FAMOUS STRANGERS – interview

Famous Strangers

Eternal Terror Interview, answers by Amanda Kiernan

Introduce your band, and describe your latest release.

We are Famous Strangers, from Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada. We’re a heavy rock band that came together three years ago. We’re veterans of the metal scene, coming from a long list of other bands, and we came together by accident, just jamming cover songs. We blinked, and three years later, here we are, a full band doing awesome stuff. Rock and roll.

Our latest release is our debut album, seven songs, out on vinyl and all the streaming platforms, our first as Famous Strangers. We’re overjoyed and overwhelmed by the support and the reactions. It takes you on a journey, starts out high and heavy and inspirational, and ends with a nine minute blues song. It’s all over the place, but it still has a similar vibe running through the whole thing. A little metal, a little rock and roll, a little punky, a little blues, that’s just who we are. We play what we feel, we don’t like to be put in a box, and these are the songs we chose to put out. We really appreciate everybody giving a heavy rock band a chance, and giving the metal and the punk and the blues a listen too.

The album artwork was designed by Art Szabo. Phil Anderson recorded the drums at the audio department, Jeff Kittlitz tracked the rest of it, and we also had Joel Wanasek mix it and Maor Appelbaum master. We are honored to have an incredible team, and we couldn’t be more grateful for them.

What’s the hardest part about being a band in this day and age?

Honestly, for me, it’s keeping up with everything. Back in the day with my other bands I wasn’t on the business side of music, and it seemed more authentic and raw, you’d just play and have time to create. Now the content and the business side sometimes take over the creative process. It’s a challenge running anything like a business, and things are so expensive these days. I completely understand supporting people and paying them what they’re owed, but it’s nearly impossible for a band to actually make money. Spotify’s a great tool, but it would be nice if artists got paid what they deserve.

I enjoy the content side, I do, and I understand why it matters, but some days it’s a lot. There are pros and cons to the internet, and I know I could do better with it myself, but it’s exhausting keeping up some days. Being in a band right now is just like anything in life, expensive. But we’re all in, and we believe in it so much that it’s never been about the money. It would just be nice to see some of what we put in come back, so we can put it toward more merch, another music video, another album, because I’ve got so many ideas, and every one of them costs money to make. It would be nice if the industry paid artists more fairly for that.

When did you realise that your project had the potential to be much more than just a fun idea?

I think it happened right away. The second I came over to jam some covers with the boys, and they laid all these original songs on me, something sparked immediately. I was in a pretty vulnerable place in my life at that time, and I wouldn’t have jumped in the way I did if it hadn’t felt right. There was just so much love between us, so much respect, so many good vibes. And then the music, they let me be exactly me, gave me complete creative control, and that’s when everything just poured out of me, like these words had been waiting inside for twenty plus years.

It kept happening every time we finished a jam, one minute would feel like five hours later, and even after five hours I didn’t want to stop, I wanted to keep jamming. It just kept growing from there, we kept asking each other, what is this, what are we feeling, will other people feel it too. It was really special.

Tell us about your latest release, why should we check it out?

We’d absolutely love it if you checked out our new album. Like Jeff always says, it’s got a little something for everybody. Seven songs, a journey through metal, rock and roll, punk, and blues, so you can find whichever version of yourself that day calls for. Feeling sad and want to dig the knife in a little deeper in the bath? There’s a blues song for that. Want to do another rep at the gym? Check out Desires or Fire Inside.

We’re really excited and proud of this release, and the response has been great, which is a little nerve wracking too, since we genre bend a lot and don’t fit neatly in a box. Lyrically a lot of it is about self-worth, realizing how special and incredible you are, and then it swings straight into a silly alien invasion song and bounces around from there. We hope you love it. The artwork Art Szabo did is incredible, the white vinyl really pops, black and white has become our theme, our colours as a band. It’s self-titled, recorded by our guitar player Jeff Kittlitz, with Phil Anderson’s help on drums, Joel Wanasek and Maor Appelbaum rounding out the team with mixing and mastering. It sounds incredible, especially on vinyl.

How does a song typically come together for you?

Usually Jeff, Braden, and Beej will work it out, right now they’re messing around with a bunch of new stuff. Jeff throws out a riff, and he and Beej will hash it out together for a couple hours to get a structure going, then Braden comes in and adds his own flair. It takes a while, since we’re open to any idea and go all over the place, but that’s a good thing, you’ve got to try everything. If we don’t like something, we put it aside, if we do, we dig further in.

