littleSUNDAY –
Four Questions
with Fourthought
littleSUNDAY is a band based out of the GTA that has been around for over 7 years. The band is comprised of Rick Farrell on vocals and rhythm guitar, JP on lead guitar, Mario Stamegna on bass and Eric Bonatti on drums. They’ve had much success in the Canadian music scene, especially with the latest album “Let it all out.” littleSUNDAY won Y108’s Breakout Band in 2008 and have recently ended ties with their distribution deal with Universal Music. littleSUNDAY is on a mission to play the music they love with the four guys that started it all, and this time they are doing it their way.
(Fourthought) So you say you’re one of the honest bands right now, “selling out”- that concept, we’ve heard about bands buying into record labels buying out of record labels what do you plan to do and how does that make you feel?
(Rick) Well I mean if you look about 3 years ago we were signed to a distribution deal with Universal Music we quickly realized that after the signing it was a lot of smoke and mirrors. Nowadays, in the music industry to actually be signed to a record deal...to be signed to a record contract so to speak distribution deal it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors what you’re signing to is the actual physical label, not the record label but the actual label itself, I mean all they did for us in the way of marketing was allow us to stamp our cds with the Universal Music logo. When we looked at the parent indie label, the intention was to market littleSUNDAY on radios across Canada, what we got was a Canada wide release of our record in late 2007. What we did realize after 4 months was that working through distribution deals with the label all they would do is actually house your music in their warehouse, now, we signed at a time when major record labels stopped signing bands unless you’re in the US and their signing more to a single as you know you look at the top 20 billboards it’s all one hit wonders. What we’re seeing now is like a.it’s coming full circle, we’ve had this discussion many times, if youlook back in the 50’s and 60’s bands were being signed to the like storefront record companies to a song deal; and that’s happening again. For us, we decided after the year was up was to dissolve all ties and.not reinvent...but continue to as we were before an indie band..Ironically, this originally led us to get the distribution deal, but now the tables are changed for us because our focus now is to just go out there and have fun and make good music. And we did in 2008! After winning Breakout Band with Y108, Hamilton, we decided to record 7 songs of music that influenced us to play. So the newest record, 'Let it All Out', it’s a mix of Zeppelin feel, you know a little bit of Kiss (Mario) and there is a heavy dose of we don’t give a shit...(JP) we were going through certain times in our careers and lives that was really affecting all of us and especially a few of us and it was really hard times in our lives, a transition (Rick) Everybody, we started out with four people and you know what were gonna go back to four people loving music.
(Fourthought) How do you make sure that brand of music is not generic, how do you make it stand out? Do you compare it to what’s out there?
With all due respect, we really don’t give a shite. Baseline is, whatever comes out is what comes out, like it or not (Mario) cause guess what, however brilliant it is or however anything it is someone is always gonna shit on it, so we’re going to do what we like. If we rewind back 3 years ago, doing this record for universal music we remember times in the studio when we were like we have to write a fucking hit song (Eric) and don’t forget the dude from the label saying you have to record this song and that song and this song....No, that song is not a hit and we’re like Ok....and we bowed down to the powers that be and the thing is we realized when we played it....we found ourselves second guessing ourselves, and were playing the songs but do we believe in the songs, it’s like “No,” we don’t believe in the song were just doing it to appease a certain group of people that apparently know what they’re talking about but when you dig deeper your realize that none of them have ever played an instrument in their lives. (Mario) And yeah, that’s when we started to notice cracks in the whole entourage and you know different guys are going different places and you know I got a call from a certain guy who like “oh this worked out like this and you gotta do this, this and this and it’s probably because of this” and I’m thinking to myself “what are you talking about? Have you ever even picked up a bass?” (Rick) I think last year was our turning point when we realized 'look guys what do we know?' We know how to play music so let’s just fucking play music and have a good time and this has been, 2010, has been perhaps the best year for us, in terms of on stage, having fun...the fun scale...and with that, two deaths, two fathers, two people got fired, so we went through a hard time and yet prevailed and at the end of the day we were still there for each other...at the end of the day there was 4 people standing, the same four people that started this band.
(Fourthought) so you were born from angst, but through the process there was some issues that kept you burning strong.
