interview from rock n world:

Every now and then, this wide eyed traveler in the Rock N World has to check in with home base and take the pulse of the music scene back home. Although Southern CA is my stomping grounds now, I come from the land of automobiles, lakes and rock & roll bay-be! Detroit – Rock City (to coin a phrase).

To bands coming up in this industry, it is always a plus if you are in an environment that is conducive to your creativity and there’s a place to gig and get your stuff in front of the masses. As long as we are wishing, make those accepting masses, who like their music loud and live. Such is the little hamlet nestled in the Midwest that spawned more recent success stories such as Kid Rock, Eminem and ICP. Now coming out of Detroit is a band with a bit of a different sound. Factory 81 takes the stage with their muted guitars and middle eastern flavor to prove that unlike cars, things are not always meant to fit a mould. I was interested to see if things were still the same for new bands out of Detroit, so I spent a little time with bass player Kevin Lewis and guitarist Bill Schultz before a show:

(Debbie Seagle for) Rock N World: Alright, I’ll ask the obvious question. Are you named “Factory 81” because you came from the land of factories?

Kevin Lewis: That was for Chrysler factory #81 – a Chrysler plant.

RNW: Okay, Chrysler plant 81. Some of the biggest names that have come out of Detroit, or out of the Detroit area of late are like Kid Rock and Eminem. I guess you could say those are two of the biggest. Its obvious that our environment in Detroit can spawn all sorts of musical styles and successes. What set you all on the road to music in the Motor City, and besides the obvious differences in your musical styles, what sets you apart from the Kid Rocks and the Eminems of Detroit?

Bill Schultz: I think that we’re 100% real with what we’re doing. Not that they’re not, but I mean, you know. Like Kid Rock does that trailer thing and all that. And you know, Kid Rock’s great, everyone knows that. But our stuff is like – I don’t know, we’re just doing what feels good for us. We don’t really have a target of what we said we want our music to be. We don’t have a specific style we’re trying to make. We’re just four guys making shit that feels good for them.

RNW: Do you think its easier to break into the spot light in a place like Detroit, since its so rich in music culture, or do you think its tougher because there’s so many bands to choose from?

KL: That’s all false actually. Everybody thinks like, its so funny because everybody thinks you know, the Kid Rock and the Eminem and ICP and stuff like that. You know Eminem’s pretty much almost like one of those people that came out of no where, but the think is that Kid Rock and ICP had been working at this for years and put out many, many albums before anything came of them being on Island Records or before Top Dog became part of Atlantic and stuff like that. So, there’s a lot of false hope for a lot of bands that are in the Detroit area because they think that a few bands are making it. They know that they can just throw garbage out there and you know, whip a band together, and they’ll automatically get signed but it takes an awful lot of hard work.

RNW: That’s so true. Every single over night success I know has been ten years in the making. I mean they started from being kids and playing their instruments in band at school, all the way up to their first garage band and their second garage band, and many, many clubs and many, many variations of bands before anybody ever got to hear about them on a national level.

KL: You know what’s another good thing actually about being in this industry, and sets us apart? The fact that it looks like a lot of the bands now that are coming out, like a lot of these bands in the same genre of music, are all being put together by the record labels. Like Bill said, we’re a 100% real band. Four guys that got together that wrote our own songs, that’s it. We wrote, we produced the album and everything. Its real. Not a made up, pieced together label band.

RNW: Well I think that that often just plays out, just in your longevity and your ability to continue and create. So, the bands that are put together by the labels, you don’t really find them able to survive for any long periods of time.

KL: That’s right, make money quick. But I think a lot of labels are putting together those bands just to . . . you know, one band makes it, lets throw together ten bands that sound the same style because these other bands made it. Hey, lets make a quick buck, and its so wrong.

RNW: The boy band formula?

KL: Exactly! But now their doing it with rock bands.

RNW: Lets not even go there. That would be horrible!

KL: You know what I’m saying.

RNW: I’ve listened to your CD, I’ve read the lyrics, I know Nate does the lyrics writing, right?

KL: Right.

RNW: But, one of you being the guitarist and the other being the bassist, when Nate brings you these lyrics, you’re creating this music around them, is that correct?

KL: No, actually, that’s not correct.

RNW: So you’re creating the music and then he’s creating the lyrics?

