Interview with Brian Farvour of Summerfest band, Disaster March
From the city who has brought us a cornucopia of diverse acts such as Steve Miller, Al Jarreau, and The Violent Femmes comes Milwaukee’s next greatest export: Disaster March. Compared to bands like Weezer, Alkaline Trio, and Brand New, these midwestern guys provide fans with highly entertaining, energetic shows. I caught up with keyboardist Brian Farvour just a few hours before he and the guys took the stage at their hometown SummerFest to discuss everything from their evolution as a band to working with Kristian Riley to their K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) model.
Hey Brian, thanks for taking the time to chat with me today. So I know you guys are getting pretty excited to play tonight at SummerFest in just a few hours; is this your first time playing?
You know actually, we have never done SummerFest as a band. We’ve all played with different bands, and actually this is the third time this year I’ll be playing. Never with the same band twice, but playing SummerFest is something I really enjoy doing, especially being from Milwaukee. The other guys love it as well, Marc for instance opened up for Fountains of Wayne one year. We really love getting up there and having a good time, and look forward to getting a few new fans tonight.
So you guys mention in your biography that you’ve had several name changes. Where does Disaster March come from – what about that name stuck?
We’ve gone through a lot of different lineup changes the past few years, but we’ve had this solid lineup for the past two years. We were initially called “My Disaster March,” but ended up dropping the “My” because there seems to be a lot of other bands out there with that as the beginning of their name…My Chemical Romance, My Morning Jacket…we really wanted to stand on our own. So we changed to Disaster March. And the term Disaster March is the name of the musical theme they’d play at a circus during an emergency to calm people down.
So now you’ve been set as Disaster March for the past couple of years. When you play do you have a standard setlist?
Yah, I’d say we have a pretty standard set list. Sometimes we play off of the crowd to see if we should go in a different direction. For instance, we’ve cut out “Slow Motion (it’s one of our slower songs)” before when the crowd is really rowdy. For the most part it’s pretty standard. We do have a couple of cover songs we like to play…
Which ones?
“Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga and “Like a Prayer” by Madonna: definitely crowd favorites.
The most recent album you have is your Dire Days EP, tell me a little bit about the how you guys came up with that.
Some of the songs go several years back, like “Save Me Jaime” and “Slow Motion.” A few years ago, we actually paired up with Kristian Riley (Citizen King, Truth In Fiction, Paris, Texas) who helped us really flush some of our old stuff out to produce better versions of those tracks. We wrote a few new songs to combine with our “new old” tracks for the EP, which we recorded with Kristian in January 2009.
I actually wanted to get the stories behind a few of your tracks. I’ve got to ask about my favorite, “Save Me, Jaime.” Who is Jaime?
(laughs). Nick, a former member and still great friend of the band knew her. That is about all I know about “Jaime.”
And “These Blue Eyes,” is another one of my favorites. I was going to guess that this track was about Jaime, but I guess you don’t have the answer to that one…
“These Blue Eyes” is one of the old tracks that I told you about that was a really rough demo form, but we were able to flush it out with Kristian. We’re really happy with the way it turned out.
And “Slow Motion,” the last one I wanted to ask you about. Kind of a double entendre there.
Exactly. The title relates to both the lyrics of the song and the tempo/feel of the song itself. I really like this track a lot. I get chills every time I hear the swell of the guitar toward the middle of the track.
I want to ask you about your K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) motto. I’ve played in a couple of bands where everything just seems so cluttered. You know, five or six people sitting around making music together but there are so many melodies and submelodies and….
Exactly! That’s where it really comes from. You know, it’s a really natural hting. We’ve all been in bands before this with larger lineups and we just like to keep it simple. We’ve got guitar, bass, drums, keys. One on each. It doesn’t over-complicate things and we can enjoy the music more.
Lastly, before you get ready for tonight, what is next for Disaster March?
We’ve got a few more songs in the works right now, but really we are just focusing on playing some quality shows to hone our craft. It’s really up to Fr. Time what will happen next, but we’re having a great time playing shows and getting new fans!
