A Halo Called Fred is back with their new album We’re All Like, YEAH! and we got a chance to interview the band’s Geverend, who expounded on the album’s creation, themes, and much more.
What inspired the record and shaped the songwriting?
In some ways the COVID-19 pandemic really derailed us – the last album we released came out RIGHT before the world shut down. We spent some time re-grouping and re-figuring out who we were. Something about our gigs completely drying up for a short time(including the CD release party we’d been working toward) really got us to buckle down and just focus on the musicianship above all else. In this album we expanded our instrumentation, really worked on our playing chops and decided that we’d take our time and work on an album that was as 100% musical as we could muster up, while still keeping Halo’s personality. Recognizing that fun and funny doesn’t have to mean half-assed. We recored and mixed and mastered and re-recorded and remixed and re-mastered without looking at a calendar and determining a predetermined end date until we had an album we knew we could be completely proud of.
Why did you decide to name your new record We’re All Like, YEAH!?
We knew after listening to the rough mixes that we wanted that song to be the opening track of the album, but it became clear after listening to the whole album that that name really sets the stage for the album’s whole vibe. Embracing the positive, exuding joy, and accepting all things that are possible we really ARE all like, “YEAH!”
What were some of the musical/lyrical influences on this record?
I think our musical influences are what they’ve always been – Between the four halo members we have a lot of different tastes. I tend to favor a lot of early 60’s (Beatles, Kinks, Credence), mixed with late ’80s early ’90s joke-punk music (They Might Be Giants, King Missile). Queenie and Tiny have a huge prog influence, and we all love to throw in a little of lots of other things – Django Reinhardt style Gypsy Jazz, early Hip-Hop influences like De La Soul, the punk sensibilities of The Ramones and The Clash. Throw in a wide gamut of various country-adjacent styles like Johnny Cash, Reverend Horton Heat, and Old Crow Medicine Show. Plus some of the swing revival era music music of Squirrel Nut Zippers and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, a history of traditional Irish from the Clancy Brothers, to the Pogues, to the High Kings.
Lyrically we are, as always, inspired by sci-fi, geek culture, the steampunk and fairy communities, and the social realities of the world around us.
But when we play we take all those, stick them into our musical bag, shake them up, and see what comes out. Somehow on this album that turned into a much higher concentration of rockabilly, bluegrass, blues, and jazz-pop influence than our previous outings – partly because that was what was in our spirits as we wrote the songs, and partly because we’ve been boning up on our chops to play those styles to better express what we’d always wanted to be there.
What’s the difference between this album and the previous one?
The biggest difference is intentionality. The last album was a collection of the songs we’d worked on since the previous album. Mostly things we’d recorded piecemeal along the way and compiled when we had enough to make an album of it. This album was very intentional. Sure. there were a handful of singles we remixed, but the bulk of the album was intentionally conceived and mapped out based on a number of half-written songs that were finished specifically for this album. In the end, even the remixes of previously released singles were’ mixed in to match the vibe of the album.
Is there a specific moment during the album’s creation that you’ll always remember?
There are a few:
- The moment we first listened to the rough mixes and realized this was a new level for Halo
- For some songs like “Wickecheoke” and “That Ass”, taking the beginnings of the studio tracks, learning how to play them live, letting that evolve the song, and putting the new evolution back into the songs
- The spontaneous writing and recording of Dick Jokes in the studio
What’s the most interesting wrong note or “accident” that ever made its way into a finished track?
On “Giant Robot” before we recorded backing vocals I used Roger Daltrey’s scream from “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. For the final song Brushwood did the scream, but I added a whole bunch of vocal processing to the original scream to the point where none of the original sound is even in there anymore, and used that as an electronic undercurrent throughout the song.
Do you have any music videos planned for the album? What can you share about them?
We definitely want to release videos for a number of tracks. One in particular is for “Wickecheoke Creek” which will the plan is to film in the creek itself when it is dry enough for the band to stand among the rocks and play the song. Brushwood also has some ideas for a few of the other songs, including “That Ass” which will be a performance video with fun lighting
If you could build the perfect scenario/location/setup for fans to experience the album for the first time, where/what would that be?
In a perfect world, I’d love for fans to sit down and really listen, like people did back in the day when just listening to a record was an event. Halo was never intended to be background music. In my fantasy world some showrunner of a streaming TV hit would discover us and use a different song for the closing credits of each episode.
What does We’re All Like, YEAH! mean to you personally?
To me it means musical freedom in a way. The freedom to make the music in our heads – not to just release our own preconceived notions of what a Halo song is.
What’s one thing you’re taking away with you after making this record?
Now that we’ve reached the absolute height of our creative and musical accomplishments, it’s time to go even higher!
What do you hope your fans take away from this album?
Only to experience the joy of listening to our music! To enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed creating it!
We’re All Like, YEAH! is available now on all major streaming platforms and can be downloaded, along with their complete discography, here!