By: Josh Gloer
About 50 miles south of San Jose is the home of the Spirit West Coast Christian Music Festival – Monterey, California. Less than 24 hours from the show, Family Force 5 is in a van, headed for the show.
Dance, Rawr, Dance 3, an official tour, starts in September, but until then, FF5 is playing festivals like Spirt West, averaging 250 days on the road for the year.
“We’re a bunch of road dogs,” Derek “Chap Stique” Mount, the band’s guitarist, said. The band is dedicated to its fans, constantly playing shows and actively communicating with MySpace, Twitter and an open phone line fans can call and leave messages on. “We have incredible fans. We have a great relationship with them, too.”
But it’s a double-edged sword, as many of the band members have wives and families they leave behind every time they hit the road. So for their latest creation, a fantastic video for their song “Dance or Die,” they decided to get creative.
“We’re trying to make sure we put our families first,” Mount said. “So instead of trying to shoot on our time off we decided to shoot it on the road.” The band brought Director Steven Shultz, a lighting rig and a green screen made from bed sheets to shoot between rehearsals, sound checks and shows.
“We have a blast. We’re a very visual band and love the escapism element of videos. It’s a lot of fun, just a nice change of pace from writing recording and touring.”
And the video, something Mount said the band is very proud of, is out of this world.
“Its very Captain EO influenced,” Mount said. “It’s very Neverending Story-esque. We’re real excited about that. We got to feel like we’re on a different planet.”
And the video has been well received. An mtvU video of the week winner, the video has been featured on AOL and has kids mimicking dance steps. “Everybody’s loving it. All the kids are just really excited.”
If festival dates, and a brand spankin’ new video aren’t enough, the band is still finding time for the studio, and their new Christmas album will drop October 6th.
“Writing Christmas songs has been a hilarious process,” Mount said. “You’ve got really, really tough competition. You might write a killer song, but it’s definitely not as good as Jingle Bells.”
While Mount jokes about wearing Santa hats and breaking out the fake Christmas tree in July for inspiration as they work on the album, its clear that for Family Force 5, the real inspiration comes from a deeply rooted faith.
“We’re very much Christians, it’s a huge part of our lives,” Mount said. “A lot of our songs are about our spiritual experiences and its something we’re very passionate about. We want this band to mean something to everybody. We try to spread fun and hope and escape and joy.”
According to Mount, its an allegory best seen in their album, Dance or Die.
“You have life, and you choose what to do with it,” Mount said. “You can either sit on the wall watching every one else, drinking some punch, or you can dance and enjoy it.”
And FF5 is definitely not sitting any numbers out. Hard work and dedication to their fans is making this group of “robot” rockers a force to be reckoned with.
“There some thing much deeper than just trying to get up there and be famous,” Mount said. “We’re trying to hopefully touch people’s lives.”
For more on Family Force 5 or their up coming Christmas album and tour, check out www.modlife.com/familyforce5.
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Josh Gloer is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. Currently he’s a writer on his sixth season of MSNBC’s Lockup: Extended stay. He has also written for MTV, TLC, TruTV, HGTV and Oxygen. Josh has been a journalist for about 12 years, doing celebrity interviews with actors such as Djimoun Hounsou, Dennis Farina and James Marsden; and bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Orgy and sax guru, Carl Grubbs. Josh’s work has appeared in Filter, Car Audio & Electronics, Zink!, Item and many other publications and websites. This fall, his fiction is scheduled to appear in an anthology of LA writers, including Charles Bukowski. www.joshgloer.com
