Photo by Patrick Houdek / For The Love Of Punk

Interview with Brendan Kelly | By Bryne Yancey

In February 2006, shortly before the release of The Lawrence Arms’ Oh! Calcutta!, longtime friends and bandmates Brendan Kelly and Neil Hennessy reconvened, along with Alkaline Trio’s Dan Andriano, who had previously been a member of Slapstick alongside Kelly, to record The Falcon’s debut LP Unicornography. The Falcon had debuted two years prior, with the hastily-recorded-for-free God Don’t Make No Trash or Up Your Ass with Broken Glass EP, but Unicornography sounded like the well-rounded finished product of a band—a supergroup even—and not just a fun side project. Kelly’s lyrics and compositions were more curt and straightforwardly aggressive; even the album’s more melodic moments like those in “R.L. Burnouts Inc.” and “The La-Z-Boy 500” weren’t without tinges of darkness.

As most side projects go, The Falcon’s members became busy with other stuff, and, other than a handful of shows here and there, the band have been largely quiet. But a new song for Red Scare’s 10-year anniversary compilation, as well as a performance at last October’s 10-year anniversary with Dave Hause on second guitar reignited Kelly’s interest in the project, and the Falcon, now with Hause a member, have been slowly but surely recording their second LP for Red Scare. After seeing this tweet, we exchanged some emails with Kelly to get his thoughts on the new material.

When did these Falcon songs start coming together? Was there a plan in place initially or did it just sorta happen this way?

We did a show at Metro in Chicago for the 10-year Red Scare anniversary. We’re not the most active band and we’ve never really had that solid of a live lineup, however the three core members: me, Neil from TLA and Dan from the Trio were all available for the show, which was nice, because I don’t know how many people really care about seeing a scab lineup of a band with only one record that’s 10 years old. We knew we needed to find a really cool lead guitarist to round out the band, since being a “supergroup” (and I use that term extremely loosely) is part of the Falcon’s whole thing, and luckily, the amazing Dave Hause hit me up and told me he wanted the job. Neil, Dan, and I had just recorded our first new song in 10 years for the Red Scare 10-year compilation, and suddenly we had this cool lineup to boot. When Dave came out and played, it was so fun, there was never a question… we sat backstage after the show just like, “Soooo, this is the band now and we’re doing a record, right?” It’s motivated entirely by the fact that we’re all good friends and we had a great time playing together. That show was the first time the four of us had ever played together, by the way. There was NO practice with all of us. So that was pretty wild.

The Falcon’s past songs, I feel, are all pretty varied; there’s a lot of more aggressive stuff but also slower and catchier songs, and perhaps a bit more contemplative. Is that variation still there in these new songs or is there a recurring theme or themes throughout?

This record is a little different in a kind of weird way. It’s being tracked as we speak, and in true Falcon form, it’s being tracked in pieces, based on everyone’s schedule, so the tracking won’t be done until mid-September. That being said, on this record, Dan and Dave each have a song, and my songs are… I think they’re some of the most ambitious songs I’ve ever written. I tried to keep the songs concise, but each of them are kind of varied within themselves. So, a song may start almost hardcore and end completely folky. I think a lot of these tunes contain the entire essence of what The Falcon is, right in the song structure.

Can you elaborate a little more on these being some of the most ambitious songs you’ve written? Maybe a specific example of where you took an unconventional approach to a song and it came out either completely wild or different than you expected it to?

Well, the songs are all very concise. Dan’s song is the longest on the record at 2:30, but the dynamics in individual songs sway from psychedelic to hardcore to folk all in the same tune sometimes. As a whole, it’s a real exploration of one sound trying a lot of different things, stylistically. As of writing this, I dunno how it’s all gonna turn out. We just finished the drum tracking yesterday, but if the vision we have for this thing comes to fruition, it will be obvious what I’m talking about when you hear it. If not, I guess it’ll be a shambling mess. But at least it’s not an unambitious mess.

What creative muscles do you flex with The Falcon that maybe you don’t get to use as much with your other projects?

Well, The Lawrence Arms is all about the dynamic between Chris [McCaughan] and I and also (and maybe more to the point) where our sensibilities overlap. And we have fans who have certain expectations. Those constraints are very helpful and that’s how those songs get made. The Wandering Birds is more of a retirement plan project. That’s a band for songs that I won’t feel like a goof playing ten, twenty, thirty years from now.

The Falcon is pure id. I think of it as the “punkest” band of any of my projects but also the most free, in terms of what I allow myself to do with the songwriting. There are less constraints, but at the same time, this new record is very much informed by the last two albums I made (The Lawrence Arms’ Metropole and Brendan Kelly and the Wandering Birds’ I’d Rather Die Than Live Forever), but filtered through a much more aggressive sensibility.

You talked about how your and Chris’ sensibilities overlap in The Lawrence Arms; is there any semblance of that in The Falcon with you and Dan, and now Dave, or is the songwriting a little more autonomous in terms of them bringing lyrics and music to the band?

Well, this is the first time that we’ve ever done a song not written by me in The Falcon, and I think that for both Dan’s song and Dave’s, they were informed by the style of the songs that The Falcon has done in the past. That being said, they sound distinctly like those dudes. Nobody is gonna wonder which songs were written by Dan or Dave. Their signatures are pretty bold.

The tweet you sent out about Neil laying down drums for six songs—is that the plan, to release six songs? Or are there more? Are we talking an EP, LP, 7-inches, how are these things coming out and when will they be out?

Ha! That was just the first day. Neil’s a beast. No, there’s more to be done. I have 10 songs written with one song that’s getting a two-version treatment. Along with Dan and Dave’s tunes, that’s 12 songs done in 13 tracks. It will probably all come out as a full-length with a bonus track or maybe we’ll save one for a 7-inch or hell… maybe we’ll write another few by the time Dan and Dave get to come track and we’ll have enough for another EP. I mean, fuck, it’s The Falcon. The whole point is that there are no rules.