LA-based band, Final Gravity

The band Final Gravity joins me on my latest #podcast #episode to talk about their latest project, “Stormchaser,” the band’s formation, touring + more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to episode one hundred and fifty. I
have been doing this now for over four years. It
has been a delight. I have been talking with some
of the most incredible people on this planet.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I hope to continue doing it.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
And I am really grateful that you are dropping by
my little corner of the world where I talk with artists, leaders, creators,
people of all stripes, and today is no different. For
episode one point fifty, I speak with the band Final Gravity.
They are in La based band. They do some incredible music.

(00:37):
I think it's kind of prog edgy music ah and
kind of has this getty lee rush vibe to it
on some of the tracks. They have a great new
project out now called Stormchaser. Get it wherever you get music,
but mostly try to get it from band camp, and
we talk.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
About that within this episode as well. Great band. They
have this lovely lead singer.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
She's just awesome and everybody is so wonderful in here.
So thank you so much for listening, and thank you
Final Gravity for speaking with me.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
And I hope to see you on the other side
of this lovely interview.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Thank you. Good to hear you.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
I could see you as well. Now excellent, And we
have another guest here. This is a surprise. I didn't
know if I was going to get to Thank you
so much for joining me, Melissa.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Three or four, depending on people's a bila trying for
the whole band.

Speaker 4 (01:35):
We'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Okay, that sounds fantastic. I'm glad you could join me.
And how are things going for you? You were all on
Pacific time this morning?

Speaker 4 (01:44):
Yep, yes, yeah, we're on the area.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Excellent. How is it going out there?

Speaker 1 (01:49):
I as we record this, the fires are still going
and I know it's affecting a lot out there. This
is just totally unprecedented.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah, I live, sorry, I live right here in the Pacific Palisades.
I'm in Santa Monica. So last week actually, uh, the
closest to evacuation zone is only about three blocks away
from my place.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
So looking a little dicey for a while. So thankfully
we're okay.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
But yeah, I mean those people have lost their homes,
a lot of people disrupted by it, so it's pretty
terrible overall.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, it always depends on which way those winds blow,
and you just like just hope against all the hope
that they would just die down for christ I mean,
for gosh, you really wish it would be over with definitely.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
That's the one thing with mother nature though.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
You know, we kind of experienced the aftermath of hurricanes
around here. Now we're getting snowstorms here in January twenty
twenty five, which is very unusual for us in the
Southeast at least, as you know, there's a point where
it's over and this kind of thing. It's just this
continuing nightmare. So I feel for everybody out there, it's
just your worst nightmare.

Speaker 4 (02:59):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Absolutely, So if you'd like to get started, that would
be fine. I could admit somebody else in here, John
is joining us, okay, because I let them in there,
and we'll see John come up here in a minute.
And I could just tell all of us what role
you play in the band and how this all came about.

(03:24):
I really think this is interesting because I'm looking at
the website and you got just like these really cool
covers to your album projects here, And just how does
that get chosen?

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Is that a democratic process in the band.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Let's say you want to answer that one or anybody
could jump in any time you want.

Speaker 5 (03:46):
Everything gets decided over a Beer usually he's.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
A record beer and or other spirits.

Speaker 5 (03:57):
Yeah, but on the Spirits. But now, yeah, it's definitely
everyone has an input and it usually just evolves organically
and naturally, like is the way it has always seemed
to be, where it's like we'll sort of be saying, okay,
this is the idea. And so like the first the

(04:20):
other album prior to this one, Surviving Humanity, where we've
got the the Icebergs, we had a guy Eric what's
his last name, say, Eric Center, Yeah, Eric Senner sorry,
and he's a really great artist, and he we told
him what our concept for the album was, and he

(04:40):
came to us with like four different things and we
sat over some beers and looked through this with him,
and it was it was pretty unanimous, but we all
put our votes in and that's how that one started
to evolve into being that one with Storm Chain, similar

(05:01):
where Charles actually headed this quite a bit with a
lot of good ideas, but again like presenting different ideas
and then we all kind of like put our votes
in and just kind of naturally coming to this agreement
that yeah, that feels right. So it was always going
with that gut instinct.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
You know, yeah, Yeah, it's just beautiful.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
I love that photography and the struggle on the iceberg.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's like a little tug of war.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Somebody's going in there surviving. It is just a really
symbolic just a beautiful photograph and obviously probably uh enhanced
with photo shop, but it's just absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
It's really really nice. But you're yeah, I was.