BS: Right. That’s basically how it is. Everything is also written together. There’s not one person who writes the music, or two people. Its four people that write these songs. Usually it will be something like either me or Kevin will come up with a riff or something. Then Nate jumps in and the three of us start forming a certain layout to the song. Like maybe we’ll get a verse, then a chorus will start going. That kind of thing. Then we’ll start with some chords and then Andy will just come over the top of it, start laying down some melodies. Stuff like that. Let the song develop itself.

KL: Like sometimes there’s cases where we worked almost as two separate entities. Like we’re writing the music all together and then he (Nate) might have already had lyrics which could have been stored, it could have been a poem. It could have been whatever. He might have had that in a notebook and the emotion of the song, the emotion of the music struck a chord and for some reason he starting about the experience, which he already had written down. So, there are some times where it works in that case, but he never comes with the lyrics and then we go “oh, lets write a song emotionally around that.” It never works that way.

RNW: Now, your lyrical style and your melodic style have a very definate middle eastern flavor to it. Do either of you or any of you have a middle eastern heritage and is that how you come by that, or did you guys kind of fall into that? How did that develop?

KL: No one really has middle eastern heritage, I think Nathan just tries to draw from a lot of different influences. I mean I think he really doesn’t even listen to the kind of stuff that we’re doing. He listens to a lot of stuff like Bjork and Tori Amos and Lauren Hill. Stuff like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker. I mean he just draws from a lot of different things and its typical. He likes a lot of the middle eastern type culture and its not that its his nationality, but there’s different things that interest him.

BS: It helps because it helps also separate us from, like you were asking before you know, what separates us from a lot of bands. Its good though because you have that generic sound and you’re just lost in the mix, but there’s a lot of people that come up to us and one of the first questions that they ask is, does anybody in your band have middle eastern background? Does any body have anything to do with the middle east because there’s a lot of that in the music?

RNW: Most definitely. But I think its really cool and it does kind of set you apart and I like that. It kind of gets you out in front of the crowd, so to speak, and gives you an edge so that’s cool.

BS: That’s what you need.

RNW: Yeah, you need every edge you can get. What are the key messages, if you can think of any, that the band has consciously thought of, that you are trying to get across in this project “Mankind?”

KL: I think the key message of anything is probably like, if you look at the liner notes, there not all lyrics. Most of them are poems and stories and I think its just, I think the whole message is that you look at the songs how you view them instead of here’s the lyrics and you agree with this point of view. You’re suppose to listen to it yourself and get your own point of view out of it. Its kind of like, think for yourself, really. A lot of those issues that are in the songs are real issues, they’re not made up issues. They’re real situations that have happened and real things.

BS: For the most part, we don’t have a specific message we’re trying to portray. People have different ideas of what they think songs mean, but yet it works better for them a lot of times, you know.

RNW: Well, you know, part of the beauty of music, and what makes music and actual language is the fact that people can take it and use it how they will – make it apply to them.

KL: You hear stories all the time of how people relate to the music. How people, they come to you and they say you know, man, that song touched me in this way because I had this going on in my life and you’re just like, me personally, I don’t even know what most of the lyrics are, actually, to the songs. Its so strange because you get an outsider’s point of view on what – you’re so passionate about writing and stuff, and its really interesting actually. I’m really glad that we actually didn’t put all of the lyrics in there.

RNW: It does kind of make it more of a “fit the situation” type of a thing. Can you tell me a little bit about how you guys were signed to Mojo Records, how that all came about, and why don’t you even back up a little bit more and tell me how you all came together and what the road was to getting this record deal.

KL: A shit-load of hard work man!

RNW: End of story.

BS: Me and Kevin have been playing together for about eight years or so now. We kind of met through a mutual friend and kind of got a band going. Nothing like this you know, but basically through time, we brought members in and out and it kind of became Factory 81. You know, right about the time that Nate joined the band about three and a half years ago, four years ago. Basically there was just a lot of playing as many shows as we can in the Detroit area, trying to build a following. We had done some shows at a high school in the Metro Detroit area, a couple of times acually, a benefit show for the arts programs in the schools, so we played there a couple times and that really spread the name around a lot. It was a chance for us to play in front of a lot of kids, and then after that, the smart thing that we did, a lot of the other bands were just playing the bars, doing over 21 shows, but we were fortunate enough after having done those high school shows, we kind of just stuck to doing all ages shows. So all those kids that had seen us got to come see us again and again you know.

