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| Credit: Chloe Mantrom |
Words by: Xochitl Hansen
Finch is American post-hardcore band coming from Temecula, California. With four studio albums under their belt, kicking ass and taking names only comes naturally. Starting in 1999, Finch has been active for the most part and has proved to be nothing less than fantastic. They have a new album ‘Back to Oblivion’ on Razor & Tie Records, and are currently supporting Yellowcard on their spring tour. Luckily, I was able to sit down with Alex Pappas and Daniel Wonacott.
Members and Roles:
Nate Barcalow – lead vocals
Alex Linares – rhythm guitar
Randy Strohmeyer – lead guitar
Alex Pappas – drums, percussion
Daniel Wonacott – bass guitar
How's touring so far?
Daniel: It’s good, we're doing direct support for Yellowcard. It’s the first time the band's done a support tour in like 10 years. We’ve always done headliners, so it’s a little bit more work in some ways and a little less. You don’t have that long of a sound check, so we get a little bit more chill time. It’s all good, were happy with it.
What’s the stupidest thing you’ve done on tour?
Daniel: Us personally or other members of the band?
Pappas: I’m not going to name names, but I’m just going to say fall off stages.
Daniel: It always ends the same way
Pappas: Little bit of bleeding, little bit of flesh wound, not normally a concussion somehow. Normally you get out clean although the next day there’s a little soreness
Any musical influences which influenced you personally?
Daniel: I mean for me, I grew up as a kid listening to music in the late 80’s, so like alternative rock. Everything from REM to Jane’s Addiction to Nirvana to Mudhoney. All the typical grunge stuff and punk rock stuff. It was much more difficult to find bands back in the day, you’d pass tapes around, and you know someone would have a cassette of a radio show. Youd go look at Guitar World, Spin or Hit Parader.
Pappas: Yea, you really didn’t have the internet, or anything like this to help you find bands.
Daniel: I feel like I grew up getting a pretty broad musical education, cause there wasn’t a lot of difference between a Chili Peppers record or a Nirvana or Dead Kennedys record to us , it all counted as rock and roll and it was dangerous. There wasn’t blogs to go check to see if it fit your credits.
What about you? {Pappas}
Pappas: I mean I was the same sort of thing, but more on the harder side of things with metal and all that. Pantera, Slayer, but its still all just distorted guitar driven rock and roll. You know like to me the heavier the better, but it’s all kind of in the same genre or classification. It’s still the same chords.
What was your first instrument?
Daniel: I had my mom’s old classical guitar. That was kicking around the house with lots of dust on it, I opened the case one day and there was a little chord book in it. My mom showed me a couple of chords and then me and nick, the singer of the band grew up together so we all kind of learned how to play guitar at the same time, so someone would learn a sweet Nirvana rift or a bad religion rift or something like that and wed show each other. We all learned, or at least in my family we all learned as a community, you see everyone in my family is a musician.
Pappas: In every group there’s required reading, basically you need to know that song because we all want to jam to it. Acquire the tastes.
Daniel: So mine was a classical guitar, then later on once I started playing a lot my dad was nice enough to get us a guitar, I mean I still had to work for it like paint the house and stuff, but yea.
Pappas: I had a drum kit kicking around the house when I was about eight or nine years old, I started messing with it and trying to do stuff with it. My parents were cool enough to let me make noise, I found some records of bands that I liked and was into like The Presidents of the United States of America.
How’d you guys get your name?
Pappas: We found Finch, because it’s a little bird that makes a lot of noise, it can fly fast and that sort of thing, we kind of though it fit with the band, as we grow people take on different meanings. I’m not going to say it was the dude in American Pie who wouldn’t take a dump at school, but as you get older you kind of want it to be a little more =novelty or something like that, but yeah we all found something we all thought kind of suited us, and worked with what we felt at the time.
Daniel: It’s the worst part of being in a band; it’s trying to find the band name. Its absolute worst, if anyone’s tried to start a band, you’ve got a list of stupid names, and you think some of them are cool. Eventually the music conforms the band’s name.
You’ve toured for a while, is there a song you're sick of playing?
Daniel: I’m not really that way with music, I think that’s probably a little more taxing on singers, but I sing harmonize and backups but it’s not that big of a deal. I imagine if you’re singing, full on every night and there’s some song you’re tired of singing lyrics to or its high range or whatever, but I enough playing with my friends. We try to vary our set list a little during tours to keep ourselves excited and what not, so it works out. We’re not really the type of band, which hates playing certain songs; well have this conversation before tour usually, like you know well leave these few on this tour from this batch.
Pappas: There are the ones that are the bangers that one’s people want to hear so we try to accommodate them
Daniel: Yea, want people to have a good time, so we try to meet our audience and play what we want to play and the ones they want to hear.
You guys played Vans Warped Tour last year, how was that?
Daniel: Hot. Sweaty.
Pappas: It’s like riding on a pirate ship across country
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Daniel: We were very excited to play Warped Tour; we hadn’t done it in like ten years or so or like thirteen years. Something likes that. It was a good opportunity to play for a different crowd, younger fans, you know older fans and we got to hang out with a bunch of friends who were on the tour too. So it was a good time, we enjoyed the tour. At first we were like ‘we have to do Warped Tour’, though it turned out to be a great time, playing some shows, drinking beer, and hanging with friends
How have shows changed from back then?
Daniel: I mean I feel like our audience has grown with us, we see a little bit older crowd , because were an a older band, it’s funny we'll travel around the world and play shows, we’ll see teenagers to 20 somethings, and now we’re seeing 30 somethings. You can always spot the 30 somethings, because they're in the back at the bar.
Pappas: The ones in the front bouncing around in the front taking the pit are the younger ones, while the older ones are in the back going ‘man I don’t heal so fast’
Daniel: It hasn’t changed all that much since when I was a kid going to shows to playing shows now, you go to see your favorite band and their playing well and are on top of it and everyone has a good time
Pappas: There's just more of everything now, that’s the thing what we were saying is we didn’t have the internet and everything. Like we were saying before if you’re trying to find a band, I mean there was a ton of bands don’t get me wrong, but still finding them was a little less in your face. Now everything’s in your face all time, all the time, all the time. That’s one of the big differences.
Has technology affected your shows positively or negatively?
Daniel: Positively, our guitar players have switched to this modeling system called the kemper amps, that I’ve seen a lot of bands using and we have a collecting of nice amps that make this song feel like this and a lot closer to what it is and the geeky musician side of us enjoys that’s stuff. And then the internet, just reaching out to fans and being able to connect with people directly and people who are interested in our band and want to follow us. They always know where we’re at and what we’re doing, so all that’s positives. We don’t get paid for anything anymore, but it’s all good
What’s one place you haven’t played that you want to play?
Daniel: Africa, for me personally I’d love to go to Africa. The bands never had been there.
Pappas: I’d want to do Dubai
Daniel: We’ve been lucky enough to go around the world, and do really cool things but we’ve never made it to Arica or the Middle East.
What’s one cool place you’ve played?
Pappas: South Korea
Daniel: South Korea was really cool. Japan was really fun. One of my favorite places to play is Mexico City, good food there.
Pappas: England is always a blast
Any last words?
Daniel: Thanks for having us!
Pappas: We’ve got Finch ‘Back to Oblivion’ out now on Razor & Tie Records. Go buy it, tell all your friends.
Daniel: It’s a brand new record, our first in about nine years, even though we had some stuff in the middle. Were super happy to be back on the road promoting the new record, so it'd be awesome if anyone can check it out.
Catch Finch on tour with Yellowcard & The Downtown Fiction!
Catch up with them on social media!
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