Below is the complete interview Hoag conducted with our loyal FanSaw “The Joker.” Look for an article based on this interview in the local press soon!
Joker: What were your goals when you started FULL SERVICE? How have those goals changed and/or remained the same over time?
Hoag: There are career goals and there are artistic goals. Career-wise, we went into this with the hopes of one day being as big as bands like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or 311 or The Police. We’ve always believed in ourselves and our artistic capabilities, so in that sense we look at the big boys as our peers, as bands to compare ourselves to. Sure, they’re big and famous, but when it comes down to it they’re just dudes that make really good music. We know other bands on the small level that we feel are just as good as the big fish, and it’s just a matter of getting discovered and getting that chance. Through hard work, intelligence, and perseverance, those small bands can increase their chances or getting that chance. So our goal has always been to take this thing to the biggest level we can, while at the same time preserving our independence in terms of musical integrity, not “selling-out” to radio, being as self-sufficient and in control of our own operations as possible. What we’ve learned since the beginning is that this is a lot harder than we thought it would be. Talent doesn’t automatically give you a chance, there’s business saavy, marketing, and luck involved, too.
Artistically, our goals have pretty much always been the same. To continue to expand our musical vocabulary so that we can express ourselves to our fullest potential. This means always trying to improve our individual skills on our instruments, and opening our mind to different approaches to music. One of the best ways to do this is not to think of yourselves as “Full Service” all the time. It helps to sometimes sneak in a new identity so that new sounds come out. Like instead of Hoag singing this one, I’m going to be a fisherman from new england singing this one, or a green shrike bird from the rainforest. This was the idea behind “Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” They gave “The Beatles” a new identity, and new sounds came out. It wasn’t “Paul McCartney” or “John Lennon,” it was “Billie Shears.” Brilliant.
When writing a song, where do you feel more emphasis should be placed? (ie. Lyrics, music, groove, etc.)
Hoag: An equal amount of attention and love should be given to lyrics, music, and groove, without question. Otherwise there’d be a weak link, right? Lyrics and melodies, however, seem to have the biggest impact in terms of taking a song to a new level. Often times we’ll have the music and the groove locked in but no lyrics, and we think “well that’s a really cool tune” and then when we put vocals on it we think “well that’s a REALLY cool tune. Damn.”
All of you decide to go by nicknames. Was that a conscious decision? If so, why?
Hoag: I think subconsciously because it helps with that sort of alter-ego identity thing. Tim doesn’t play the guitar, BONESAW does, and he’s a baaaad man. I’m not sure Tim could come up with some of the stuff that Bonesaw does.
In a relatively short period of time, you have released a number of albums that it takes some bands decades to record. How do you manage to come up with new material so quickly (As in, where do you draw inspiration? Nature, politics, etc.) and continue to keep your sound?
Hoag: Who the hell knows where inspiration comes from. Out of thin air I guess. But yeah, seeing something or reading about something or experiencing something that is beautiful or terrible or funny or thought-provoking in some way, that definitely helps trigger some synapses. A lot of it is just searching your imagination to find different ways of looking at things or expressing things. Like “Hotter in the House” came about because we were hanging around the house one day talking about how hot it is in Texas, and we started joking about how it could almost cause a hallucination or a citizens revolt. Something like “Hi-Ho” came from a fascination with the ocean and with the lifestyle of pirates, so we wrote about a mutiny on a ship. For one of the songs on the new album “Eyes Like Snow,” I wanted to tell a winter-wonderland kind of fairy-tale, so I created some characters and took off with it.
What are your thoughts on your own musical output, especially in contrast to current major label releases, especially the new Axl Rose solo release(aka Chinese Democracy), that take years to record?
Hoag: Well Axl is sort of a strange, atypical case. Like Brian Wilson taking all that time to finish “Smile” (which is amazing). But I don’t know, we just love to create. We feel bored if we go long periods of time without making something new. This is how we know we’re in it not just to “get big and make a lot of money” (there are far easier ways to make a lot of money.) If we were in it for that, we wouldn’t be making new songs all the time. It’s more of a personal journey, to peel back the layers and see what we can do that is new and exciting for us and for the world. That being said, we don’t force it. We never sit down and try to write songs. Everybody know that never works. As we say, “the guitar tells me when to pick it up.” Sounds kind of new-agey, but it’s true. It’s very odd actually. Like “The Force.”
In a world of online downloading and myspace, y’all take music to the fans with your Takeovers. How did these performances come about?
Hoag: Well, the internet connects you to a lot of people, but it can also bring you farther away from the people. Promoting your band exclusively behind a desk, with myspace messages or whatever, has never been our style. We prefer to combine this with real, face-to-face interaction. Takeovers are so empowering. We don’t need to book a show or corner ourselves in a particular time-slot, we can just find a place where there are lots of people gathered (concert parking lots, parks, art festivals, etc) and set up and jam. Also, the fans we make from playing takeovers become such hardcore fans, because they’ve really been a part of something spontaneous. They go home and tell their friends about the crazy stunt they saw that day. They offer to help us unload and hand out demos and all that. Plus, we can talk to them face to face, and we establish a more meaningful connection than the one that exists in the virtual world.
In terms of musical diversity, how does each band member bring something to the table in terms of musicality, performance, and/or musical tastes?
Hoag: Bonesaw has an odd combination of sensibilities. He’s a balladeer but also a shredder. I’m sort of the same way. I also have a deep interest in improvisation (especially vocal) and different melodic traditions, such as jazz (nina simone, billie holiday), qawwali (nusrat fateh ali kahn), even stuff like john denver and old French singers like edith piaf. Twinky-P is very well-versed in funk lines and syncopation. Maybe because he’s half Colombian. And smell, like me, brings a sort of primitive approach to performance and music-making. He has a very keen ear for what’s interesting and what’s sort of normal or stock or unacceptable.
Bonesaw writes songs with only his guitar, he rarely writes vocal melodies or lyrics. Because of this, his compositions really could exist without any other accoutrement. His melodies are IN the riffs and the guitar parts. Then I’ll go ahead and bring put some vocals on top. I like to think of it like the vocals are hidden in there somewhere, and I have to coax them out. I’ll just listen to his parts for a while and wait for the melody to reveal itself. It’s always buried in there, and when it peeks it’s head out, I put words to it and sing it, and the song rises to a new level.
When I write songs on guitar, I write more traditionally in the “chord-changes” kind of way, which leaves way more room for creation of melody. I like both ways of doing things.
We’re sort of like Voltron. Each individual is great, but when we get together and morph into one huge individual, we become super.
You have a large repertoire of videos online. How did that come about?
Hoag: Videos are a great way to involve people in the process. They can see what it’s like making an album, touring, etc. We just thought it’d be fun to give our fans a glimpse of our life and journey as a band. We also use it to make commercials for our shows, and we’ve even staged mock press-conferences to announce big news, like the Takeover Tour.
Where do you see yourself in the history of music?
This may sound egotistical, but I think we all really believe in ourselves, and believe that we have something amazing to offer the world in terms of musical expression. We’re not in this to party, we’re in it to inspire people, make them move, make them feel, make them think. But I mean, if we never get this music out there to the large number of people we hope to, then that doesn’t really change the fact that we made this music. It exists in the world now. We dug deep within ourselves and made music out of thin air. It didn’t exist before, and that’s kind of cool to think about. Also, it’s all about the process…the process of making the sounds and the melodies and the beats and the words, so in the end, no matter what happens, we engaged ourselves in that process, and it will have been a personally fulfilling journey regardless of whether we have an impact on the history of music.
