Funeral for a Friend explore SA
Welsh rockers Funeral for a Friend are going for glory in South Africa - currently headlining the RAMfest V festivals across the country, they release their new album, 'Welcome Home Armageddon', on 11 April.
As part of their local invasion, singer Matt Davies-Kreye, drummer Ryan Richards, and guitarist Kris Coombs-Roberts sat down with local media to talk about our friendly audiences, eating in a treehouse, and what archers used to do with their fingers.
How much did you know about RAMfest before you came here?
Matt: I was really disappointed that there weren't a lot of rams. But to be honest we didn't really have much information about it. We did a bit of YouTube searching on some of the [local] bands playing, came across Die Antwoord and they took us by surprise. The show was great fun, and a real experience.
Ryan: We have the same booking agent as Billy Talent, and they came here to do some shows and said it was some of the most fun they ever had on tour, so that really sold it for us.
Did you have any preconceived ideas about the country that you were quite surprised to find were totally wrong?
Matt: I didn't really have any ideas, but people who had been down here before said they had such an amazing experience, and we just wanted to see if that was true. And so far, they have been proven right. We have met some amazing people, seen some great sites, experienced the weather, and ate some fantastic food.
Ryan: Our tour manager was actually born in South Africa, and he tours with us wherever we go, and he is really excited and talked up the South African experience for us and pre-planned a lot of cool activities and we were really excited about that before coming on tour.
What has your itinerary been like since being here?
Matt: Well Ryan would have loved to dive with sharks.
Ryan: Yeah, I was the only one into that, maybe I should have gone with Alkaline Trio [who went the day before], but we have done some really exciting stuff. We were chilling with penguins yesterday, in the sea which was quite nice. Got into the cable car, checked out the top of Table Mountain which was awesome. And yeah, lots of great food - we went to Moyo.
Matt: We got a bit of a traditional experience there which was fantastic.
Ryan: Great food up in a tree. That's the first time I’ve ever been able to say that sentence. But we have a lot more planned, and we have been well looked after by the RAMfest crew and are looking forward to the rest of the tour and more of the sights.
Did you have any idea of how your fan base in South Africa was going to be like?
Matt: None whatsoever to be honest. It was really encouraging the whole weekend to see the response of South African fans on our Facebook page and Twitter. We didn't know that we had that amount of fans down here and it was really great to see this outdoor support and made us excited to come out here.
Has social networking made interacting with fans easier?
Ryan: It’s easier in the sense that no matter where you are in the world, you can instantly connect with us and we can connect with our fans no matter where they are and I guess if we toured South Africa ten years ago before the dawn of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, whatever else, it would have been hard to interact with any fans over here.
It’s great that we have been able to share our anticipation with fans, and we’ve been able to get the positive feedback leading up to the festival, and also keeps us in contact in future with the fans we have made on this tour.
You guys were really interactive with the crowd at RAMfest, do you usually psyche up the crowd deliberately?
Matt: I tend to have a mild dose of Tourette's on stage, and I tend to shout abuse and swear a lot. I think it's important for us to get the crowd interacting with us, I think it's something we love. At our shows it's like a family and we are part of the same thing, we are all there to enjoy the experience, enjoy the music, and it's going to happen regardless if there are 10 people or 10 000 people.
What was your favourite moment from the festival?
Matt: For me it a tossup between playing a song called 'History' from our second album, which is a very laid back kind of song and the entire audience were knocking the words back and it was a major highlight. Also, having an inflatable pool chair thrown on stage 'cause it gave me a bit of a rest.
Kris: It was just a great experience at festivals when you come in not knowing what to expect and walking up and seeing so many people and so many excited faces.
Did you manage to catch any of the South African bands whilst you were at RAMfest?
Ryan: Yeah, definitely. I'm quite a big metal fan so I went to go check out the Metal4Africa tent, I thought that would be really cool and I watched and really enjoyed a band called Sabretooth. I really, really loved their outfits. I saw them walking out in their interesting retro look and thought 'This could be pretty cool'. They did it all in a modern and exciting way and the musicianship was incredible and I really enjoyed their set.
You chop and change band members. How does that influence your sound?
Matt: The changes that we have had, have affected us positively in the band. It has made us able to approach ideas we may have been wary of approaching in the past. It kind of strengthened us in a way.
How do new members change the dynamic of the band?
Matt: The dynamic I think, makes us musically better, allows us to express our ideas the way we want to express them, and not feel like we are not being listened to. Sometimes it's hard, when you have your own ideas you are precious of things and when everyone in the band is on the same page, it creates more openness in the band.
Kris: We have been playing with five people in the band for so long, we are a bit spontaneous and form a bit of a pattern, but I think having Richard and Gavin in the band has broken that up as in writing has become a bit more free formed.
Matt: [Richard and Gavin] came into the band as fans of Funeral for a Friend, so they had a unique insight as to what the band was like from their perspective which was amazing.
What is the vibe of your new album? How would you describe it?
Matt: It's like a punch to the face followed by a kiss to the cheek. That’s pretty much what it is. I think it's got some of the most aggressive songs we have ever done. I think it's some of the strongest, melodic kind of music that works really well from start to finish as a complete body of work whereas the last album maybe didn't do that really well. We are only as strong as our last record so hopefully the fan base take to it and play it loud and proud.
Do you have any interesting information about the songs you're willing to share?
Matt: Let me try and get upbeat. It's hard to explain because a lot of the songs come over as slightly negative, as they are written about things I have an issue with. The new album is set around social issues, and on issues we should be dealing with on a worldwide level and on a social level. So the album doesn't really have any "stories" behind it.
Going back to one of your famous older songs, 'History' - what's the story behind the lyric "Archers in your arches"?
Matt: For a man who speaks in metaphors as myself, it's a concept of a 'F**k you' really because historically the archers in the civil war back in the 1100s used to wave their fingers as a sign of retaliation to the enemy as they still had their bow fingers to fire off their shots. The Arches is with reference to where as a young man I used to rehearse with various bands I was in, when I was trying to do something with music which I was quite passionate about to get away from the idea that all you could do in South Wales was to work in a factory. So it was a 'F**k you' to people who said you couldn't do anything with music as a career.
We heard you listen to old country. Is there any other music you listen to that we wouldn't expect?
Ryan: When you are in a band who tour as much as we do, and play as much live music as we do, and watch as many live bands it's very nice to have that change of pace. After you've done a show, you climb on the bus and listen to something more chilled out like I love like Rat Pack stuff like Frank Sinatra and really enjoy listening to that on the bus. I don't know if that should really surprise anyone, but we do like to come off [stage] and chill out a little bit so you can be energised when you get on stage again.
Matt: We all went through a bit of a Kelly Clarkson phase as well.
Ryan: I didn't.
Matt: We all have very different tastes and are open to very different things.
Will you be returning to our shores?
The whole band: Yeah, if you want us to come back we will definitely be back.
Date Posted : 10 Mar 2011
