Email
Print
FeedThe Fray Take 2
Off the grid for a while, Denver's multi-platinum band-next-door emerges with their long-awaited new record. we go Behind the scenes with four friends ready to step back into the spotlight.
Lead singer Isaac Slade is dodging Dave Welsh as the guitarist attempts to throw his arms around his band-mate. The four members of The Fray are laughing, more like a band of wrestling brothers than celebs posing for a magazine cover. Messing around, they are hardly the bad-asses you envision when picturing multi-platinum"“selling, world-famous, twenty-something rockers. In fact, instead of arriving with a cadre of bodyguards and limos, Isaac rode to the photo shoot on his Euro scooter, guitarist and occasional vocalist Joe King biked it, and Welsh and drummer Ben Wysocki strolled over on foot. Just four nice guys living the American dream.
The Fray - You Found Me Viral Video
But it's been a couple of years since the international accolades and since "How to Save a Life" became known for its endless repetition on NBC's Grey's Anatomy promos. Sure, we still sing along to "Cable Car" on KBCO, but we can't help wondering how this homespun band from the suburbs, who rocked the world with earnest music, plan on doing it again?
It all started one fateful day in early 2002 when Slade ran into King at the Littleton Guitar Center. The two had been neighborhood friends, and over a conversation about musical pursuits and a bucket of used CDs, they decided to hit the garage, plug in the amps and jam.
The two were soon joined by former high school comrades of Slade's, Wysocki and Welsh, and the foursome's melodic sound seemed unstoppable. They picked a name out of a hat and began submitting songs to KTCL. The Boulder-based station receives thousands of songs from local bands yearly, rejecting most of them, including the first eight put out by The Fray. But late on a Sunday night in 2004, "Cable Car" was aired, a single play that opened the door to the band's future.
The band started touring with four additional people: air guitar master and tour manager Mark Maher; guitar tech Steve Clark; monitor engineer Brian Joseph; and Blackhurst, a Colgate grad and photographer/cinematographer who also sold T-shirts. The eight drove state to state, motel to motel, in a van.
"Grassroots" and "organic growth" are terms frequently associated with the band's astounding success. Music services such as iTunes had recently arrived on the mp3 front and were making strides in the market, which perfectly aligned with The Fray's national introduction. The Internet played a predominant role in drawing fans to The Fray's soulful fusion of bluesy alternative and strong piano riffs. Within a year, Westword anointed the boys 2004's "Best New Band," and they were signed to Epic Records. By 2007, when they hit the road, they did so with three tour buses, four tractor-trailers, and 23 crew members.
Epic Records helped the band get noticed, and Hollywood even honed in on the catchy music. Not just a rage in the states, "How to Save a Life" "” written while Isaac was mentoring a cocaine-addicted teenager "” topped charts in Spain, Ireland, Canada and Australia. In 2007, The Fray claimed the title of the best-selling digital album of all time.
But while you can score a million Google hits that have something to do with the band, it's been nearly a year since the press has heard from them "” or their publicist. The band's Website has been under construction, and The Fray's success has been shadowed by other bands such as The Killers, who arrived on the scene at the same time and have released three albums since Slade and company debuted their first. Fans have been patiently waiting, hoping the band's down-home nature, funny stage anecdotes and addictive sound haven't slipped away forever.
"There is a time when you believe you've made it," says King. "But when we had toured the world twice with our 12 songs, we had to make another record. We had no clue how we were going to do it. It was a very scary first couple of months in the recording studio. We had to find our voice again, and it was a roller coaster. Sometimes it clicks, and it's immediate. Other times, you're digging, trying to discover the right way to say something. At certain points, we were very confident, and other times, we were so frustrated, thinking it'd take six years to finish 10 songs."
King is the patriarch of the band, the oldest at 28, who married his high school sweetheart and is the father of two girls. He falls into the role of the responsible one who keeps the rest of the band in check. In interviews, King often has the perfect press-friendly response. With seemingly scripted answers, the band has been featured in Rolling Stone and has made numerous television appearances on everything from The Today Show to The Late Show. Yet with all the exposure, they tout an unblemished record of never being caught in a gossip magazine.
