Interview With The Color Fred’s Main Man Fred Mascherino
THE COLOR FRED is a band that is fronted by one of the members of Taking Back Sunday, Fred Mascherino. He has finally come forth to bring you his solo band and his first debut solo record entitled BEND TO BREAK. A album that puts him right where he should be out front and wearing his heart on his sleeve for the world to see and hear.I had a chance to chat with Mr. Mascherino before his set in Worcester, Ma on the Chiodos tour and I hope you enjoy this fun interview I conducted in his dressing room.
WHY NAME THE BAND THE COLOR FRED?
Well, I was….obviously it’s a pun but I was…something I came up with years ago. Back when I was playing in a band called Breaking Pangaea, I was making demo’s under that name and I eventually wanted to tell people that, so when I was in Taking Back Sunday, I put up on our website a poll to pick the name of Fred’s solo project and everyone liked that name the best out of the ones I put up. Which were all kind of silly other ones.
SO, PRETTY MUCH YOU WERE MAKING THEM PICK THAT NAME?
No, no, no, Well, I said, should I just go on Fred Masherino or should I, ya know put up THE COLOR FRED, I had this other one called Basic Design that was a song but I didn’t think it was as good as a name. I put up all the ideas I had and that was the best one. It some times is a name that gives people a smirk or it makes them smile or something, but that’s sort of my personality, I don’t, not that I’m a smart ass but (laughing) I do like to make people….ya know….I’m more of a positive guy, I try not to take myself too seriously, things like that.
SO, I GUESS, THE COLOR YOU WOULD BE IF YOU COULD BE A COLOR, WOULD NOT BE BLACK?
Hmmm…No, ahhhhh (laughing) No. It would maybe be brown but ya know
DIDN’T YOU FRONT THE BAND BRODY, TOO?
Yeah, but it was with a Y, it was a pop punk band from California with an IE, but we were from Philly. We were on a small punk label and we did one cross county tour but mainly our main following is obviously in our home town area Philly but also in Long Island we had a nice big following and that’s ultimately what led me to meet Ed Ray as eight years later again after Taking Back Sunday.
FROM THE BEGINNING, IT SEEMS LIKE YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO DO THE WHOLE SOLO THING. WAS THE BAND LIKE A STEPPING STONE TO GET TO THIS LEVEL?
I did the band because I was friends with them and I was definitely, ya know, I was doing my own band, Breaking Pangera and I found out I was having a kid and I wasn’t really getting a lot of success with Breaking Pangera and I was on tour with Taking Back Sunday and they lost their guitarist during that tour and I was just sort of there and we talked about me doing their band and I was very excited about it, so it wasn’t the type of thing where I was premeditated but I did join the band and I think because I always fronted bands when I was young being a back up guy and in my heart I do enjoy singing a lot and I do feel what I’m doing now is what I was meant to do but I wouldn’t call that a stepping stone. We’ll just say that, ya know, we needed each other and I was psyched to do it but really in the end, I wound up doing what I ultimately wanted.
NOW IS THIS ALBUM THE TRUE FRED, MUSICALLY AND LYRICALLY?
Oh yea that was another goal of mine was to make something really honest. With Taking Back Sunday it was getting really big and we would write all the music together but you write something in your basement and then you bring it to practice and one guy wants to change this and one guy wants to change that. So this record is straight from me and a notebook and a guitar to your ears. It’s not an acoustic record, it’s a loud band thing but it’s arranged the way it was in my head when I made up the songs and also lyrically I tried not to be vague. I tried to tell a story that was very obvious and not put hidden meanings in. I want someone to hear it and know who I am and where I am coming from.
IS THERE ONE SONG ON THE RECORD THAT DELVES INTO YOUR PERSONALITY THE MOST?
They are all going there I would say probably some of the softer ones like I’LL NEVER KNOW which is a finger picking one with strings on it. I sort of get the deepest in but there are other songs like IF I SURRENDER which was our first single really shows how I like to put things. It s sort of a sarcastic thumbing at the people that you might not like and saying like I’m going to bail out, I’m going to do this to make you happy, there how do you like it and…because I don’t really….I always want the music to speak for itself and that sort of is what the song is about.
