Terry Kane - Faux Ferocious Interview
Tennessee based rock group Faux Ferocious have been on the scene for years. Having participated in the legendary Nashville scene that consisted of the Infinity Cat family from back in the day, Faux Ferocious are the true underdogs and in this interview we speak to the band’s frontman Terry Kane about growing up in the south, meeting his fellow bandmates, bouncing from Knoxville to Nashville, recording for Infinity Cat, becoming close to the Pilot Light’s Jason Boardman and their most recent record “Pretty Groovy”.
Are you originally from Nashville, TN? What was your childhood like growing up? When did you first get into music and was this something that was relevant around your household?
Music was a pretty big part of all our houses growing up. We had older siblings telling us what to listen to and already playing music, parents and family in the music industry, great record collections to dive into, and instruments we were able to play. Three of us are from Nashville, and Dylan is from Anderson County in East Tennessee, but we all grew up as pretty broad listeners and that eclectic nature still influences a lot of what we are trying to do. I pretty much always wanted to play music live. I remember learning how to make a bong with my trombone mouthpiece in high school and then plugging in my dads Ibanez Analog Delay pedal and twisting the knobs for what seemed like an hour. It was a small house, and I am sure my parents questioned it, but I still use the pedal today and the knobs are just as much fun to twist. We were lucky that Nashville had a lot of free music growing up, and in the late 90's and early 2000's it was not unusual to just be dropped off downtown for Dancing in the District, or River Stages and see the likes of Bob Dylan, The Wailers, George Clinton, and tons of other shit.
How did you initially meet your bandmates and what were first impressions of everyone? What led to the decision to first form the group?
Jonathan and Reid had a band in high school. The three of us in Nashville have all known each other for a really long time. We met Dylan in college in Knoxville, and started jamming. I forget our first show, but the Preservation Pub was really supportive, and of course the first time we played the Pilot Light I really felt like we could do something. We started touring around 2013 and just kept going. Knoxville, and specifically the Pilot Light was a great place to really learn music. It is where I heard Dead Moon, and The Monks for the first time. The first Big Ears was really eye opening, and just the whole sort of a lack of a music industry that allowed for a really artistic, and cheap life. Moving back to Nashville definitely made us hone the skills we picked up in Knoxville though, and ultimately made us a better band. When we started playing a lot less in Nashville, and a lot more in other cities some people started to take us "seriously"
Tell me about writing and recording the band’s self titled release on Infinity Cat in 2015. How did the deal with those guys come about and what was the overall process and approach to recording that project? That following year you guys released “Cloning The Rubicon”.
The Infinity Cat tape was part of a tape series they asked us to be a part of. I am really happy that we got to play a small role in the IC story because of how influential they have been, and will be when the story of Nashville is all said, and done. They put out such incredible music. A lof of what was on that tape ended up on Cloning The Rubicon. Jason Boardman who runs the Pilot Light as well as Striped Light played as big a part of us turning into an actual band as anyone, and we are really proud of that record. There is no real back story to those songs other than the fact that we recorded everything ourselves. We used a couple SM58's, and maybe one condenser mic, and various semi functioning Tascam 4 track and 8 track recorders including the legendary 388. Jonathan had a pro tools rig that we would dump everything into, but it was really fun to learn how we wanted our stuff to sound by doing it all ourselves.
In 2019 the band released “Pretty Groovy” on Burger records. How did you guys want to go about this record that differs from the previous works? How did the deal with those guys come about?
Jay Steele and Jon Prine who were both one time Athens folks put us in touch with Drew Vandenberg to make what would be Pretty Groovy. Jon was our booking agent, and Jay helped us with some management stuff for a bit. I am really glad we trusted them when they said we should work with Drew who is an amazing, highly skilled, and patient engineer, and producer. We knocked that record out in 4 days at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, GA. Drew has the ability to understand the short hand we developed when teaching ourselves how to record, and to translate that to the studio environment. Pretty Groovy, and 2019 in general marked a pretty big milestone for us. That record helped pave the way for our work with Patrick Carney, and Danger Mouse as well as an awesome European tour. Obviously things took a turn in 2020 not only with Covid, but also with the really sad revelations by Lured by Burger Records about what was happening at the store, and with some of the bands. We ended that relationship, and had our friend Bryce from Colonel Records host Pretty Groovy from his label on all streaming services.
Is there anything else you would like to further hare with the readers?
We started another record with Drew the weekend that Covid was declared a global pandemic. It started off great but by the end of that weekend there was a lof of anxiety and uneasiness. We finished it with Drew Carroll at the Bomb Shelter in Nashville and finally mixed it at Chase Park sometime in 2021. We are planning on releasing some of those songs finally. What we got right from those sessions I think is really good. Other then that we are going to try to get out of town, and play some more shows the second half of this year. It feels really fun to be playing music again, and we have written a lot of new stuff that we are all pretty jazzed about, and will try to get another record done this year.
