Tonight at Cowboy Monkey, Brooklyn’s Finding Fiction shares a bill with local groups The Number One Sons and Cameo Turret. Show starts at 9:30 p.m. and cover is five bucks.
I caught up with the fine folks of Finding Fiction as they were preparing to depart from New York, New York for an eight-week tour.
Smile Politely: Eight weeks of touring, is that customary for you guys or more than you’re used to?
Finding Fiction: We actually did another eight-week tour to South by Southwest, but we also used a week-and-a-half of that time to record our record.
SP: Have you guys been to Champaign before?
FF: I haven’t been to Champaign. Last year, we played Normal or Bloomington. I think we also played Macomb.
SP: Hitting all the college towns downstate, that’s good.
FF: This tour’s starting off a little bit weird, because last time it was in the spring when school was in session, but now we’ve had to change things up a little bit.
SP: How so?
FF: Macomb doesn’t do shows in the summer because school’s not in session, so certain cities are just more like college towns.
SP: How long have you guys been together as Finding Fiction?
FF: Just up to a year.
SP: Wow, that’s not very long. Can you tell me the story about how you got together?
FF: Sure. I met Mario in October or September of last year, and that was off a Craigslist ad. Actually, most of the band came together through Craigslist, we used the Craigslist store. Mario had been doing some acoustic stuff, had just moved here. We were playing in some different bands at the same time. Just started booking some shows here and there, started playing out more. We were each able to go out on the road for a good length of time, so we decided to take some time off and book a tour, and it was just great. We got along really well, and it felt really good, and the energy was really good. We came back, and took a little break, and then went out on tour and recorded on our second tour, our first album.
SP: And that is already out, or is coming out soon?
FF: We self-released it in June. We’re so new, we were shopping it around a little bit, but everything was going so well and we were already writing for the next record, we figured we’d keep the momentum going and release it ourselves.
SP: Right on. How has it been received when you’ve been out and about?
FF: It’s been really good. It’s been really well-received. We’ve gotten some really good writeups, it’s been received well here in New York, and it’s been awesome. It seems liked the interest has really been perked, and everyone’s just jazzed about how we’re going to grow and how we’re going to change. It got one kind of bad review, it’s wasn’t really bad, it was really cool in that it was constructive. It was still encouraging in a way.
SP: What’s the logistics of this tour?
FF: We’re basically heading out west, to Las Vegas, San Diego, heading up the coast to Seattle. It was initially supposed to be just a three- or four-week tour, and then we got into a big festival in Ohio – Midpoint Music Fest. It basically just entailed being out longer, rather than going back to New York for one or two weeks, were just going to stay out. Hopefully we don’t kill each other.
SP: Are you all full-time musicians, then, or do you just have flexible enough job schedules that you can just switch it around?
FF: That was what was really cool when we first started was that we kind of toured right away, and it was really good because it kind of forced us all to be flexible with our living situation in the city. New York is awesome because you can always find temp work, like I belong to five temp agencies, so I can always pick up stuff here and there, and you can sublet your place. New York moves so quickly, so you’re able to be more flexible when it comes to touring. We’ve been able play a bunch, every night of the year, and just grow.