so much buzz.
Justin: It was a lot of fun. It's something that a lot of people never get to do in their lives, and I'm just glad to be a part of something like that.
Adame: It was great recording. I joined the band halfway through the recording session, so a good bit of the music was already recorded. But it is something that a lot of people are not able to do.
Was it weird jumping in the recording midway through?
Adam: It was very awkward. I had never done any recording so it was completely new to me. I think that I picked up pretty quick on the recording.
How does being in a small town affect your band?
Adam: It limits the amount of shows we can play because then you have to go to Athens or Anderson to get a decent crowd.
Zeke: And most people around here are Blink 182 wannabe bands or are afraid to listen to anything different or new.
Justin: There tend to be more people that get jealous and try to pull you down but in the long run I think it helps to make us into a better band. It's a goal of mine to prove everyone who said we couldn't wrong.
Zeke: Bingo.
Adam: Most definitely.
Zeke, why did you leave school last year?
Zeke: Well, there's a lot of reasons. I wouldn't always say I was a model student, and I did a lot of things that made me wide up in trouble and other situations, and one of those situations caused me to leave school. But I believe that everything happens for a reason, and while I was in school, I had no direction in life, no goals, and it took losing something for me to have a wake up call and realize, "Hey, I'd better do something with my life." So I started the band and now I look on it as more of a blessing. And in the mean time, I took classes and graduated on my own time.
Was that why you started the band or was the band just something that ended up developing from it?
Zeke: Well, I had always deep down wanted to play in a band, but all the other effects of teenage life just kinda kept that from ever happening. I started the band for a few reasons, one being the fact that I needed to do something with my life and music had always been a big part of me. The "depressing" or "somber" songs, came from me being depressed about life and things to do with my family, which has seemed to get better with each passing day, and with that, each new FNF song seems to have a happier sound to it.
What else inspires you to make music?
Adam: When I was younger, I had always wanted to play drums, just because they seemed cool, but after a few years of playing I realized it was more than a hobby.
Zeke: Anything that has an impact on my life. I have a lot of good memories from years ago, and a lot of bad ones, and I almost always seem to write a song about them. My biggest influence and goal is being able to write a song that someone can listen to and have it speak to them. That is how music affects me.
Justin: I just like the feeling of being on stage and being in the spotlight. I just want to make music that people enjoy and have fun while doing it...and a few bucks here and there wouldn't hurt.
Zeke: Just to pay for food.
Justin: Yeah, food + Justin = happy.
You guys do a lot of stuff on top of FNF, from Zeke's recording studio to drumline and school... Does it ever just feel consuming? Or overwhelming?
Zeke: Well, I really started the studio just to record my own stuff, but I had a lot of bands asking to record because they liked how the FNF stuff happened, so I started producing other bands. I don't think I could ever get tired of music because there's no end to it, you never stop learning.
Justin: It can be. I'm on the drumline so all during the first semester of school I was going to school everyday, working three days a week, then on Tuesday and Thursday I had drumline practice, I would be at Zeke's at 7:30 until 9:30, then Friday nights I was off somewhere at the football games with the drumline so I was very tired all the time. But I was never tired of playing in FNF.
Adam: School is the most consuming thing to me. I used to be on the drumline, but I'm no longer. So I have a good bit of free time to go down to Zeke's studio and rehearse and record.
Justin leaves the interview
On an unrelated note, are there seriously UFOs in Hartwell?
Adam: It's very likely. I've personally never seen one, but there's no telling what you'll find in a strange hick town like this.
Zeke, you recently wrote the music for an independent film, The Philosopher. Could you tell us about it? How did you come upon that opportunity, and what was it like?
Zeke: Well I have some friends from South Carolina that are really talented in the film industry and through them I got hooked up with this company called Dead Horse Productions, an indie film corporation. Our album got passed around up there and when the owner of the company heard it, he liked it a lot and contacted me about producing music for an upcoming film they were about to do. They invited me to the shoot, gave me a nice actor's chair to sit in--which is really what sold me (laughs)--and after viewing some scenes, I came home and produced a soundtrack using a 20-something-year-old Casio keyboard and a few other things in the studio. They loved it. And they had us play the songs at the premiere which was cool.
What has been your favorite part about being in this band?
Zeke: Being recognized for what we do and being respected for it. It's a really good feeling when someone tells you that they like your music and then goes on to tell you a story about how it's worked into their life. Also, what's been fun is the fellowship that comes with traveling to play shows.
Adam: My favorite part is the feeling when you're onstage performing. It's a great feeling when you're in front of the crowd. I also enjoy practicing, getting ready for shows.
Finally, what are your hopes for where Fact Not Fiction will go?
Adam: I've got a lot of hopes for this band. I hope that we will be able to produce another studio album. I'd like to be able to make a decent living off of this band. I don't necessarily want to become famous, but it would be nice.
Zeke: Yeah, we never really set out saying we want to be famous or nothing, but my dream I've always had was to be able to make a living by doing music and not having to wake up every morning and be like "Damn, I have to go to work." Because music, as work to me, is something that I would never mind doing anytime. I'd be lying if I said we didn't want to go as far as everyone knowing our music and knowing us, but just to be able to make an honest living off of it would suit me just fine.