I usually sit there while they’re jamming and think about how the tones make me feel, write down a word or two about that feeling, and try to connect it to a personal experience. From there it’s still challenging, but it flows a lot faster once I know what I want to write about. Some songs I write in five minutes, which feels strange, like a song shouldn’t come together that fast, but I’ve heard enough artists say the same thing, if it happens in five minutes or five months, that’s just how it came about, so I’ve learned to accept it. With the five minute ones I’ll sometimes go around trying to improve them and just end up back where I started, so I figure I was just feeling it that day.

Then there are the ones that take forever. Fire Inside was pretty much done instrumentally, and it took me months sitting with a blank page. We actually played a show at Neighbour’s Pub in Drumheller for a Loud As Hell fundraiser, and the crowd was yelling for an encore, so I asked the boys if they wanted to play it and let me freestyle over it. I asked the crowd what the song should be about, and since we were in Drumheller, of course somebody yelled dinosaurs. So I freestyled a whole song about dinosaurs, and no one will ever hear that version again, but what a magical moment. After that I took some of the melodies from it, and that’s when the real song finally started to form.

How would you describe your sound to an unfamiliar reader?

That’s a tough one, maybe unpredictable. People have called it haunting and moody depending on the song. I’m honoured that people bring up Halestorm, Dio, Ozzy, a lot of eighties metal comparisons. We’re old school, genre bending heavy rock, and I love hearing everybody’s different takes, because they’re always changing. My buddy Pete Clanton from Striker came to our album release and told me he’s been describing us to people as, if the Doors were heavier and Jim Morrison was a girl. I love hearing all the different ways people try to describe us.

What do you want listeners to take away from listening to your band?

We get deep into the depths of your soul, and help you get through the day. We help you realize the self-worth you’ve been searching for out there is actually inside of you. I’ve already had people message me and tell me our music helped them get through their day, and that’s all you could ever wish for as a musician, my job’s done. If I can inspire even one person to love themselves and realize how incredible they are, whether that means getting up and seizing the day or just staying in bed, I hope you know you’re perfect exactly as you are, doing the best you can, and you’re going to make it through.

Musically, it inspires people, whether you’re in a band or not, art can go anywhere you want it to, there are no rules, that’s the beautiful part. Not everyone’s going to like it, and that’s totally fine, we’re not everybody’s cup of tea. I just want it to inspire someone to approach their day a little differently than they usually would, or take their own art somewhere they don’t normally go. I really just want to start a love movement, not a cult, just the belief that love is the answer, and that when we all come together as one, that’s what it’s about. I feel our message reaches people in a beautiful way.

Where would you really like to tour that you haven’t done so yet, and why?

The boys are aching to get to Europe, and so am I, some of us have been before, but you can never get enough. I’ve also been to India and China with Order of Chaos, and I’d love to go back. I’d love to play Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado too, that outdoor venue is gorgeous. But honestly, Famous Strangers’ goal is to play every town this planet has to offer, worldwide tours, exploring everywhere, the sky’s the limit. There are so many untouched places out there that would be amazing. So really, just everywhere.

How would you say that the sound of your band has progressed over the years?

It’s progressed a lot, and I think we’re finally starting to find our sound. The cool thing about us is we’re all over the place and open to anything, but we’ll always sound like Famous Strangers no matter where we go. Even the new songs already sound so different from the last album, and we’re excited to show everyone what we’ve got cooking. I feel like we’re settling into a bit of a structure, metal, rock and roll, and I think our next album will have a similar journey, heavy and punky up front, ending on a slow, chill vibe. We’ve come a long way in three years. It’s cool how musicians collaborate and intertwine musically, songs like Deep Star and L.S.C. feel like our sound, but we’re always going to keep pushing it further.

How excited are you for 2027, and what can fans expect from you?

We’re so excited, I’m almost terrified, because things are going so well right now, and of course we’re the type to get nervous when things are going too well. We’re honoured to be playing 70,000 Tons of Metal in January, sailing from Miami to the Dominican, we’ll be on a big boat with a bunch of incredible people, and we’re so excited to showcase ourselves outside of Canada for the first time. We’re also planning a Canadian tour, and there’s a lot more coming our way that we’re excited to find out about ourselves.

We just want to keep touring, we want to tour the whole world. Things are buzzing right now, so we’re excited to see what comes of it. There’s another album in the works too, probably a single first and then the full record, and of course more music videos, since I love making those. I’m sure we’ll have plenty more announcements coming soon, so check us out on our website for all your FS needs. Thank you so much, have a great day.