Interview | Fairgrounds
Greetings from Mars!
How are you today? Comfortable I hope.
Come and join us and get to know a band that we’re very good friends with, Fairgrounds a local rock quartet based in New York and Massachusetts. Tonite we’re here, abstractly, with two members of the band, singer bassist Zach Brown and guitarist Rudy Sapp.
Zach, what style music do you guys play?
Zach: A little bit of everything really. I'd say that between the four of us we have different musical tastes but we also have a lot of overlap. We really do run the gamut and there's tastes of everything from the dozens of styles we tend to lean towards in listening and even also styles from television, movies, books.
How much music do you have out right now?
Zach: We put out a self titled demo, a split with the Dirty Looks, a couple singles. And a split with Sidelined from Illinois and our EP La Mar. And then we came out with Nine last year.
Nine is a super fun album packed with a ton of really diverse sounds. It’s available on all your usual streaming outlets for casual hearing, and if you really like what you hear, I’ve heard there’s a vinyl print of the album available on 12 inch! How’d you produce that album Zach?
Zach: We actually recorded it in a mixture of a living room and a a basement, and it really came out great. Especially the vinyl master that we got from Cauliflower Audio that I thought really brought out a lot of the detail that I thought maybe we lost in the digital master. But I thought they both turned out great.
Wow, these are really great recordings. You guys really know how to record an album. Personally, my favorite song off the new album is Cerberus! Oh man, when that cymbal bell starts getting hit around the middle of the song, my brain releases a good chemical. Check out Cerberus here!
What’s a song you really like playing Zach?
Zach: I really love Cover to Cover. That was one of my first real experiences with weird time signatures for the sake of it.
Rudy: That one’s a jam!
Since Fairgrounds started out in 2012, the band has seen a whole host of different characters come in and out. Originally, the majority of the band was based in New York, but now with Faye and Stu, the band is predominantly of a Massachusetts persuasion. How do you guys make music when you live so far away?
Zach: We actually have done the entire band remotely for lack of a better term.
Rudy: Zach, basically, has a song. It’s just not played by people. Zack sends me the mp3 and tabs over the internet, and I'm like yes, easy!
Zach: I do a lot of the legwork, and then I leave the finer details to Stu, Faye and Rudy. I'll come up with a skeleton, with basic rhythmic patterns, guitars, my ideas of how different chords and melodies can sound, and then I pass it on to everyone so everyone can make that final sound. Giving it that last step is huge.
Rudy: I have the recipe.
Zach: Bon Appetit.
Rudy, when you’re playing this skeleton, what’s your approach on interpreting what Zach sent you?
Rudy: I feel like the best thing to do is just paint. Paint and don't think about it. Get out of your own way.
And how do you guys plan your next show?
Rudy: I just get home and I chill, and then Zach hits me up and is like "It's time for a show."
The last time Fairgrounds played in Lowell was at Smokehouse during the Town and City Festival. The show was two bands deep when, promptly and rather inconveniently, half of downtown lost power. Now there next show is… would you look at that… Today!
Check em out tonite @The Worthen Attic.
They’re slotted for 8:30pm. Seriously consider giving them a look. And if you can’t make it tonite, consider listening to them on one of the half dozen platforms that hosts their music!
Here a link to their WEBSITE
And another for FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM
Below is their latest music video, Faceblind!