But here they were in a downtown Denver studio: unrehearsed and completely free of PR and label reps. Instead of the united front with which The Fray normally greets reporters, we met four musicians, each with his own take on the band's success and the challenges that lay ahead.
"The record label has been really supportive," Slade says. "They've just pushed us to make the best music we can. At the beginning, they search for the singles, the big hits, but they trust us now."
As we talk, individual personalities slowly surface, each distinct and all with humility. Slade has an empathetic connectability. His spoken voice sounds nothing like it does when he sings although his word choice eerily resembles the lyrics: methodical, philosophical and poignant. "The album is extreme from both sides," he says. "We're a better band four years later. The louder stuff is more messy, and the quieter stuff is more quiet."
In the last few years, we've had friends go through tragedy and try to make sense of that. It's about the tendency for religion to dumb things down, telling us to just "˜have more faith.' Our music is pretty personal. The songs are just about our life."
"The minute you start editing yourself, people start sensing that," Welsh adds.
The four talk in a huddle as if they were brainstorming on a game show. King then declares, "You know, it'd be interesting to hear what other people think."
They look at each other in bewilderment. Welsh asks no one in particular, "Where does the fan mail get sent?"
"We used to have a P.O. box," Slade says. "I don't know if we have it anymore. Fans sometimes would find our personal email addresses, and those letters meant a lot."
"We need to figure out if we still have that P.O. box." Wysocki says.
"What if get there, and The Fray has only like two fan letters?" King asks. "Maybe some cookies."
This is an inside joke. The band has several serial fans, who happen to be obsessive bakers, leaving bags of homemade treats at concerts all over the country. The most famous stunt was at Red Rocks when two bags of chocolate chip cookies were abandoned on the grand piano on stage. This is just one example of The Fray's wide spectrum of listeners and how even their most aggressive fans seem pretty harmless.
As gregarious and approachable in person as they are on stage, the guys don't take themselves too seriously. "We've been pretty good at taking things with a grain of salt," Welsh says. "You have to laugh at things as they go by. Being gone eight months out of the year and jet-setting to random countries can wear on you quickly, so if you don't have a light heart, it can get you down really fast."
"Everyone starts paying attention to you," says Wysocki. "It'd be hard for anyone, but the relationships between the four of us keep us in check. Plus we're all happily married."
And they are good Christian boys, practicing values virtually extinct in the glamorous stratosphere of rock stars "” even when their wives are not present on long road trips. "They come out sometimes," King says, "but mostly it's so they can see us. They have lives in Denver. Part of the mutual respect that all of our relationships have is that they love what we do, but they also love what they do."
He continues, "Visibility is important, but we still have lives separate from our music. If you are able to stay out of the public eye, then you can't be judged on what you're doing. It is really important to stay out of those gossip magazines and not try to get in the limelight."
"We're not in gossip magazines because we live in Denver," Welsh says, laughing.
"Nothing is better than a band who is known for their music, not their personality," Slade says. "People know our music but don't have a clue about us as people except that we're married and we live in Denver. And we're also a lot of fun."
Two trips to Australia, a two-week trip to 10 different European countries, standing on Wrigley Field, it sounds like fun. "It's a common misconception," says Wysocki, "but touring life isn't all that exciting. It's like, great you have eight hours in the middle of suburban Boston to do anything."
Which, they admit, can lead to a prank or two. "We really like Silly String," Slade says. "The Damnwells were on stage playing their encore, and the four of us snuck up and attacked them with Silly String. We totally threw Alex Dezen, the lead singer, off. We felt pretty bad, well not too bad, afterward, but they got us back."
"The second night was the best," Welsh adds of the second of last summer's sold-out shows. "It was pouring, but the audience wanted to stay." So the band stayed, too.
Collectively, the four decide their all-time favorite venue is the Fox Theatre in Boulder. "That is where most of the memories of being The Fray started," King says. This isn't a surprise; The Fray signed their contract with Epic Records in December of 2004 at the Fox after a packed performance.
