Fishboy

Eric Michener: Oh boy! I’m going to try to do this without rambling…the concept is that there are ten standard Fishboy-type pop songs…man, this sounds so dumb already, let me start over. The concept is…is that actually typing out what I’m saying?
MB: No, those are my questions.
EM: Ok! So, the concept is that there are ten pop songs and they’re all about a different person, and each song talks about that person’s life or something about that person, and within that song it’ll name drop the person who is the subject of the next song. So, someone from song one talks about song two, song two talks about song three, or the person in song three, and it goes on like that for the whole album, and then it loops back around—song ten talks about song one—and on top of that it develops into a narrative story, using the characters as a basis. And all of the names start with the letter A, and I did that because…I don’t know why I did that. I just keep thinking of a robot typing this out! [Laughs] They all start with A and they’re in alphabetical order. And yeah, I did that—yeah, I’m not going to go any further, go ahead.

Eric Michener: Usually not. I don’t really write songs about my personal life. But I really like that, when you do write a song about your personal life, you’ve got that memory. I worked a really crazy job for a few years, and when I left that job, I realized that I didn’t write anything down. And I’ve lost a bunch of those memories. It was like tons and tons of stories just kind of lost, and so I do the comic thing so that I can keep funny memories.
MB: So the comics are actual, personal stories? Things that really happened?
EM: Yes, it’s all autobiographical. It’s usually what happened that week. Sometimes, I’ll fall behind and I’ll be writing and doing stuff from a few weeks back. Sometimes a comic will be a story someone told me, but I usually put myself into the comic, listening to that, or sometimes it’ll be me remembering something that happened years ago. But it’s all autobiographical, and it’s just because I don’t write autobiographical songs…and it also helps me do at least one creative thing every day. Yeah, and it keeps me busy, I guess. And, I don’t have the Facebook, so, to keep family updated. “Here’s what’s going on! I don’t want to be on Facebook, so here you go!”

Eric Michener: Our old bass player Justin [Lloyd] had worked for the advertising company who works for McDonalds, and someone who worked there remembered his band, and was like “Hey, will you guys write a song for this?” And we’re like, “Sure, why not?” Because it was like the easiest thing ever. It’s almost like they were throwing money at us. We spent like 20 minutes writing a couple different 30 second songs, and we sent them the garage band demos and they’re like ‘Ok, sure, we like this one.’ The next thing we know, a couple weeks go by, and they’re like “Ok, you need to come in and do vocals.” The vocals that we had written were all just me saying verbs, like ‘running playing laughing singing.’ Almost making fun of like, you know, their…I wasn’t really making fun of it. Justin said, like, “Don’t really sing about food. That’s not what they want. Just sing happy things!” So, it’s just a bunch of random verbs, and so…anyway, I’m rambling. The next thing I know, we’re in the studio, and an entire studio session band has recorded the entire thing for us. So we’re like, “Wow, so we didn’t play any of this stuff?”
MB: How did you feel about that?
EM: Oh, it was great! And then I did lyrics—they cut the verb lyrics—and they were like “Let’s do a take where you’re just saying “La La La.” So, I did that, and they put it in for 30 seconds. So, basically, we got paid for recording a garage band demo for 20 minutes and then me going in and singing ‘la la la,’ and having everyone else do the work. So, in that case, yes, I would definitely do that specific situation again, because, I don’t know, it was very nice and I got a nice check out of it. I don’t know what my answer would be if there was any other sort of situation.
MB: So, that’s not something that you’re going to pursue, as far as trying to make commercial music or promotions or jingles or—
EM: I mean, I honestly felt like an amateur in front of the studio guys. Like, they were thinking “Oh man, we could have done this! We could have written this 30 second song! Why is this guy in here?” It felt really weird, like, “Why am I in here?” I know you don’t really need my voice singing ‘la la la’ and you probably could have written this thing—this 30 second, three chord pop thing for…you know, you probably could have done that. So, yes, I would pursue it. If anyone is out there, and they want me to do that, I will gladly do it again! It was a great experience. You know, I probably wouldn’t change my lyrics to talk about food or anything, but probably anything other than that, I would be willing to take someone’s money to put my songs to the public. Yes.