NOW, HOW DID YOU FIND THE BAND MEMBERS SINCE THIS IS LIKE YOUR IDEA, WHAT WAS THEIR LIKING, DID YOU HAVE A STANDARD?
Yeah, they didn’t do any tryouts actually or anything like that. I played with guys that I knew from touring through the years. We toured with a band called Tokyo Rose a couple of years ago and two of the guys in my band are from that band. The drummer is a guy from my home town that I just, ya know, hidden talent that was hanging out at the bar back then. I just happened to run into to him and he said what are you doing and I said I’m starting a band, do you want to do it (laughing), he said I’ve got drums and a car, where do you want to go
(laughing) HAVE YOU SEEN TOURING WITH THEM NOW THAT THEY HAVE PUT THEIR FLAIR INTO THE MUSIC?
It definitely has taken the songs on the album to a different angle. I think it is important to people who want to get to know the music to come check it out live because I’m finding a lot of people say that they heard a song or two on Myspace but then when they saw it live, they really understood what I was trying to go for.
HOW IS IT BEING BACK UP FRONT NOW?
I’m enjoying it quite a bit (laughing) I feel most comfortable delivering my own lyrics and telling the stories first hand now and just being able to see and talk to the crowd, react with them even more directly than I was. It’s super awesome (laughing).
NOW, YOU AND LOU, THE PRODUCER, YOU GUYS WORKED REALLY TIGHT TOGETHER IN RECORDING IT AND I HAVE LIKE THREE QUESTIONS ABOUT THAT.
Yeah, sure.
WHAT DID YOU GUYS WHEN YOU STARTED WORKING TOGETHER, WHAT DID YOU INSTANTLY BOND ON ABOUT THE RECORD
Well…..hmm….well…., that’s a good question. Well, ya know……sorry I’m trying to put it in….like pick one
THAT’S ALL RIGHT.
I’m thinking about a couple of things.
WELL, THERE WERE MANY THINGS YOU BONDED ON?
Yeah, there are many things. Lou is very passionate about the music from the first time he heard it. I sent him a couple of demos through e-mail and that night he had written up a paragraph for each song of what he thought about it and what he thought we should do production wise and even arranging
WOW!
He was super into it from day one and there was a moment there that I almost didn’t make the record with him because I wasn’t sure if I was going to have time to make it or if our schedules were going to work out and I was so upset that it wasn’t going to happen so it really was fate that he ended up doing it. I worked with him on WHERE YOU WANT TO BE, Taking Back Sunday’s record and we got to know each other very well, then I went away and worked with someone else but I always sort of felt a connection with him and that’s why I wanted him to do it so badly.
WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST FIGHT IN THE RECORDING?
Oh, man
(laughing) OH, THERE WERE SO MANY (laughing)
So many, exactly (laughing). Well, the beauty of doing a solo record is that there weren’t very many fights because Lou really treated it like well, you’re the writer, I’m here to capture it, he’s very….I call him artist friendly…because he knows how to bring your vision to its fullest without changing it but it was very…hm…yeah, it was a rare thing that we even fought. We did two different versions of one song because we couldn’t agree…..but we wound up agreeing on the same one at the end.
I WAS GOING TO SAY WHO WON, BUT I GUESS
Well, I’ll……..I won’t say
(laughing) WHAT WAS THE FUNNIEST MOMENT IN THE STUDIO?
Well, we recorded out in the middle of completely no where. It was in No Brook, New York, nothing but land everywhere, deer, raccoons and things and one night we went into the studio….it was like, we were next to a barn and they had built this studio. The studio, part of it was on stilts, it wasn’t on the ground, what do they call that
IN CASE OF A FLOOD?
