Imagine for a second you are a famous celebrity and your publicist calls to tell you that Jimmy Fallon has picked you to appear as one of his first guests as host of the Tonight Show. Even if you’re a cream-of-the-crop A-list star, it’s a pretty big deal.
Now for a second imagine that you’re the lead singer of a Naples, Florida-based punk band called Fake Problems. You released a critically acclaimed album in 2010, but you’ve struggled to release your new album due to label issues, and you haven’t toured in about a year.
Even if you have a good imagination – it’s hard to see how these two things could fit together – but they do.
In addition to being the lead singer of Fake Problems, Chris Farren is also the creator of “The Smiths Family” t-shirt (pictured above) that’s been hard to miss if you’ve been to a festival or punk show over the last few months. Farren was drifting off to sleep when Fallon presented Will Smith with the Morrissey and Marr inspired t-shirt design in front of a few million people watching him host the Tonight Show for the first time.
Since that night, Farren has used his fifteen minutes of fame to do what any hardworking lead singer would do – start a side project. That project is called Antarctigo Vespucci, and it also features Bomb The Music Industry! frontman Jeff Rosenstock. We talked to Farren about both of his bands, the shirt, and touring with other good bands.
Allston Pudding: So let’s start with t-shirts – I see a lot of people wearing your Smiths t-shirt or even shirts with your face on it – how did that happen?
Chris Farren: This is a weird way to answer this question, but last year I was crazy crazy depressed. I started going to a therapist, and through that I started to gain a little bit of my confidence back and get a better perspective of my life.
And I’m sure a lot of people do this, but you have these ideas that you never take action on. And I had an idea for this Smiths shirt and I said “that’s stupid”, and didn’t do it. But then I figured maybe I would just make the minimum I could make and hopefully in a week or month I could make the money back.
So I ordered 30 and put them up on twitter and sold out of them that night. Then I went to bed, and apparently someone had put it on Reddit, and the next morning I had like a million emails with people asking me how I could order them.
AP: I figured it was a way to supplement your income and branch out beyond music, since we know that’s not necessarily a gold mine – was that part of it?
CF: That was never the thought going into it – I just wanted to break even. But with that happening, I am able to fly to New York to work with Jeff (Rosenstock) on Antarctigo Vespucci. It makes the world a little more open because I can buy that plane ticket.
AP: So you’ve put out an Antarctico Vespucci EP and now you’re touring on it – what do you expect from these shows coming up?
CF: We’re just looking to have fun and bring these songs to people who potentially might like them. We’ve only played one show so far, and that was in Brooklyn and it was one of the coolest shows I’ve ever played – it was packed and everyone knew all the words to all the songs.
AP: So Fake Problems haven’t done much lately – but it sounds like you’ll have a new album out soon?
CF: It’s kind of been our Chinese Democracy…. We recorded it a year ago at this point. We’re just kind of doing the boring label dance thing that bands do, but I’ve been lucky to work on other stuff and keep touring and doing what I love to do.
AP: If you were that depressed a year ago, that would probably coincide with when you recorded the Fake Problems record – what should we expect from it?
CF: Yeah, it’s definitely darker. A lot of the songs where born out of a place where you’re growing up and you’ve seen so many people come up through the music business with you and either get crazy big or just give up. And I’m somewhere in the middle. It’s weird when you see people move on and start doing other things and you don’t feel as dedicated or as into it – so a lot of it is about that and dealing with it.
AP: You’re working on all these projects but still based in Naples, Florida – what’s the scene like there?
CF: I couldn’t even name a good local band. It’s so rare for there to be shows in Naples, I mean, there are a few bar bands, there’s not really much of a local scene. Even for touring bands it’s tough, we’re at the very bottom of Florida and it’s like a hell pit – it’s very expensive to come down here.
AP: So how did you guys get your name out there when you were coming up?
CR: I credit Naples to helping us get our name out there because we knew we couldn’t have any success in Naples, so we knew we had to go on tour. The isolation gave us the motivation to get out there and go for it.
I’m guessing that bands that get their start in bigger cities don’t feel the need to tour as much because they can get something going in their town, but that was never really an option for us.
AP: Yeah that’s a great point – we have plenty of bands here in Boston that can count on playing great shows here every weekend if they wanted to.
CF: I know this will sound like pandering, but I can’t tell you how much I love playing shows in Boston. In fact, the first show we ever sold out was the Middle East Upstairs. So I’m stoked, definitely one of my favorite venues.
AP: Yeah, and Fake Problems has played a ton of shows here opening for some big names – Murder By Death, the Menzingers, Say Anything, etc.
CF: yeah, it’s fun to play with good bands. That’s a pointless statement to make, but whatever.
Chris Farren and Jeff Rosenstock will be at the Middle East Upstairs on November 15th with Antarctigo Vespucci. In the meantime, check out the Farren t-shirt collection. The jury, however, is still out on whether it’s cool to wear one to the show or not.