We had a chance to sit and speak with Garrett Garfield, Fletcher Howell and Hiram Hernandez of The New Low after they played at Auburn Hills, Michigan on the Vans Warped Tour, 07/22/2016.
Side Stage Magazine: Congratulations on the record.
Fletcher Howell: Yeah, this is our first record…
Garrett Garfield: So we had no expectations
FH: Didn’t expect the crowds to be pulled in like they have been these last couple of days. It’s been a lot. The record came out this morning and we’ve already got people out in the crowd that are singing along. It’s been insane, to say the least.
I listened to it my whole way here.
GG: Did you? Awesome.
FH: Cool. That’s awesome
Yeah.
FH: Thank you so much.
“Scared” gave me goosebumps.
Hiram Hernandez: That’s all right. You did it, dude [Garrett].
So, some of you guys were in a band together before. I know … Garrett, and Fletcher, and…
HH: Hiram.
Okay. How did you guys meet up with Hiram and Corey then?
FH: We, ah, we were playing in our old band. We had our really good friend out working with us in our crew. He knew Hiram and Hiram came out and hung out at one of our Arizona dates. And, we were having issues with our current guitar player. Guy was…just not pleasant at all. So, we just kind of hung out with Hiram for a bit and we just talked about, you know, just music in general. We all just clicked and we all had fun talking about it. When we got home and got rid of said guitar player, we were just, let’s hit up Hiram and see if he’d be down to do a project, because Hiram’s a producer, first and foremost. We knew he was busy with that gig. But, we called him up and he was just … how about it. So, here we are.
HH: It took me a second, but, I was, after hearing these two sing, I was like, let’s just do that.
FH: And then, with Corey. Corey is from Virginia, where Hiram is originally from.
HH: Me and Corey are from the same town in Virginia. So, I recorded his band a while ago, five years ago. And, we needed a drummer. So, we hit up a few different options and oh, let’s get Corey. And, Corey just kind of stuck.
So, did you [Hiram] produce this album?
HH: This one?
Yes
HH: Yes, I did.
And I read that you guys recorded this in a basement?
GG: Yeah, studio basement, yeah.
FH: Yeah, it was a place up in Northern Utah, a little bit out of the way from where we all live in Salt Lake-ish. And we got in there, set up all the gear and just started writing and recording. Just kind of locked ourselves in there as long as we could and came out with something we’re pretty stoked on.
HH: I drove up ten hours from Phoenix in one shot, just to hang out with my friends and make a record. And, it was awesome. I like what we did.
FH: Yeah.
HH: Definitely great
So it sounds like pretty collaborative. There isn’t one single person who kind of runs the writing and…
GG: It’s pretty collaborative between the three of us. Because we were really the only three in the picture at that point, when we were writing the record.
HH: Yeah, it was just us three primarily that did everything. I handled the guitars. They handled the rest.
There’s a pretty clear message in the songs about kind of moving on. Is that like a memory, or a cautionary tale to yourselves going forward or is that kind of inspirational for the fans?
GG: I mean, it’s a little bit of both. I think that, in terms of… I guess I can only talk about myself individually, but my writing style as a vocalist has always been kind of third party. I never… I don’t know if it’s because I was afraid to talk more about personal experiences. It’s obviously a scary thing to open up and put yourself out there, but this record is definitely all about the past two years of our lives and all of the stuff we had to go through, coming to a point where we kind of hit a crossroads at the low point we were in and had to decide if we wanted to keep doing music or just go get a 9 to 5 and do that. So, yeah, it’s definitely about getting up, moving forward and being better than you were before.
Well, I’m glad you didn’t go get a 9 to 5.
GG: Yeah, me too.
So, why Adele’s “Hello”?
FH: Oh. (laughs) We heard it. You know, Hiram lives in Arizona. Garrett and I live up in the Salt Lake area. We had both heard it and it was kind of like a mutual thing. Like, I remember calling Hiram to be like, hey, I heard this song. And he’s like, yeah, me too. You need to cover that Hello song by Adele. Like that song just clicked for both of us. It’s like that’s literally what I called you for. We had done a cover under the moniker Hearts and Hands of “Elastic Heart” by Sia. We did that one when we were actually in the studio working on the record. We just kind of wanted something that we could give people immediately, because we had, you know, a fan base that had been waiting for something to happen for a while. We just kind of like disbanded out of nowhere and then got back into the studio. So, we did that really quick because we were all in the studio working on it. And, when we heard it, we were all in different things. Like, somebody was out running errands. I was up in the kitchen sending emails and stuff like that and listening to music. We all heard it in the course of a couple of hours of not actually working on the album directly. And then we all got back together, it was just like this song is just incredible. Everyone just got goosebumps. We sat and watched the video over and over again. We just geeked out on it. It made us feel something that was undeniably real. And we related with that, more so than, you know, a lot of other music out there, so we thought, we need to put our spin on this. Like, this feels like something we need to make kind of our own. Hello was the exact same thing. We had two cover songs come out before our record. And Hello was kind of the same thing. Okay, we’ve had our record done for a while. Let’s try to get some sort of content on the computer to listen to. And it was kind of the same thing. We definitely didn’t want to get niched into being a Youtube cover band. But, that’s why we kind of had to go with that particular song, is because we wanted to do something, and that song itself just hit really hard for us.
HH: Basically, it’s in their power range.
Oh, yeah, your guys’ voices in that are just amazing.
GG: Thank you.
FH: Thank you.
It’s funny, I was listening to one of the songs without watching the Youtube video and I couldn’t tell the difference between you guys singing for a moment, until I watched the videos and I was like, wow, there’s two people.
GG: Oh, yeah. Wow.
Until you started screaming, and that’s a little different.
(laughs)
How many dates [Vans Warped Tour] have you guys been on? Just a couple?
GG: Four now.
FH: Yeah, we’ve just played our fourth set. Ever. As a band.
Ever? You guys haven’t done anything together?
GG: It’s as wild to you as it is to us.
FH: Noblesville, Indiana was our first show ever on the road. So, been a real interesting experience for us. It’s felt a lot less shitty than I think we expected.
GG: Yeah, like we told you before, the draw that’s come up for these shows, it’s just … personally, for me, blowing my mind that people are saying the words to our songs. You know, it’s wild.
So, I know the album just came out today. What’s next?
FH: We don’t have anything that we can openly discuss yet. We’re working with management and our label and things like that. Right now, our main focus is just do as strong as we can with the shows out here on Warped and kind of take it from there. We’ve got stuff in the works, but nothing official that we can announce yet.
I think you guys are on a good label [Razor and Tie]. They seem to support their bands very well.
GG: Yeah, they’ve been awesome.
FH: They’ve been kicking ass so far.
Have you guys got any bands out there that you’ve had a chance to see or that you still want to?
FH: All of them.
(laughs)
GG: There’s a bunch of good ones. I mean, we’ve all been really busy and really tired just cause we’re doing this thing in a fifteen passenger van with eight people. We try to go out and watch as much as we can. I’ve watched Yellowcard a couple times. I watched Good Charlotte. Those are kind of like, those are my big ones. There’s a bunch of talented bands. I mean, you can go to any stage at any time and you’re going to see something’s that good.
It’s a good tour to make some band friends, a lot of collaborations come out of all of this.
GG: Yeah, it’ s a lot of nice dudes.
Well, enjoy the tour, and thanks a lot for talking to us.
The New Low links:
