Q&A with FIDLAR’s
Brandon Schwartzel

FIDLAR is a four-piece punk band from Los Angeles who love music, surf/skate culture, drinking, and other intoxicants. Then again, you could figure that out from the songs on their self-titled debut album which came out this year on Mom + Pop records. Song titles like “Wake, Bake, Skate” or “Cheap Beer” or “Max Can’t Surf” may seem pretty basic on the surface. However, there’s a lot of craft and heart that goes into writing good surf-skate-punk. Some of their influences may surprise you. Other things, like dick jokes, will probably not. At the end of the day, FIDLAR are out to make music that excites them and have a good time.

I spoke with bassist Brandon Schwartzel in advance of their show at the High Noon Saloon this Friday night. 

Let’s get this out of the way. For people who don’t know, what does FIDLAR stand for?
“It stands for Fuck It Dog, Life’s a Risk, but there’s a lot of variations. We encourage people to come up with whatever acronym they feel is suitable for them. People will type out what they think our lyrics are on Tumblr and the lyrics will be wrong. That’s funny because we have a lyrics page with our record. And our lyrics are pretty straightforward. There’s not much mystery behind them. It’s funny. We should just start posting it whenever people get our lyrics wrong.”

If I’m going to play you on the radio, and to be able to play you on the radio, I have to edit out the words that the FCC doesn’t like. Is that OK? Or does it water down the punk rock?
“We’re not all concerned about having to swear all the time. I think we’d rather have our song on the radio than say ‘fuck’ in our songs. When we were first doing the radio edit, we wanted to have really loud censor beeps on every word, but I don’t think that ended up happening. It makes songs funnier when there are really loud beeps.” 

Do you have any other words of wisdom for young punks out there?
“Our whole mindset is that you can do whatever you want. Do what makes you happy and don’t worry about all the other bullshit. Life’s too short; that’s how we approach our band and our music. We don’t think too much about it. We do work hard on on music but we do what we want. When we did our last record, we did what we wanted. When we do our next record, we’ll do what we want and if it comes out different, fuck it.”

Is it true that you just started recording songs in a studio for the heck of it?
“As the story goes, Zac and Elvis were working in a recording studio in Los Angeles on projects and shit. They had the keys to the studio. So, after the producers and musicians would leave, they would clean and wrap all the cables up and shit like that. Since they had the keys, we would just sneak in after the session was done and record our own stuff. That’s not how we recorded our full-length but it is how the band started, making fake demos and playing music. When we decided to make an album, we built a studio in the house where Zac and I lived. We borrowed gear, stole gear, got gear however we could and then spent a month tracking it. We were there all day and all night, a lot of weed and other influences — musically and non-musically.”

You guys are based in Los Angeles, but where are you all from?
“Zac and Elvis grew up in L.A. proper, in Culver City, which is pretty central L.A. Zac grew up in Hawaii. I grew up in San Diego, but I moved to L.A. in 2006 so I’ve been there about eight years. Zac moved up a year after I did. So, I’m from San Diego but I claim L.A. as my hometown, which is weird (not). It’s home for me now. I became who I am in Los Angeles.”

Did you know The Orwells before this tour?
“We have crossed paths a few times. They would come out to shows that we’d do in Chicago. When they would come to L.A., we’d go to their shows. I loved their record. They love our record. They’re super-young and just graduated high school. When it came time to do our first headlining tour, they were super down to do it and we were super glad to have them.  It worked out. It’s been fun. The shows have been rad.”

You guys are touring with the Pixies next year. What’s that going to be like?
“The tour starts the second or third week of January. That’s insane; I don’t know how that happened. That’s a dream come true for all of us. People would ask us early on, when we weren’t even going on tour, who our dream band to tour with would be. You’d say, ‘I don’t fucking know. We’re not even going to ever go on tour. The Pixies. We want to tour with the Pixies. Like that’s going to ever fucking happen.’ And now it is. It’s just like WHAT?! We were freaking out when we found out. It’s weird getting email from the Pixies’ tour manager asking what we need every night. We’re like, ‘WHAT? Give us whatever you think we need. We don’t give a shit.'”

Were any of your actually alive when the Pixies were touring on their original albums?
“I was pretty young when they split the first time. I had two older brothers who huge Pixies fans. I would sneak into my older brother’s room and steal his Pixies CDs. I was probably ten years old when I listened to Doolittle for the first time — it had already been out for a while. It was pretty early on that I really started liking them. They have never ceased to stop making awesome music.”

Who is someone that most people wouldn’t expect you to be influenced by or to listen to?
“We all listen to a bunch of different music. I really like Elton John. I think he’s an amazing songwriter. Neil Young is amazing.”

What’s your favorite Elton John Song?
“I like ‘Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters’ a lot. I think that ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ is probably the perfect pop song. It might just be the perfect song. It has such good melodies, man.”

So, what makes a great punk or pop song? Melody? A hook?
“We’re fans of good songwriting — pop songs, country songs. It’s more about the actual song than the attitude. Attitude is important, too. We think a lot about melodies and structure. It may not seem like we do but we definitely spend time. We’re not about to just ‘play three chords and rock out.’ Sometimes it happens that way but we like what we do. It’s important to us. It’s our lives, our art, our creativity. We take that part of it very seriously, but have fun with it at the same time. If it’s not fun, then why do it?” 

What about Neil Young?
“After the Gold Rush is probably my favorite record. Also, Live at Massey Hall is an amazing record. I’m trying to think of a particular song. I always forget the names. ‘Southern Man’ is really good. ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ is one of the saddest songs, beautifully sad but really good. I like Harvest Moon. He’s incredible, actually.”

What’s a song or artist that you like that would surprise your fans?
“I’m a huge Frank Ocean fan. I though that Channel Orange was the best record of 2012. Speaking for myself, because the other dudes don’t get behind my R&B love, I think that he’s amazing and that album is amazing. It was an actual album, recorded with a complete thought as to what the entire record would be. It’s not, ‘Here’s three singles and some filler tracks.’ It’s rare that you see that nowadays. It seems like today, music is really single-based or download-based. You don’t get as many bands doing a thought-out album, that if you listen to all the way through it all connects.”

If you could do a concept album, what would it be?
“There’s a FIDLAR side-project called FILDAR, and it’s our Fantasy-Metal project. We’re thinking of doing a concept record as FILDAR and it will probably be about some Game of Thrones-type shit, some magic. I’m really into fantasy — books and movies about that kind of stuff. I wanted to be a magician when I was a kid. I never really figured it out.”

Do you have aspirations to do magic on stage? Or a show like GWAR with costumes, etc.?
“That would be amazing. It would be cool to just make the record and then just have the sound guys play it while we throw smoke bombs and shoot fire out of our hands. We wouldn’t even have to play the songs live; it could just be a stage performance. Performance art. It’s in the development phase.”

Have you been to Madison before?
“We haven’t played there as a band. I’ve been to Madison with another band that I was touring with before FIDLAR. I can’t remember where I played. I was on tour with this other band, and the opening band cancelled. They weren’t sure what they were going to do with the opening 20 minutes. They were worried that people were going to get bored. At the time, I had a hip-hop side project called Trick Tracy. I would do house parties or clubs, just to get free drinks. So, I offered to open up the show. My one and only time playing Madison was a hip-hop set. I haven’t really done it for a while.”

Did you freestyle or do turntable stuff?
“It started out that I was just really bored and really broke. This was when I first moved to L.A. I was trying to think of something to do. I got really stoned, started making beats on my computer, and then I would put all these samples of musical interludes. I made this one 30-minute track, six songs but one track, with interludes in-between. So, I’d just hit play on my iPod and rap over it. It was pretty stupid rap, dumb shit, but it was fun.”

So, was it all about getting away from playing an instrument, or just improvising?
“It was just something to do. Something to do to kill time. I’d just download samples off the Internet and then just rap over it, yell into the mic on my computer. I’d rap about getting drunk so some of the lyrics were similar to FIDLAR stuff, but more joke-y. It was dumb hip-hop stuff like ‘getting money’ and ‘fucking bitches,’ but I was A) not getting money, and B) not fucking bitches.”

How did you get Nick Offerman to do your [NSFW] video for “Cocaine”?
“Zac and Elvis’s dad used to play music professionally for a long time [Greg Kuehn of T.S.O.L.]. He’s played music with Nick’s wife, Megan Mullally, who is also on Parks and Rec. The band they play in is called Supreme Music Program. He was playing music with her before she was on Will & Grace. So, Zac and Elvis grew up with Nick as a family friend. They always stayed in touch. Then he started on Parks & Rec and became the funniest guy in the world. We had made some music videos and said that he could be in one if he ever wanted to. As the story goes, he was at a dentist’s office and he was looking through a magazine and saw a write-up on us. He went home, listened to the record, and came up with the whole idea for the video. It was all his idea. He emailed the band a music video treatment that he wrote, and it was the funniest email that I’ve ever read. It was hilarious how he describes what he wants to do with the video. We just worked out the schedule. We shot it at Zac & Eric’s house in Highland Park. Our friend Ryan Baxley directed it. He has done a lot of our videos. We feel like we can’t make any more music videos. It’s the funniest thing. I still laugh at it.”

You just hung out with Nick Offerman at their house?
“We spent all day with him. We were dying. He was just walking around the house with this fake penis hanging out of his jeans. We couldn’t handle it. We were all busting up and he was completely serious the whole time, with a straight face. That’s his kind of comedy, very serious, kinda stoic. It was amazing.”

If memory serves, Nick Offerman has worn a fake penis. Legend has it that he had a headshot taken with an arm-sized latex penis coming out of his jeans. He would send it to casting agencies.
“You’re totally going to remember that headshot. That’s going to stick in your mind when you’re looking through actors for a show. You’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s the guy with the huge penis.'”

Did he offer you any life advice or woodworking tips?
“No particular advice. He was super nice and stoked on our band. The video was his idea and he was totally into doing it. He was a total pro about it. He’s just a cool guy. He’s putting out a book, and he made a commercial for the book. He used one of our songs in it. Hopefully it will be a lasting relationship, and we’ll get to do more stuff together.”

Which song was used in the commercial?
“It’s a song that hasn’t been officially released, but it’s called ‘The Punks Are Finally Taking Acid.’ We made a Youtube video for it. It’s a slack, easy, slower, heavy kind of jam.”

So is the song an outtake?
“There’s a lot of songs that are like demos or just us jamming. We’ll put them out on the Internet for free. We’ll just make a weird video and throw it up. We always like doing that. Not every song has to be an official release that’s built up. We just like to throw stuff out for fun.”

You sing a lot of anthems. What are the songs that fans sing back to you the most often?
“‘Wake, Bake, Skate’ is a song that a lot of people sing along with. And ‘Cheap Beer’ as well. Those two are the sing-along songs.”

You shot the video for “Cheap Beer” on vacation in Niagara Falls. Is that your favorite place to vacation?
“When we’re on tour, we try to find a body of water to jump into, or a hiking trail, or going to the beach. We don’t get to do that as much on tour. Also, Joshua Tree is a place that we like to go. Get weird in the desert.”

Do you only drink cheap beer?
“We’ll pretty much drink anything that’s given to us. We’re not real picky. A lot of people think that song is how much we love cheap beer, but it’s about getting shit from people who make fun of your cheap beer. When we wrote the song, Zac and I were partying a lot in Los Angeles. We were both super broke so we’d go to a house party with forties of King Cobra or Miller High Life. We were living in Silver Lake/Echo Park, which is kind of the hipster neighborhood. You’d get those microbrew guys who would say, ‘I can’t believe you’re drinking that. How can you drink it?’ I’d say, ‘Fuck you. You don’t have to drink it.’ We love good beer, too. We’ll take a good beer along with cheap beer. Sometimes I want nothing more than a forty of Miller High Life. Sometimes I want a fancy IPA. It all depends on the night, or the day. Usually, we lean towards cheap. It’s just beer.”

Do you have any favorite Wisconsin beers or styles that you want to try out?
“We’ve just gotten to the point where we’ll get a rider, stuff left in the dressing room, so we’ll do a case of something standard like Budweiser and then a case of the local brew from the town that we’re in. So, that works out that we get to try something new and have a ‘classic’ on deck as well.”

What if I told you that there was a local brewery¹ that had a skate park² across from it?
“What?! I’d say that we’re getting to Madison a bit early.”

What is the proper way to do that? Beer then skateboarding? Skateboarding then beer?
“It would have to be a beer sandwich with skateboarding in the middle. Get some beer. Go skateboarding. Then, after you’re tired, more beer.”