Interview: Featherface

Awhile ago, I wrote about a noteworthy Houston band, Featherface, and recently we had a chance to chat about their band, their music and their hair. Read on to learn more.

Lauren Ignited: How did you come up with the name Featherface?
Featherface: We knew we wanted the name to involve feathers, because Steve has a weird obsession with peacock feathers. Actually it’s not that weird, they’re pretty awesome. Anyway we tossed around some ideas like Featherfan, and someone ended up saying Featherface and we all liked it. It’s like Leatherface but we’re not serial murderers, we’re just big softies.

LI: What is the background story to Featherface? How did you become a band?
F: Jake, Steve, and myself (Kenny) were about 12 years old and we started a “band” called Jitney. I think Tenacious D was the main reason we thought it would be fun to be in a band. Our first song was called Ned. It went “Ned, he’s my best friend”, and pretty much just repeated for four minutes. It was a masterpiece. We added another friend of ours, Sam Taylor who was actually this disgustingly good guitarist (and still is), and that made us start trying to actually be good musicians. We played all through high school with each other, doing a lot of classic rock cover songs and a lot of jamming at my parents’ house. It was mostly an excuse to just hang out with each other and have something to do, but it ended up becoming our whole lives. We all did our own things for a while after that, but the three of us ended up wanting to write music together again, so we wrote and recorded four songs, and that became our first EP.

LI: Is having long hair a requirement to be in the band?
F: I wouldn’t say it’s a requirement, but if anybody cuts his hair he will be deeply and constantly shamed by the rest of us until he grows it back.

LI: What other instruments would you want to incorporate into that band, if any?
F: We’re open to anything. We feel like we have a lot more to accomplish with the instruments we use right now, and we like everything to be in tact when we play the songs live. That being said we like to keep our unpredictable so I’m sure a lot of other instruments will come into play. Strings or a horn section would be righteous, but we’d have to fit them in a natural way.

LI: Your music videos are amazing, tell me more about the creative streak behind creating them.
F: Why thank you. Randall Hopkins has made every one of our videos to date. He’s my brother so he has been the one person who has heard all of our songs go from demos to finished tracks. He always seems to come up with some concept that totally fits the song, but is never the obvious direction to take. We like our videos to be more like short films than music videos, so they are thematically matched with the song but not direct interpretations of the lyrics. Randall joined the band as our drummer about 6 months ago, so he is closer to the music than ever.

LI: What’s next for Featherface?
F: We are currently writing a lot of new music. We’ve been taking our time in developing our sound and making all kinds of demos. We’re planning on another full length album in the near future, but I couldn’t put a date on it yet. We are also planning a lot more touring dates and video content.

LI: What do you love most about Houston?
F: The way that people show up somewhere and just immediately start making everybody have a great time. The most sterile bar can turn into the most vibrant and awesome place in a few minutes. There is this awesome community of people here who have no pretensions. I think that’s really unique.

Grab their 7″ here and be on the lookout for these guys. You’re going to be seeing a lot more of them.

Connect with the band on the web, bandcamp, facebook and twitter.