RNW: And they buy records, by the way. The under 18s BUY THE RECORDS.

BS: Yeah, and we caught on to that, believe me. It just kind of spread like wild fire through the high schools, you know? Started hearing about it. Kids have friends in other schools and the tapes that we were selling, we were selling demo tapes at the time, it just kind of started spreading through the schools like crazy. It got to the point where we really needed to put out a CD but no one really had the money to do it. We were like, who can we borrow money from to do it? We have to have a CD! Well, then all of the sudden there’s a local independent label, Medea Records. They approached us and said “Hey, we’ll pay for you guys to put out a CD. We’ll get you in the studio.” Right when we were trying to find out what to do, they came up out of nowhere. Well, we put the CD out, it was doing really well with local stuff, but there was really no distribution and we were kind of at a point where, you know, we’re really doing good but we want to know how to get to the next level. Well, at that point, I got an email from our manager now, Bruce Thornfeld, and he said that he was interested in the project and what not, and he wanted to shop us around a label. So we started doing that and we had some labels come out and see us in Detroit and do that whole thing, and we ended up going with Mojo. They basically had a lot of the same ideas that we had. It was just right because it was a label that had no one else like us on there, so we knew we’d stand out. It’s a small label, but yet they are backed by Universal. Its kind of the best of both worlds there.

RNW: And you made a really good point in that it was better to go with a label who didn’t really have another band quite like you.

BS: Right, I mean there’s a lot of other labels out there like on Roadrunner for instance. It’s a good label, but for someone like us, there’s so many bands on that label that are heavy. We’re just like one of the other bands, you know? Mojo, we’re like “the heavy band.” We’re the only heavy band here, you know?

RNW: You’ve got the billet for that. So, are you still based in Detroit, all of you?

KL: We pretty much will be. I mean, I think if there ever comes a time where things get larger and larger scale, I think I would at least move away from the snow, but . . .

RNW: Its nice here in California guys!

BS: Its not like, I don’t see us as a band that’s, lets move away from home, because that’s where its all about. That’s where it all comes from and that’s where a lot of our writing comes from. Everything that’s around you. And the fans who are at home are the ones that have got us to where we are now. To move away from them would be kind of like a smack in the face to them.

RNW: Have there been any surprises for you as a band since you left the smaller Detroit market and got some national distribution through Mojo? Any new adventures that you’ve embarked on or been surprised with since you’ve come to this larger arena?

KL: Definitely. A few things, like touring. We played Texas, and Texas was just enormous. Fan wise, it was so crazy and we’d have never expected it. You’re so used to like, seeing your Detroit crowd, you know, knowing those people. Then you go play some place like Texas and it just erupts in madness when you get on stage. Its really strange. And then probably the second weirdest thing is that every time we come home, the buzz seems to get larger. Its so weird. Its great, but weird to see that because everybody at home says “Oh my God, all these people!” Like we just went home after Christmas and sold out a venue that we’ve always dreamt of selling out. Like the place held like a thousand people and they turned away several hundred people that couldn’t make it in. And before, like three months ago, we weren’t doing that. So there’s something going on and it kind of blows you away.

RWN: Well, next is Joe Lewis Arena, right?

KL: Nah, I don’t know about that.

RNW: Oh come on. Think big!

KL: Yeah, you can think big, but for right now, I want to take the baby steps. I want to play at Clutch Cargo’s and State Theatre and stuff before we try to jump at something like that.

RNW: You never know, you know? If you get on a tour with another band . . .

KL: That, that’s a big thing, but doing our own show, like coming back and doing like the home town show, that would be crazy.

RNW: Yeah, that IS one of those surreal moments, but it does happen. What kind of advice would you give to other bands out there who would like to get a record deal and realize their dreams of making music available to a wider audience?

KL: Basically, I’d say don’t really focus on getting a deal right away, just basically focus mostly on promoting yourself and getting your music out there and things will happen in due time. I mean, that’s probably one of the main questions I get asked when I go home and there’s other bands around, or I’m on line a lot and band and people always try to talk to me, asking what they can do to get signed. Just, right now the best thing for younger bands to do is just promote themselves like crazy. Be out there at the shows, flyering. Every time someone like Korn or Limp Bizkit would comes to town, be out there with flyers all night. It says a lot when kids come to your shows and they know you and they’re coming out of a Korn show and you are personally in the band and you are standing out there working your ass off and handing out flyers. They know that. They see that and then its amazing. Your turn outs for the shows, and kids come up to you and they know that it was you, or they might be shocked and not know that was you that gave them the flyer but they remember you. They come to you at the show and go “Oh my God dude, I got that flyer from you!”

