The Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon details his solo excursion before tonight’s show in Charlottesville

by | Jan 15, 2016 | MUSIC

“The last thing I would want to do is create Gaslight Light or whatever. The absolute last thing.”


“The last thing I would want to do is create Gaslight Light or whatever. The absolute last thing.”

Since news broke last fall that The Gaslight Anthem’s songwriter and frontman Brian Fallon would be embarking on a solo career as the Jersey rockers enter an “indefinite hiatus,” there were mixed feelings across the music community. The celebrated musician has been no stranger to projects and interests outside the scope of Gaslight’s normal output, but even still, a solo career this soon after the band’s quasi-departure is definitely going to leave people confused and maybe even worried. It’s a testament to how broad The Gaslight Anthem’s reach has become since their modest debut in 2006 even if the majority of their success and fanbase has come due to the lyrical strength and musical power Fallon confidently grows each year.

Speaking with Brian Fallon regarding this and his upcoming record Painkillers (out March 11th on Island Records), the million dollar question had to be asked: did the hiatus come from Fallon’s desire to strike out on his own and be recognized in his own right? “No, not at all,” he revealed to us. “[The hiatus] came first before the decision to make a record on my own. It’s not one of those things where I said I want to make a solo record so we’re going on a break. It was the reverse order of that. It felt like there was no new ideas coming for us and there’s nothing really to do right away except for the next thing for the sake of doing something. It was better for us to do nothing rather than something we wouldn’t like later on.”

The selfless decision Fallon and company made to spare the world a record released just to fulfill business or fan expectation is definitely something the music industry needs more of, yet a lingering question still remains. For someone who seems perfectly content in the confines of The Gaslight Anthem or several other side projects he’s dutifully cultivated, why push forward under your own name especially knowing the treacherous minefield that awaits him. “Well, there were getting to be quite a few side projects so I didn’t want to go down that route,” he divulged. “I feel like if you get stuck under a band name, you can only play that band’s music and that band’s style. I actually had a friend ask me ‘why don’t you just do it under your own name so you can play whatever you want?'”

Fallon’s completely cognizant of what it means to be a band in today’s world. Long gone are the days where a band like The Beatles can switch from bubblegum pop to experimental rock music and maintain their same following. These days, a band even throwing in one song out of the norm on the album can be enough for critics and fans to write them off, though they’re just as quick to cast you aside for rehashing the same material. To Fallon though, these limitations occur only in the notion of what a band is and not what a musician can be. “Your own name is not definable as a band’s style. It’s just not. You can keep changing and if you have a different style of music you want to put out, it doesn’t matter because it’s under your name. It’s not bound by the walls of ‘this is this band and they play this music.'”

It’s all true as we’ve seen with the outpouring support of David Bowie’s career and how it was able to continually change and morph over the years. Still though, if that’s how Fallon truly feels, then why not strike out with a solo career before and run them simultaneously? It’s uncommon for sure, but not unheard of either with artists like Craig Finn able to bounce between solo and group efforts almost seamlessly. “Well, I’ve dabbled in it a little bit with songs and things like that,” he reasoned, “but I never really had the time. I was very, very busy so I could never just invest any substantial amount of time. I didn’t want to half-heartedly do anything like that. I try not to half-heartedly do anything. You don’t want to go out there and throw together a bunch of acoustic songs and then here’s the record. I just waited until I had the right time and then I thought if the band’s not going to be busy for a while, now’s the time.”

“It all came out of necessity to write,” he continued. “And I was conscious to not make it sound exactly like The Gaslight. If there was a choice between one thing and the other and one was distinctly Gaslight, I wouldn’t use it out of respect. Not to try and copy what I had done before. I really don’t like that when bands reinvent the same band and then do it with different elements. It’s never quite the same.” Fallon could do a hundred interviews and say this over and over again and while most would take it as relief from their lingering PTSD from the muddied careers of Mick Jagger and Chris Cornell, there’s still going to be plenty of people casually rolling their eyes and scoffing at the idea of Fallon actively not sound like a band he pioneered.

“I think there will always be people who think that what I do sounds like The Gaslight Anthem and I think that’s fair,” he reasoned. “It’s me writing and when you’re writing, you have a style and you can always hear that in what people do. If you took somebody and had them in a bunch of different bands, there’s always going to be that form of them writing in there. There’s not going to be shock to anyone because even from Sink Or Swim, there was songs like ‘The Navesink Banks.’ There’s always been that element of singer-songwriter. It’s not a completely acoustic record, but it’s not a quiet record. There’s up-tempo songs too and it’s a good blend of them. Anything that you would say a songwriter record is. There’s a distinct sound on Painkillers for sure.”

