Blessthefall
We Hate Sitting At Home

16.11.2010

U.S. post hardcore outfit Blessthefall may only be six years old, but they are already established enough to pay their first visit to Russia. The guys have made a profound stand in Top 100 of “heavy” artists on MySpace this year, therefore, even though you won’t find their albums in Russian stores, won’t hear their songs on Russian radio and won’t see their vides on Russian TV, the local public was well prepared for the show. Thanks to the Internet, the event drew a sizeable crowd, and there was a nice atmosphere around it. Before delivering an impressive and high-energy show to their fans, singer Beau Bokan and guitarist Eric Lambert had a chat with us in the chill-out area of the Tochka Club…

You wrote on your MySpace page yesterday, “Russian traffic is shitty”. Any other impressions of Russia so far?

Eric: I think that’s been the worst thing. Your traffic is really bad. Your border patrol is really narly. (both laugh) But either than that, it’s been awesome so far. We saw the Kremlin, we saw the Kremlin area, and that was great. We did little sightseeing last night. It’s cold here. It’s freezing for this time of year. But that’s cool so far. It’s really different from anywhere we’ve ever been so far.
Beau: And we’re exited for the show.

Let’s go back to the very beginning of your career. When did you realize you wanted to become musicians and play in a band? How was it?

Eric: For me, I think I realized that when my friends asked me to fill in and play this town show with them, and I wasn’t really that good at guitar. So it sort of compelled me to wanna learn. And the second I got on stage and played with my friends, I felt adrenaline rushing, and it kept like that until the very end, which was really special. Ever since that moment I kept playing guitar and wanted to be in entertainment industry, be in a band and have that feeling every night. That’s the coolest thing ever. So that’s what really pushed me into wanna be in a band… I used to wanna be a singer. But I’m not really good at that. (both laugh)
Beau: I don’t know. I liked going to shows, going to watch my favorite bands play. Like Blink 182 – they’re one of my favorite bands. And I used to think like, “That’s so awesome!” They had so much fun on stage, they used to like run around. The whole crowd was going crazy. They could sing songs that, you know, mean something to them… And I thought that I wanted to write songs that have meaning people can relate to and stuff like that … Since I was like younger I used to watch Michael Jackson too. 
Eric: Yeah, I share that! I used to watch him too as a kid… Go ahead.
Beau: Yeah, I watched Michael Jackson and tried to do the moves and sing along and stuff like that…
Eric: I also sung along. That’s why I wanted to be a singer at first, as Michael Jackson. I used to watch Michael Jackson on television and try to mimic his moves and try to sing like him...
Beau: It just seems like a lot of fun. Now we’re having fun.
Eric: Yeah, and now we’re just having fun. We don’t take ourselves serious.

In the beginning of Blessthefall you had another singer (Craig Mabbitt, who left Blessthefall in 2007 and now sings with Escape The Fate – ed.). What was wrong with him?

Eric: We had another singer… Oh, yeah we did.  (laughs) That was such a long time ago. But yeah, like I said, we don’t take ourselves seriously, we’re just like being friends. And it wasn’t just working out like on our friendship level. Craig and I are better friends now when we were in the band together, then it was just like we’re killing our lives. The reason is that we weren’t having a good time. Once we saw that the band was falling apart, we took a break from each other, really had to figure ourselves out, what we wanted, then we came back together, found Beau, and the whole clan reunited again. It was almost like we started over, we’re beginning things together, and everything is fine, no worries. That’s cool. It’s just all about having fun and not taking life so seriously…

How did you find Beau?
(Beau and Eric whisper to each other and start laughing)

Eric: There’s a website in America called eHarmony. And it matches like voice wise harmony plus personality. I came to eHarmony and I saw these blue eyes and I was like “you know what, he’s a lady killer, let’s see if he can sing”. And he could sing, so I was like “okay, I would date him”.

What a story! By the way, Beau, doesn’t your name mean “beautiful” in French?

Beau: That’s what I’ve been told, but I don’t believe it.
Eric: “Beau” is just first four letters of beautiful.
Beau: Yes, it’s a French word.
Eric: It’s pronounced [bju:]

I believe you’ve already been asked this question before, but still: why are you called Blessthefall?

Eric: Jared, our bass player… Okay, I’ll give the real story. Basically we started off, and everyone got this perception of us to be a Christian band, whereas we all have Christian beliefs we’re not priests anymore, some people take you away further than we do. When it comes to us, we just have some good morals. I think that’s what Christianity’s all about – just being a good person and doing the right things. So Jared’s whole idea was blessing the fall of man – we’re here to make music that helps people when they’re in rather crappy moods, you know. When you’re in bad mood and got no one to talk to you, you listen to music, hopefully some thing of ours is gonna make your day go by or time go by. That’s basically what our band is, it’s “bless the fall of man” with our music. That is why it’s called Blessthefall.