But none of this means the band is comfortable with their fame. "Playing in front of 20,000 people and singing songs you wrote in a garage is an experience hard to explain," says Slade. "It's strange to be in Los Angeles or Sydney and see all these people who drove miles and paid money to see the four of us play music. It's a very strange, out-of-body, out-of-mind experience."
"It's odd," says Welsh. "It's very foreign, and I don't know how long it takes for it not to feel that way. I imagine a long time."
While The Fray hit the music scene four years ago and were almost immediately splashed all over MTV and Rolling Stone, it's difficult to project how The Fray, grown up, will be received. One thing is for sure; the second album will sound different.
"We start with a big pile of songs, make it a smaller pile and then, finally, we have a handful left," Slade says. "As a lyricist, I'm drawn to tension, things that aren't just black and white. You can always write a song about what is just happy or just sad, but this new album answers to both."
As we were wrapping up, we ask if there is anything the band wants our readers to know. With no hesitation or collective conversation, Slade says, "Denver has built The Fray. We pay tribute to the people who have supported us since the first day."
"And we're really proud to be from Denver," Wysocki adds.
This young band from the Colorado suburbs, whose first single hit the charts within months of being played on a medium-market radio station, has grown up, gotten married, and the only reputation they have to live up to is their own. The second time around, Slade's deep, gentle voice still moves against Welsh and King's guitar notes, melds perfectly with Wysocki's beat. They still produce a harmonious, addictive sound. The songs are still unapologetically and brilliantly tied together by a story, an alluring three minutes that we can all relate to, with only the added pressure of a world eager to fall in love again.
The Fray clothing on page 40 courtesy of Saks Fifth Avenue representing the following menswear collections: Armani, John Varvatos, Hugo Boss, Elie Tahari and Howie.
Rod Blackhurst has been the official Fray photographer from the first Polaroids of the boys unplugged at the Bluebird Theater to them performing for thousands in Tokyo, from the smirks and serious expressions to the stage fright and the humbling climb to stardom. This year, he is releasing The Fray: There and Back, a coffee table book chronicling their journey together. We asked him to reflect on his experiences:
"When I joined the band in March, 2006, it was for a three-week tour as the merch guy. I was waiting to hear if I'd been accepted into graduate school and had three weeks to kill. I took my video camera out on the road on a whim. It's still a little surreal to think that I've had a music video on VH1's Top 20 Countdown [2007, The Fray, "All At Once"], a short film that over 100,000 people bought [2006, The Fray: The Place That I'm From, The Place That I'm In], another film on the way and I'm about to be published. I was just the t-shirt guy!
"I'm perhaps most proud of an image from the red carpet at the 2006 Billboard Music Awards. I managed to sneak onto the red carpet with the band, and as they walked past a mile of flashbulbs, I stood behind them and took a photo of their silhouettes as the press snapped photos in front of me. The perspective of that photograph should give everyone the idea of what it feels like to have your life on display.
"Some of my most vivid memories come from days off on tour; a day spent in an Olympic-size swimming pool with diving platforms in suburban St. Louis, sneaking into Royal Albert Hall in London to watch Modest Mouse from box seats, water skiing on some lake somewhere outside of Austin, TX, and standing on the grass at Wrigley Field.
"The road is both the loneliest and most exciting place you'll ever be. Three weeks out, you begin to lose track of those things in your life that don't seem present anymore. You forget to call people back home, you forget to pay your bills, you start living moment to moment; its almost as if you're some modern-day tramp or vagabond out there devouring new cities and
new experiences at a rapid-fire rate.
"Work on the book began in early January, which seems so long ago. The process of narrowing down 16,980 photographs to a hundred is tedious to say the least, so it's actually quite hard to gain some perspective on the situation because I'm still not far removed from the sheer amount of work that went into selecting and producing these few images.
"The band has always trusted my creative process and vision. Very rarely do they ask to take a look at what I've been shooting, and so I often find myself excited over a photograph trying to show them instead. My goal has always been to create art that I'm proud of. That'll never stop being the plan."
Reader comments posted at DenverMagazine.com are the opinion of the comment writer, not Denver Magazine. Comments may be edited for clarity and unsuitable or offensive comments will not be displayed.