Speaker 5 (05:46):
So impressed when I saw it. It was kind of like, absolutely,
that's what it has to be.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
So you have an exciting new project, Stormchaser, which is
just a really nice collection of tracks.

Speaker 6 (05:59):
Here.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
How did how did this come about Stormchase, or what
was the original idea for it.

Speaker 6 (06:05):
There's a lot going on we had We started working
on some of this material way back during the pandemic.
I think in La we've even got the fires going
on right now. I think in La there's always a
little bit of chaos, and I think as a band,
we're always trying to look for the positives and survive them.
We're never like a downer band, or we never try

(06:25):
to look at the dark, depressing into things. We always
try to look for the standing up and rising against
and overcoming. So I think a little bit of the
artwork that Charles put together for the album cover and
the name. You know, I think we were just trying
to say that, you know, we're ready to take things
head on and when we're gonna nothing's gonna get in
our way. And we're actually not just sitting back, you know,

(06:46):
along for the ride, but we really want to kind
of you know, grab the you know, take the lead.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, And as a band, it sounds like it's pretty
a democratic process that you were all really unequal. It's
so much different than a solo act where you got
the band supporting the solo artists, and you know, that's
a whole different dynamic. So it sounds like it's all
equal parts. As far as a project like this comes together.

Speaker 6 (07:14):
We all share. Yeah. I think everything from the songwriting
to deciding which gigs we're going to play, to anything
is it's usually a pretty democratic, like you said, democratic process,
and everybody contributes to. I mean everybody has special skills
too that you know, anybody can kind of contribute in.
I actually work in the world of audio as an

(07:36):
audio engineer. Charles works is a video editor. Mike does
a lot with internet based products. Milita's really good with marketing.
So I'd like to think that each of us have
some special unique talents we can bring to the table.
But even that, you know, we always run all our
ideas past each other. No one ever just sort of says,
this is my thing and I'm doing it my way
if I'm in charge of this. But you know, we

(07:57):
all say, hey, we present an idea, Hey this is
where I'm running with this. What do you think? And
everybody always provides feedback and we welcome it. No one's
no one's very defensive about it.

Speaker 4 (08:05):
You know.

Speaker 6 (08:05):
We all let you know, we want when we want
to make things as good as we can and make
things better and better.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
So what's your role in the band is? And then
if anybody wants to jump in there as to who
plays what? Melissa is obviously the lead singer here, and
just describe your role in the band as to what
you do in instruments.

Speaker 6 (08:22):
You play, Charles, it's my mic on Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Looking good? I like that background?

Speaker 7 (08:32):
All right? Uh, well, I'm the bass player.

Speaker 8 (08:34):
Obviously I write a little bit on guitar, a little
bit on keyboards, but primarily if I bring an idea
to the band, it's on bass. I'll have ideas like Hey, Mike,
could you play something like this? Or John, I'm thinking
a drum thing like this, or Melissa, maybe the vocal
melody goes like this.

Speaker 7 (08:51):
But it's completely collaborative.

Speaker 8 (08:52):
It's like that's just a starting point or a jumping
off point. And I think everybody has sort of that
same collaborative effort when they bring something into the band
or collaborative spirit. I mean, it's just like, hey, here's
something to start on. What can we make out of it?
So it's not really as you mentioned er, is it
Robert or Bob?

Speaker 1 (09:11):
You can call me Bob Okay, Bob, Yeah, has my
formal name there.

Speaker 8 (09:18):
Definitely not. It's not a solo project. It's not a
vanity project for any one person. I mean, we're very
much collaborative. Additionally, as John mentioned, my career is in
post production.

Speaker 7 (09:32):
I'm an assistant editor at the moment.

Speaker 8 (09:33):
I've edited almost all of our music videos that you
see on YouTube. My girlfriend shoots a lot of video
for us that I edit. And also I did the
artwork for Stormchaser, the front cover or back cover, the layout,
everything except the photo of the band on the interior.

Speaker 7 (09:50):
Do you have all the artwork?

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Bob, I just have the covers here. I don't have
like the inside artwork.