And what kind of music do you listen to when you feel like there’s no one who cares about you?

Eric: I don’t have times like that, because I have someone who cares about me right next to me all the time. Well, I listen to happy music when I’m bummed out – like Blink 182, All Time Low, pop bands. I like all kinds of music. I listen like R’n’B and...
Beau: I think the saddest music I’ve ever listened to is Coldplay. But it’s not that sad, it’s just soothing rather than sad and depressing.
Eric: I’ve been listening to one composer lately, because he’s on the soundtrack called “Sunshine”. There’s a song called “Adagio in D minor” and that song… You know, it’s movie music and it’s all instrumental, it’s all orchestra and everything, and I just like listening to that when I’m in a serious state, because it’s so epic. And that song lasts 15 minutes or something. I listen to that a lot.

And who’s the main author of your songs, I mean in your band?

Eric: Well, we all are. I think I kinda start it off, I have my idea, then I bring it to the rest of the band, we all kinda build on it and then we bring it to Beau so he can write his vocals and scream parts.

So Beau writes the lyrics, right?

Eric: Yeah, Beau writes majority of lyrics, majority of vocals as well. And I write a lot of music, but we always have everyone’s opinion on the songs. If I write something and someone says “oh, it’s wack, and I have a better idea”, I say “okay, that’s way better”. It’s always better bouncing off ideas with other people than just having one person writing songs, because it just comes out very one-sided, you know.

Talking about lyrics, Beau, how do you decide what’s worth writing about?

Beau: What’s worth writing about… You know, I take from personal experiences and I try to write so that people can relate to it. It’s all real, so that kids can apply it to their own lives. Like “oh, I went through something like that” or “oh, I feel that way, I’m in a similar situation”. It’s all real life, real life experiences.

The symbol of your latest album “Witness” (2010) is a butterfly (it graces the album cover and appears in a video for the single – ed.). Why?

Beau: We saw that photo and we loved it. It’s something beautiful and pretty daring, that’s how we feel like our band was - we transformed into something that was great, when all of a sudden darkness was gone and beauty stood out, it’s like rebirth.
Eric: Rebuilding…
Beau: Yeah, and stuff like that. That’s why this symbol is very important for us.

With all this touring you don’t have any time left for other jobs or education, do you?

Eric: No, but I think you learn more doing what we do than doing anything else we could do. We’re learning how to survive being on your own, taking care of yourself on the road, when your parents are not around you to support you and give you money and give you a roof over your head and cook you meal. What we’re doing every single day is learning and surviving and coping with different situations. We see the world, you know. I’d rather see the Kremlin than read about it in a textbook. We get to see all these things all these kids back at home in colleges are studying about. Okay, you can memorize definitions and you can read about it and hear how spectacular it is, or you can see it yourself. Which I think is what we’re doing. So I feel like we’re step ahead of education and college… Well, the society thinks the right path is going to school and doing college and graduating and having a job… But we get the experience, and I think experience is education. In my opinion, it’s a better education than studying your text book.

What do you do in your free time?

Eric: We like movies… Sitting with our laptops for hours… We’re just normal kids, we don’t do anything spectacular. We like doing exiting things: going on vacations… I guess we all like snowboarding, trips... We don’t like talking about things, we just like doing it. It’s not like “would be cool to go camping” – it’s like “let’s go camping”. We’re just having fun. We hate sitting at home and being bored. I can’t stay at home for more than two weeks without being bored out of my mind. We like being very busy people.

My last question will be about your new album. They say you’re going to enter the studio in May. So what shall we expect from you this time?

Eric: You can expect an album.
Beau: You can expect music. (laughs)
Eric: I think that “Witness” was a success, it was an awesome album and we just made our mark saying that we’re still a band, we’re still here and we’re still writing good tunes. On our next album we’re gonna do what we wanna do and really push forward, try to break barriers and let people know we’re the band that’s gonna be around for a long time. We’re definitely not gonna hold back on our next record, we’re gonna do what feels right and what we wanna do. We already have one song that we’re gonna practice live. It feels like it’s one of the best songs we’ve ever written so far and I know kids are gonna love it. I think we’re definitely in the right direction. It’s gonna be a cool record. I’m not worried about it the slightest bit, so I think it’s gonna be good.

Blessthefall on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/blessthefall

Special thanks to Vera Dmitrieva (Spika Concert Agency) for arranging this interview

Interview by Ksenia Artamonova
Photos by Olga “Omena” Dendymarchenko
October 12, 2010
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