BS: I think another thing that is a misconception is that getting signed to a label is actually the easiest part. After that its not guaranteed. You can get signed and still sell basically nothing, cause it happens every day. The best thing is get your song writing down, promote yourself and just try to get a buzz going. If you get signed, you get signed, but there’s so many things even now with bands, just through the internet alone, you can do so much promotion. That alone has helped us out more than anything. We’ve had Factory81.com up for a couple of years now and its going like crazy, you know? There’s so many people coming to the site, like right now, of all the bands under Universal Records, only Nellie, Godsmack and 98 Degrees are the only bands getting more hits on the web site than us.

RNW: I meant to mention to you, your web site is awesome.

BS: Thank you.

RNW: First of all, I love the opening graphic. It is fabulous. Very, very much of an eye or attention getter. And just the way you have it set up is really top notch. You’ve got a great web site and being that we are a web site company, we can pretty much attest to the power of internet promotion. And, one of the things that I’ll do with this interview is – people want to know you better. I’m going to tie them, right at the end of the interview, right back to your web site, so they can get more information, so they can get your tour updates. So they can get, you know, your emails or whatever it is. However it is that you interact with your fans and stay close to your fans, that’s one of the really great things and its not the same with print media or with television, or with radio work. Any of the other ways you promote yourself. You don’t get the interaction that you do with the internet. Its really, really important to someone in your position, when you are building a fan base.

BS: I thing it says something for the fact that, all those three bands are all mega bands. Those people are getting more hits on their sites than us. Universal has so many people under their umbrella, the fact that we’re doing better than all those bands, I mean, like not record sales – we’re still a new band and things are still spreading for us – but the internet has done so much for us. If we’re getting that many people hitting our site . . .

KL: What’s even more amazing are the people that make fan sites. Like when you see your first fan site of your band, its kind of like “what?”

RNW: How does that make you feel?

KL: Weird. Its cool too, when you go to a fan site, you get information before you know about it yourself.

RNW: Do you ever write any of them and say “This is me and no, that’s not my favorite color and no, I don’t wear boxers, I wear briefs?”

KL: Its weird though, because most of the sites are factual stuff, like Bill knows every body that’s done all the sites.

BS: I keep in touch with all of those people, because I’m on the internet myself and I run factory81.net. Universal does .com and I do .net. I run that while we’re on the road and stuff. But I’m constantly in contact with those people who are doing all the sites. I’ll find out what’s doing on, you know. Now I talk a little bit more, but before people were getting information before I’d even get it. That was a little weird.

RNW: I like that though. It shows people are paying attention.

KL: Like with the factory81.com site, if you go on the message boards, the kids that are on from the fan sites will be correcting people that just randomly spout off stuff on the guest book. Like some kid might say, you know their favorite color is this, or I hung out with them here and the other kids will just be from a web site and totally correct them. No, this is exactly how it is, because they know Bill, they know, they interact with him constantly.

RNW: So all you have to do is just sit back and let it be taken care of.

BS: Pretty much.

RNW: That’s pretty good!

KL: Its awesome. It’s a really good feeling to actually have, you see one band site pop up and then there’s like, five.

RNW: Its one of those trade-offs for the blood, sweat and tears.

KL: That’s cool too, cause its cool looking at the message board and seeing the fan sites interacting with the other fan sites. Like, hey, I got this information off of this web site. Its kind of like, it is weird to see information on other sites before we find out about it.

RNW: We’ve talked a little bit about your success in getting a record deal and your style lyrically and melodically, but the last thing that I’d like to talk about, and kind of give our readers a little bit of insight on is the band dynamic, because that’s what’s really important. I mean, you can write good songs together, you can make good music, but if the band is not a cohesive unit, you’re not going to last as a band. So, give us a little bit of an idea of your band dynamic and how you make it all work as this group of guys, all striving for the same thing.

KL: We come together a lot more on the road, actually. Going out on tour, you kind of have, like everybody says touring is where its at and you’re going to know if your band is going to end or not because you don’t know how everyone is going to get along 24 hours a day.

