Wednesday, October 15, 2014 10:45am ET by  
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Pressparty talks to Grizfolk about their impressive journey so far and touring with Bastille

Earlier this week, Pressparty sat down for a chat with Los Angeles-based band Grizfolk as they prepared to open for Bastille at the Agganis Arena in Boston.

The band consists of Adam Roth, Sebastian Fritze, Fredrik Eriksson, Brendan Willing James, and Bill Delia, and they have been supporting Bastille on tour since the beginning of 2014.

We spoke to them about their time on the road with the band, how they met, and their incredible journey so far. 

Hey, Grizfolk! Let's start at the beginning. How did you all come to meet each other and decide to form a band?

We met in Los Angeles, but we’re from all over the world… Pensacola in Florida, Los Angeles, Pennsylvania, and Sweden. We met from working on different projects and we originally had a songwriting team where we were just writing songs, but realised it could turn into a band so called up Bill (Delia) and Brendan (Willing James) and started doing it! We started touring and now we’re in Boston, playing a show! 

It was more of a songwriting/production team at first and then one of the songs, ‘The Struggle’, was posted on a blog and ended up going viral, so then we were like, ‘we should probably turn this into a band’. The SoundCloud link name was ‘Griz Adams’, which was just a nickname and wasn’t meant to be a band name, so we found the name Grizfolk out of that and turned it into a band.

As your band has members from all over the world, do you all come from wildly different musical backgrounds and bring varied influences to the table? 

Sebastian Fritze: I come from more of a hip-hop background - I did beats before. Adam (Roth) is from more of an Americana background, Fredrik (Eriksson) is from rock and electro music… and then Bill (Delia) and Brendan (Willing James) also - they did their own music before. We like blending all our genres together. It's something we like doing and it just comes naturally. 

You have an EP out called ‘From The Spark’ and every track on the release has a very different sound. Did you do that to showcase what fans will be able to hear on your studio album? 

Yeah, that was the point of the EP - just to put everything we were trying to do together into a small collection of songs, like, ‘here’s our representation of what Grizfolk is going to be’. We’re finishing our full-length right now. It’s very much the same kind of thing as the EP and even further into that territory of every song being completely different and listeners not knowing what to expect. So we’re just finishing that now and then we’ll have a release date!

So you've been working on your full-length record on the road? How has that been for you? 

It’s crazy, we’ve been touring a lot so we’ve been working on it in the van, in hotels, on airplanes… It’s been constant, but now we’re done with that phase and it’s being mixed and mastered. We’re very excited, we can’t wait. It has been just over a year – the recording process for these songs. And even longer than that really, from when these guys wrote the songs. 

What's your creative process and was it different with working while on tour? 

We’re all laptop based so when writing new songs everyone would sit with their laptops and pitch ideas to each other. Then we’d just pass laptops around and say, ‘oh, here’s a beat I did’, and then I’d give it to Fredrik (Eriksson) and he would put a melody to it, and then Adam (Roth) would come and sing on it. We’d just pass it around – it’s a fun process and it kept the creativity flowing constantly. 

You know, playing the shows every night... it feels different and the crowds are all different, and that triggers ideas and motivation. We have to keep writing more music. So it’s a good thing we have 5 portable studios so that we can always write music, which is a great thing. We’ll keep doing that in the future! 

Do you each have different roles where songwriting is concerned, or is it a case of you pool ideas together and write every part together as a group from the drum lines to the lyrics?

It’s always different - a song can start off with a beat or with an acoustic guitar. I think the most important thing when we actually write a song is that it can be played on organic instruments and it still comes out well, so that’s what we always think about. You know, 'will this song hold by just singing a capella?'.  

Is there a tentative release date scheduled for your highly anticipated album?

We haven’t been able to put a release date on it yet because it’s being mixed and mastered, but that’s happening this month and we’ll have a release date really soon!

 

 

 

You're currently on tour with Bastille across North America, but this isn't the first run you've done with the 'Bad Blood' hitmakers. How did you all meet? 

We were introduced to them through our label, but they were like, ‘let’s do a couple of shows’, and Dan asked us after that to do a few more shows and then after that he asked us to join their European tour. They chose us and there were a lot of other people who wanted to be on these tours so we feel super privileged and blessed to have been asked.

They asked us to do a couple of dates with them initially – Detroit, New York and Boston. We had a really good time with them so then after that, they asked us to go on their European tour, which was crazy for us because it’s hard to get over there, but we pulled it off and made it happen. It was the best thing we’ve ever done. Then they asked us to go on this tour with them, which is a dream run for us. We got to play Radio City Music Hall in New York twice, which was amazing. Every venue is a dream show for us and they’ve been totally amazing - like big brothers to us. We’ve learned a lot from them – how they do it, their process, and their work ethic.

The tour has been amazing. It’s nice that we didn’t have a polar vortex this time! The fans have been amazing. This run is cool as we’re hitting up a couple of cities we’ve already been to and there are a lot of people singing along to our songs, and people who turn up to the shows early.  

What are you all listening to at the moment? Any bands or artists we should check out? 

We’re super hyped on Banks and Volcano Choir… and the new alt-J is really cool. The new Foo Fighters’ stuff, too. Their documentary is coming out next week! Then we all listen to metal sometimes.

What's next for Grizfolk?

When we get back in late October, we will be finishing up our album. Then we have a couple more dates with Bastille on the West Coast, so we have Los Angeles on November 20 at the Shrine Expo Hall and another show on November 21 at the Fox Theater in Pomona.

You can catch Grizfolk on the rest of Bastille's tour and the remaining dates can be seen below:

  • 10/15 – Toronto, ON @ Air Canada Centre w/Bastille

  • 10/17 – Cincinnati, OH  @ U.S. Bank Arena w/Bastille

  • 10/18 – Milwaukee, WI @ Milwaukee Theatre w/Bastille
  • 10/19  – St. Paul, MN @ Roy Wilkins Auditorium w/Bastille

  • 10/21 – Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom w/Bastille
  • 10/23 – Detroit, MI @ Masonic Temple Theatre w/Bastille

  • 10/24 – Rochester, NY @ Main Street Armory w/Bastille 

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Watch the band's fantastic video for 'The Struggle' below: