Back from a long break and lineup changes, Fire in The Hole has done some recording and is working on their upcoming full-length. I talked to guitarist Dan Fusting about the break, the album, the band.
The Overcast: Obviously a lot of things have changed since Matt left the band way back in April. Tell us about that. What did that long break do for the band and where are you now?
Dan: Matt left unexpectedly a while ago. Shortly after, we began playing with a kid named Ben who we met through a friend. He learned all of our songs in like 2 days and won a battle of the bands with us. Then after summer he moved to West Virginia for school so once again we we're bass-less. Then we kinda fell apart as a band and did nothing basically all summer. Me and Zach got together a few times and started playing a new style like pop/funk/acoustic stuff for a while. Then we decided we wanted to give the band another try and reached a compromise with the sound we wanted to play. Now we are a five piece band (Zach dropped guitar to just sing) and we have our friend Steve Hudkins playing guitar. He is amazing, the most talented kid I have ever met at his age. And our friend Tim is currently on bass.
So you finally have a bassist?
Dan: Yes our good friend Tim who I've known for a few years is now playing bass with us. We tried out a ton of kids, some who were amazing but lacked the personality we wanted, and some who just sucked but who fit perfectly with us. One day we were just like, "Hey Tim plays bass, let's see if he's good." So we brought him to practice and he played with us and we we're just like "yeah he's joining, haha." It was fairly easy since we were good friends with him already.
What has it been like since you "came back" a couple months ago? Was it anything like starting over as far as trying to book shows and the fans and all, or did you basically pick up where you left off?
Dan: We played our first show last month at a local church. We were so excited to play and there was a crowd of well over 200. That show didn't go to well though and left us all with kind of a bad feeling because we knew it didn't go well. Part of the problem was that the sound was horrible and we just got frustrated 'cause we couldn't hear ourselves. The next show we played at a local venue where we brought out 150 fans, which is pretty solid for not playing in such a long time. This show went awesome and was one of the best we've ever played. Booking is very hard now 'cause I lost almost all of my contacts and no one really knows us as well anymore - we kinda disappeared for such a long time. Lots of fans probably also forgot about us. I think our upcoming recordings are gonna help get our name back out there though. We're all really looking forward to that.
What can we expect from the new recordings?
Dan: I can't wait for them. This time we're trying something different and recording half of it at my house, which allows us to make it sound like we want and spend a lot more time on it. You should expect about 10-12 new songs which will be released in probably early April. The album is gonna be really diverse. Its gonna have some heavy songs on it, some slow mellower ones, some upbeat catchy ones, a few acoustic ones, a piano one and an electronic one. We are really trying to push ourselves to write more difficult music this time around.
Rock Chicago Records?
Dan: Basically they are a label based out of Chicago that is helping us promote and they lent us some money to record our album. There was no actual physical signing of anything but we are each equally promoting each other and helping each other out.
What do people say about you? That is, how do people tend to describe you?
Dan: We used to get compared to The Starting Line because some people think Zach sounds like their singer, however our new stuff sounds a lot different from the old pop punk type stuff. We've played around a lot with song structure and chords and the way we write. Most recently the comments we've been getting are something "Dude your new guitarist is sick, he is amazing." Haha. Steve, our new guitarist, has had the biggest influence on our band and has really helped us evolve. He is able to solo and use other picking techniques like "sweeping" that really add to our songs so much and help us stand out from all the other local bands.
Your songwriting, in my opinion, really stands out, too. Where does your inspiration come from?
Dan: Our inspiration basically just comes from our lives. We all love listening to and creating music and it's so cool to be able to make our own and have it affect people the way others' music has affected us. Basically we all really want to play music for a living so that goal inspires us to keep playing and keep writing. As for lyrics go we just write about certain things going on in our lives at the time or how we are feeling.
Anything else you want to say?
Dan: Just that we are extremely excited to finally be back, and keep an eye out for a few new songs to be surfacing online in early February. Also we love everyone who listens to us and thanks for all the support you've given us.