RNW: Yeah, if you’ve been on a bus together going anywhere, that’s definitely the proving ground.

BS: We’re in a van, which is even closer quarters than that.

KL: Its amazing though, because its amazing how everybody comes together a lot more because there are only the four of us plus a tour manager, somebody to do merchandizing and stuff like that. There’s been times when there hasn’t been, so its just been the four of us and the four of us have to come together as a unit or we’re not going to make it.

RNW: Are you all pretty good friends?

KL/BS: Yeah, definitely.

RNW: Hang out when you’re not making music?

KL: Actually, Bill and I have been pretty much best friends for like, eight years, so its really cool to watch it evolve. Since we’ve been friends, we’ve known each other, what a goal its been to actually tour and now its kind of funny to kind of sit back and laugh and say wow, that’s kind of cool. We’re really hoping to get on the road one day, you know, if we could get to Ohio, you know?

RNW: Oh, right. As far as Ohio . . .

KL: California, its really, really exciting.

RNW: If we can just make it to Ohio – California must be pretty surreal for you. What about your families? Are they kind of sitting back going “Wow, we can’t believe they actually did what they said they were going to do?”

BS: The cool thing is that my family has always been 100% supportive. I’ve never had one even hint of someone trying to say well, you shouldn’t do that, you should go to school. The weird thing now is that every time we have a family function, its not normal anymore. All anyone wants to talk about is the band. Everyone is asking about the band and talking about how they are so proud of me, you know. I mean, its cool. The family is really excited about everything. Everyone happy.

KL: Its cool, I’m pretty much in the same situation. Where as my parents, in the beginning, of course they were the cautious parents. They were like, make sure you have something to fall back on, but they didn’t push that issue. And they kind of just went with it, and they’ve come up to shows and they still come up the shows. We’ve played a sold out place and it will be just completely packed in there and my parents are sitting right in their little chairs in the balcony, watching the show and they’re totally supportive of it. Amazing. I absolutely, obviously love my parents and love my family, but that means so much to me whenever the people that cared for me my whole life are caring and supporting what I want to do and what I’m set on doing. That makes a whole world of difference and actually gives you a lot more drive.

RNW: Oh its real. Why do you think people get up at the Grammys and say “I want to thank my mom and dad?” That’s like the first thing, because if you don’t have that support at home, if you don’t have people that understand musicians and understand that they need to do what they’re doing . . .

KL: Right. Its cool to get it from another perspective, like Bill’s mom will come up to a show, and its interesting, being an outsider and looking at his mom being so excited for her son, it kind of gives me a perspective on how my parents are towards me at a show. So, its really good. Its really cool that they’ve all been really supportive. Same thing with Andy’s family and same thing with Nate’s family. Everybody’s just really into it and they’re not just kind of like, my son’s going to be a rock star. Nothing like that. Its all, they’ve seen us work for it and they’re very proud of what we’ve done.

RNW: With good reason. What should we be watching out for from Factory 81 in the future? What’s going to happen next for you folks?

BS: Basically, right now its just going to be constant touring. We’re going to be hitting every town and coming back, you know? And then, hit those towns again. They want to keep us on the road now and we’re really trying to build up a fan base grass roots style. We really want to be out there playing in front of the people as much as possible. Maybe next year around this time we’ll do another album.

RNW: Are you guys writing right now? Do you write on the road?

KL: We don’t really get a chance to, because we don’t really get, we get a line check before we go on, we don’t really get sound check, so with the size of the equipment we have, its not like we could quickly set up in a back room and jam some stuff out as you know it. So there’s a lot of writing actually goes on in your head and you keep it until you go home or you keep it when you are personally line checking up there and you can kind of write something, but we usually write whenever we get home. If we get together and practice. But its going to be better, like he said, in about a year maybe we’ll start working between the tours. We’ll start working on new songs and trying to formulate a new album, but we really don’t get a chance to write that much on the road.

RNW: Well keep those good ideas tucked away then.

KL: Oh yeah. We’ve got a few songs that we’ve already written that we got together before we started touring, but there’ll be a lot more stuff coming out next time we get a break.

RNW: Okay then. Stay tuned rock fans. This is a band to keep an eye on. Follow the links below if you want to find out more about Factory 81 and their heavy sound with an exotic twist!

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