Yeah, it was elevated. Well, a skunk had crawled under there and either died or got scared, we went into the studio and you sure could smell it, it was the worst and it was mainly bad smelling, there’s a room about this big actually four feet by eight and it was the room I had to record my vocals in. I’m sweating and screaming and taking the deepest breaths I could possibly breathe, there’s this beautiful smell and you want to bring like car air fresheners and spread that around, we couldn’t get rid of it.
(laughing) THAT IS FUNNY! DIDN’T YOU RECORD NEAR ALFRED HITCHCOK’S ESTATE?
Yeah, that’s where it was
DID YOU VISIT IT?
No, I don’t believe so, his grandson owns it now and the house…….your seeing this giant scary looking thing that looks like the house and it’s not even the house, it’s just the entry way to the estate. I think the guardsmen at the gates or something live there and it was this spooky looking house and that’s all we really had to see, there were several like lakes…..well, ponds, giant ponds and we sort of snuck up to those to see the view, we weren’t able to do much.
YOU HAVE A JAZZ PERFORMANCE DEGREE TOO?
Yes
HAVE YOU USED ANY OF THAT IN THIS BAND OR PAST BANDS?
Yeah, I don’t use it in the way you use it for jazz but the knowledge that I gained from playing that music and from pushing myself to become more of a musician have really helped me through the years with….whenever I’m working with a producer or we’re arranging music, ya know, there are ways of layering guitars without oh let’s all play the same thing so I lay down a line based on the chord and then throw a chord on it and have the other guitarist go clearly off the wall but it fits in and that’s all part of…..your hearing things like Miles Davis and Bill Evans that is taking your minds to other places that your not going to hear if you just listen to pop punk
SO IT’S SUBTLE LITTLE THINGS?
Yeah, it’s something that most people are not going to hear, I don’t really want you to hear it because if you hear it sounds like a jazzy part, then I haven’t done my job. I’m not writing, I’m just stealing something.
SO WHILE YOU WERE IN SCHOOL FOR THAT IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED TO DO IN MUSIC?
No, the main reason I went to school for jazz was because that was an excuse to play guitar 8 hours a day without feeling guilty. Plus I wanted to become as good as I could possibly be, so I did that and it was kind of bad cause all my teachers knew that I really just wanted to play rock because it was just obvious but I still took it very seriously But it was just a way for me to do what I already did and do it in a better way.
TELL ME ABOUT THE PACKAGING OF YOUR CD?
It’s thee most earth friendly packaging you’re going to find in any CD store.
WERE YOU VERY DEMANDING ON THIS?
I was, Equal Vision was very cooperative about it and they were really cool about finding stuff that was what I wanted. They came back and forth with me starting at finding something 25% recyclable and I would be like can you do better, what we wound up with was about 90% recycle material and 100% bio degradable. So the part of the digi pack that is usually plastic is a cornstarch and apparently if you throw it into water it will dissolve, so kids don’t get your CD wet. It is something new and I know some people are starting to use it which makes me excited but I haven’t seen anyone do that in with conjunction with the recycle cardboard, so that is the way we went
ANOTHER QUESTION TOO, FROM THE BIO, I DON’T EVEN KNOW IF THIS IS TRUE BUT IT SAID YOU USED CARBON OFFSETS, YOU BROUGHT IT TO THE RECORDINGS, WHAT IS THAT?
(laughing) I paid……the easiest way to describe it….when you drive a van across the country, your putting a certain amount of carbon pollution into the air. Now, trees suck in carbon and pump it out oxygen, so there are companies now that you can tell them what kind of car you are driving and how many miles and they can tell you how many pounds of carbon estimated that you created in the air and you can plant a certain amount of trees to reverse that and they call that naming your carbon foot print zero. So that, I spend money after every tour, a small portion, not expensive for anyone to do, but I do it, I donate it to these people and they plant trees or put it towards a wind farm, like a windmill, to reverse what our band does as a company that’s damaging environment, we are trying to reverse that, so we don’t cause that harm.
I GOT YA, SO SPEAKING OF BANDS AND ROAD LIFE, HOW IS THE ROAD FOR YOU?