And what type of sound should listeners expect? Well, as much as Fallon believes in this record’s ability to stand on its own, he’s still very much aware of his own personal inclinations when it comes to music. “I read this review the other day,” he mentioned. “It said something to the effect of, ‘Brian Fallon does Rock And Roll 101. That’s what he does so if you don’t like it, don’t go.’ I’m not vastly varying everything. There’s not going to be huge differences song to song. It sticks to that formula and that songwriting base I’m into. That’s what I do. If I could do other things, I’d try it, but I don’t feel comfortable. There are some guys and women who can go out there and change it up like Madonna. She changes it up crazy all the time, but that’s just not me.”

Fallon may be “Rock And Roll 101,” but when you combine him with savvy producer Butch Walker, whose staggering discography features artists from Weezer & Panic! At The Disco to Katy Perry Taylor Swift, you’re signing up for a lot more than just a basic intro class. As the topic of Walker’s involvement came up, the perpetual music fan inside of Fallon came to life as he expressed not only his admiration for Walker’s work, but also his appreciation of the same golden age of music that Fallon draws so much inspiration for. “When I met him, we came to a real common ground to the same type of rock and roll like the late 80s,” he began. “Like Tom Petty. I asked him, ‘You like Tom Petty? What record do you like?’ And he told me, ‘I like the Jeff Lynne stuff’ and I fired back ‘Me too!’ We kind of really hit that the whole time too. ‘You like Bryan Adams? Yep! Great!’ All that stuff and the early Springsteen stuff – that was all the relatability.”

As much as Fallon detailing his beginnings with Walker sounded like a Step-Brothers scene, it was Walker’s understanding of that era of music that really enticed Fallon and gave him a good foundation to build off for on his first solo effort. “The funny thing about that whole era is people will call it rock music, but essentially that stuff in particular is pop music. ‘Free Fallin’, Born In The USA, Dancing In The Dark’ – that’s 101 pop. So it was weird because the elements crossed over and that’s something people miss about Butch a lot. Though he does pop music, it’s coming from the same place as his other music. There’s definitely a meeting of what he’s doing. It’s not vastly different between working on a Fall Out Boy record or a Frank Turner record. It’s not as crazy as you would think and we followed that kind of loose blueprint on Painkillers.”

Fallon was quick to clarify that while it may have used that blue-collar rock renaissance as a guideline for Painkillers, it really was just as a blueprint and nothing trying to rival or even imitate that sound. “I don’t think there’s anything on there as good as that,” he laughed. “I totally wish, but we didn’t sit there and analyze it and get crazy about it. We did try to make things as clear as possible. I tried to make the lyrics really clear about what each song is about. Here’s the story, here’s the beginning, middle, and end and that kind of thing. I learned that listening to those type of records. These are guys who took wordy rock songs, not so much Petty, but definitely Springsteen. He’s got a lot of wordy stuff going on in the first couple of records. He got a little but more direct. I tried to get that kind of spirit in there for sure and make things concise. There wasn’t a lot of fat to be chewed out of the songs. There wasn’t wandering parts – definitely none of that, me and Butch were very particularly about that. No wandering bits. If it doesn’t need to be, then it’s out instantly. If it’s boring, it’s gone.”

It’d be easy to wander into an Americana sound following that path, especially as Fallon carried two previously demoed Molly And The Zombies songs over that he described as “sounding a little country.” There might still be traces of that sound left over too, but in the end, the New Brunswick native worked with Walker to ensure a sound that was truly rooted in who Fallon was and where he came from. “I’m from New Jersey. We listen to country and that stuff, but that’s not what I’m hearing pumping out of the streets. I wanted to do it my way. I didn’t want to put on someone else’s clothes and do that. I wanted to do it from where I was from and show off who I am under my own name for this record.”

Brian Fallon plays The Jefferson tonight in Charlottesville with Cory Branan opening the evening. Tickets are $22.50 and doors open at 7 PM. For more information on the show, click here.

Amy David

Amy David

Amy David was the Web Editor for RVAMag.com from May 2015 until September 2018. She covered craft beer, food, music, art and more. She's been a journalist since 2010 and attended Radford University. She enjoys dogs, beer, tacos, and Bob's Burgers references.




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