(Rick) Right. Can I tell you something? When Eric’s dad passed away we had a show two days after and we called him up and said Eric we’ll cancel the show and he said “no, I need this it’s you guys that keep me going,” and we went out, we dedicated the show to his dad and it was a beautiful night it was a packed house, over 350 people and he was on fire. Similarly with JP his dad passed away and same scenario, we said you know what JP we don’t have to do it and he’s like “no” you know what, these guys collectively if I can speak for both of you, our dads wanted us to do this. (Eric) Yeah, they were pushing us, I see the passion, no ifs and or buts you gotta do this. (Rick) Since the two tragedies in our family, we’ve gotten a lot closer and we realized that you know what were gonna do this until we can’t flipping do this anymore and when I mean can’t do it I mean he can’t pick up a drumstick because of arthritis, and I can’t fraking sing because I have to remove a fucking lung for some reason.
(Fourthought) Having said that, there are a million and one causes why bands play these days do you find bands are actually being more self serving jumping on causes to be on these charity concerts?
(Eric) Ok if you take this one for example, they called us, or any of them for example they always call us, but we jump on it, in a sense (they call us) because they know we have no reservation or stipulations.
(Fourthought) Do you find bands misuse cause marketing? Some bands play the one event and never play another one.
(Rick) I’m not in a position to make that judgment call but I know with us we’ve always tried to stay honest and true to people who really want to hear good music for a reason. We played one of our first shows at city hall in Toronto for Cancer Research, there was over 3000 people, CIBC Walk For Cancer, we were on stage just after finalists of the first Canadian Idol, um, but, the point was why would we say no to playing, better yet why would we say no to playing for a reason? You know what I mean if it’s a good reason, well any reason is a good reason (Eric) but to answer your question we don’t have any ulterior motives. We look at this to do the show for the benefit that’s it we don’t expect anything back, if other things pan out that’s fine but that’s not in our expectations, were doing it for the benefit and that’s why we’ve done several shows inlcuding, Music not Mischief, Benefit for Tyler McGill, to name a few off the top of my head.
(Fourthought) In regards to social networking, we know that you guys are really active how has it helped you guys?
(Rick) Well I tell you what, 7 years ago the internet was still, I would say fresh, there was no Facebook, no MySpace, no band presence, but Eric being the techy of the band, the IT guy of the band, you know, we were just a bunch of guys north of Toronto writing music, he discovered some internet competition, it was a global band wars, and it was brand new to all of us, he’s like check it out, so I...uhh...plugged in my cable waited 20 minutes for it to load, and wow. So, we entered one of our studio songs, we ended up winning best online rock band in the world. Nowadays that means absolutely nothing but for us it was fantastic. Anyways, Eric jumped on the IT thing and we were like one of the first of 1000 to be on MySpace, yeah we were one of the first groups to be on MySpace and one of the first to be on Sonic Bids when it first came out, Reverb Nation and the whole irony behind it was we would go to these industry nights and they would be like “Gotta get on MySpace, got to get on this” and were looking at each other and were like “Uhh we did that a year ago” I’ll tell you what happened for the first two years of us playing in band we never had to book a show, We got booked from people online and one of our first bookers ever is here tonight who’s Bettie from Metal Queen, they found us so we were doing something right and for the last 7 years I think maybe we’ve made a dozen phone calls...
(Fourthought) Out of how many shows in contrast?
(Rick) About 400 shows. But what online presence did for us, facebook in particular is hooked us up with people and groups that got us on some big shows like Default, Suzie McNeil, Thornley, Honeymoon Suite, ...and they start coming to us and be like “Hey, you guys are doing ok right?” and “We’d be like “Yeah it’s ok” and they’d say “how would you like to open up for ..... ?” and we’re like “Damn right buddy.” You know honestly I still make the phone calls and send the emails to venues all over the place and never get a reply and the irony behind it is ills end it to venue a like three emails to follow up and a few months later they’ll be like “Hey! Just found you guys, do you want to play here?” and “I’m like uhhh yea.”
(Eric) But the other thing is, and we’ve found also whoever it is a management company or a venue whoever it sis they would rather here directly from the band then to go through a manager or some representative.
(Fourthought) Ok, we have one more, hard hitting question for you, if you could punch one celebrity dead or alive, male or female, right in the face, who would you punch?
(Mario) We all get one? (Eric) Paris Hilton, (Mario) Courtney Love for Killing Kurt, (JP) Slap Courtney Love and ricochet her head into Paris Hilton’s head. (Rick) No comment!!! (Mario) No, I'm sure it's JD Fortune from INXS, cause people always mistaken him for Rick, or Rick for him?? lol!! I'm not sure how that goes .....