It’s as good as ever
REALLY? ARE YOU BEING SARCASTIC? (laughing)
No, no, no I’m completely serious
OK.
It’s the best I’ve had in a long time. The band, as I said, are old friends of mine. We’ve been having a blast every night. We did this tour in a van, I was doing a bus for awhile, I’ll being work on a bus but we’re in a van and I feel like it’s the first time I’ve seen the country in five years because in a bus your driving at night and then you wake up and your next to a brick wall and then you go to sleep that night and the same thing, you just wake up next to a different one. So, I got to see the Rocky Mountains for the first time in five years, I got to see the Badlands and the desert and the West Coast Highway. It’s been so awesome just doing old school and going back to my roots.
WITH THIS TOUR, IS IT REALLY LIKE YOU HAVE TO GET SOMEONE BY A CERTAIN TIME OR CAN YOU STOP AND SEE DIFFERENT PLACES?
We try to make time, a few times, we’ve gotten up early so we could stop like we stopped in Niagara Falls this week because we were up in Rochester, so we made sure we spent a couple of hours there. We went out to the detour to go down the West Coast and go to the beach up in Oregon and see what that was all about. It’s really beautiful up there. You have to make the extra effort and that’s what we try to do.
NO PARTYING AT NIGHT! (laughing)
That’s my weakness.
ONE THING YOU CAN NOT LIVE WITHOUT ON THE ROAD?
I’m such a fan of really sweet ice tea, every truck stop, I get it and the thing is you can’t get it everywhere. You can get it a lot in the South and a little bit in this area but the really good ones like Southern sweet tea, you can’t get that everywhere.WHEN YOU’RE DOWN THERE, YOU HAVE TO BUY LIKE FIFTY OF THEM! (laughing)
I know but who wants warm, not in the frig
DOESN’T DUNKIN DONUTS HAVE A SWEET TEA? I’M SURE ITS NOT (laughing)
It’s mild water (laughing)
BEING ONSTAGE EITHER WITH THIS BAND OR YOUR OTHER BANDS, YOUR FUNNEST MOMENT OR YOUR MOST EMBARASSING MOMENT?
Oh, man. Every night’s embarrassing, there’s always something going on with….all the sweatiness and everything else coming out of my…..But anyway, I remember an embarrassing moment on this tour but it wasn’t on stage. I was helping with the merch and we had to cut something apart and I asked to borrow a knife and the other guy I was with had a huge knife and I was cutting and I was cutting in the wrong direction and I wound up when the rope broke that I was cutting, I stabbed myself in the leg. So, I looked down and I pulled it out and looked down and saw a hole in my pants, I said well, that doesn’t look good and so I put my hand down and pulled it up and it was fully bloody and so they were about to open doors and I have to pull my pants down to So, I’m wearing my boxers behind the merch table with a bleeding leg, it was awful, it was really bad and so the paramedics that were working the show hadn’t gotten there yet so I was basically just stuck behind merch, we did put a little make shift curtain so I wasn’t completely in my boxers.
OH, OK (laughing)
I was but no one could see it at that point. So, that was embarrassing. Later I went to the hospital
SO YOU HAVE A SCAR?
Yeah, fairly big
A MEMORY!
Yeah, it was fine
THAT WASN’T FUNNY, WE WEREN’T LAUGHING AT YOU
No, no, it was embarrassing
I COULD JUST BE LIKE, SEE A LITTLE GIRL COMING, CAN I BUY A ……OHH (laughing)
It was not very good, ya know.I SAW, I THINK IT WAS ON YOUTUBE, YOU DID AN ACOUSTIC VERSION OF MICHAEL JACKSON’S HUMAN NATURE
Yeah
WAS THIS SOMETHING FOR SOMETHING OR DID YOU JUST DO IT?
Well, the guys who shot my first video, they are movie makers and they decided they wanted to do a documentary about what I’m doing, my new project, they wanted the contrast from what I used to do compared to what I’m doing now, so that’s just a little clip from it, it’s like a teaser for when they are finished. I haven’t seen any of the footage yet but I’m told that it’s pretty crazy.
DID YOU SEE THAT FOOTAGE?
Not until we put it up on the site.
I THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD COVER OF IT!
Thank you. I love the Thriller album, obviously a classic, but yeah I feel I do that song in a way that people don’t know what it is until half way through, which I like.
HOW LONG DO YOU HOPE TO TOUR FOR THIS RECORD?
Well, we’re going to England right after Chiodos tour and of course Bamboozle next weekend and then England and then Warped Tour. We are already working out things for the fall and I would love to do a tour where we can get a little longer set because ya know, we tried to write an album that didn’t have just three hits but had like a full listening adventure. If you listened from front to back, you would feel like you went on some kind of trip or something and so I would love to be able to play more of those songs. We’re just going to keep going until we feel it’s time to go and make the next record but right now it’s all about getting the word out. I still have people come up to me at these shows and go Hey Fred, what are you doing here? They don’t know about the band yet so we really do still need to be out here proving ourselves as a band.
YOU’VE BEEN ON GOOD TOURS, I MEAN, THIS IS A GOOD TOUR!
Oh yeah, it’s been amazing, I’ve been very lucky.
ARE YOU THE TYPE OF GUY THAT’S JOTTING DOWN YOUR NEXT ALBUM ALREADY?
I’m always writing, yeah, I have a few but it’s no where nearly done and I feel like I need to do all this and then get home from this and write about that.
IS IT GOOD TO WRITE AT HOME?
Yeah, it is actually.
OK. YOU ARE DOING ALL OF WARPED TOUR?
All of it.
THAT’S EXCITING!
Yeah, it’s going to be awesome.
TAKING BACK SUNDAY EVER DO WARPED TOUR?
Yeah in 2004, that was the last time I was on it.
ANOTHER WARM SUMMER FOR YOU!
Yeah, sweat
(laughing) ALL RIGHT, I HAVE A FUN QUESTION NOW!
Great!
IF YOU COULD CREATE AN ISLAND PARADISE FOR YOUR FANS
Ot oh
WHAT FIVE THINGS WOULD NEED TO BE ON THAT ISLAND?
Oh man, OK, well
(laughing)
Well, if I say like vegetarian buffet, that’s a lot of things, right?
WELL, THAT’S FOOD!
Well, I’ll say vegetarian food because I happen to be a vegetarian and I find that a lot of people checking out the van are talking about that so, we’ll have like really good stuff though, nothing weird.
OK
Then we need to have some motorcycles, no, no, no scratch that. What do we want to have, what things are on a paradise island. Oh, my goodness, I think we have to have water slides because that’s always fun. We’ll have tropical fish in the pool at the bottom of the water slide so people can like snorkel and look at the fish. I think people like to swim who like THE COLOR FRED. I don’t know how many things that is.
THAT’S THREE
We’re going to have electric cars because we don’t want any of that shit in the air, so let’s do that and then…..the last thing is going to be like totally adult, like luxurious which we have…we need to have…oh man…darn it….we’ll put a masseuse on. Then we’re all good.
FABULOUS, ALL RIGHT. (laughing)
(laughing)NOW DO YOU HAVE ANY FAMOUS LAST WORDS YOU WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOUR FANS?
I just would like people to check out the live show to see us and come and hang out. We always hang out after the show. Just come and say “hi” like it would mean the world to us if you showed up.
ALL RIGHT, COOL. ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?
No, we covered the…as far as the CD packaging I try to mention to people to go on line and check out different issues. I’m doing every week for the next year, I’m doing a little Earth Day quote or like tip, just go to this website and read this story and we’re doing that once a week. The reason that I picked that issue is because there are no other issues if the world is not here for us. I’m just real concerned about the future of our kids and things like that, so….also the environmental things affect our health, things like asthma and it’s just going to keep getting worse, it’s not getting any better and that’s why it’s such an important issueHE’S A ROCK STAR AND HE CARES!
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