Speaker 7 (09:55):
Bummer.

Speaker 8 (09:56):
Well, i'll send you that at some point, hopefully during
this In fact, if you guys will let me pull
back for a moment, I'll see if I can send
it over.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
And I'm a video editor too by trade in the daytime,
so I totally understand though what not to talk too
much shop here?

Speaker 2 (10:11):
But what system do you added on?

Speaker 8 (10:14):
Well, I'm a Windows guy at home, I'm a Mac
guy at work. At home, I go back and forth
between Avid and Premiere depending on how I feel that
project at work. It's Premiere right now. It's been Avid
before Final Cut, way back in the day, before they
nerved it.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, Final Cut pro.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Really it became a more consumer product that used to
be good way back in the day.

Speaker 8 (10:39):
I also touch on Resolve a little bit, but mainly
for color and transcoding.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah that sounds good.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
You're heavily into it, and there's a lot that can
go into it, but yeah, you go down this whole
rabbit hole. I do Premiere in after effects and it's
totally endless, but that's the video part.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
But yeah, nice videos on you two that you have Thanks.

Speaker 7 (11:02):
Yeah, I'm gonna pop out from it and Finma.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah and whoever else.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
If Melissa, if you'd like to tell us how you
got into the band, how that all came about, and uh,
it's a it's a pretty unique story how you became
the lead singer of this band.

Speaker 9 (11:16):
Yeah, it's very so the very very beginnings of it
are what I found out later.

Speaker 5 (11:26):
I didn't even know this. Like initially, was that Gravity
opened for my all female led Zeppelin tribute band at
this place called Weber's in where's it West Hollywood, somewhere
right and Rosa Rosita was it? It's not there anymore anyways.

(11:51):
John had a solo project that he was working on
and he thought, oh, she'd be really good to sing
on my solo project. And actually center package out to
that venue with a proposal saying like, hey, you know,
I think you're a really good singer. You should sing
on my solo album thing. And you know I could

(12:13):
give you studio time because John has a he had
has a few really beautiful studios where he does recording.
And I thought, oh, it sounds that sounds great, and
so I did. I recorded it was called Fire, Wildfire

(12:34):
called a Wildfire, and so then I I did that,
and then the return favor ended up being that I
was in another band, a metal band called Sin, and
I needed a drummer because our drummer had basically, you know,
taken on a new career and he just wasn't going

(12:55):
to be available. And I said to John, well, you
played drums, do you want to like fell in for
my band Sin. It's like okay, And he did that
and it went really well and we really we hit
it off like that. And so then obviously John had
his own band, Final Gravity, but I didn't really hear

(13:17):
too much about them until I left the country and
I went to Australia for like a few miles there
for like a couple of months actually, and they contact
me and say oh hey, or John contacts me it says, hey,
I have this gig opening for Fates Warning. And our
singer did the same thing that the drummer of Sin

(13:39):
did where it's like a new career. He's like, I'm
going across the country and not going to be around anymore.
Would you be able to learn our whole album in
about a week and do this show? And I said, possibly.
The only dilemma is I'm in another country right now,
and I'll probably be in the US three days before

(14:01):
this said show. But I kind of jumped in and
I'm like, sure, you know what, let's do it. And
it was a big hit. It was It was so fun,
it was so great. I love the songs I live
in a week that I loved learning them in a week.
And we did it and we got a really good
response from everyone and had just a blast. And after that,

(14:26):
basically John and I were like, Hey, would you like
to be the permanent musician of my band? And It's
like sure? And would you like to be the permanent
musician of my band? It's like sure, And so we
kind of like made this kind of you know, alliance
that we were we were going to like bolster each
other in the music.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, and the rest is history.

Speaker 6 (14:50):
I guess.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
In your background's interesting.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
You got the opera training, which I think does get
you for the type of music. This milange sounds that
you have is just perfect and it kind of has
this steady lee vibe to it.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
It's really interesting.

Speaker 5 (15:08):
Well, what's interesting is that so I did opera really young.
I did like opera scholarship, and I was like in
high school, and I actually learned all my singing because
and I got into gospel, and I got into all
these other forms of singing because of doing opera, because
I wanted to be able to expand beyond that and

(15:29):
have like more mouldability and capability of being able to
do anything and everything. And so the opera did help.
But it's funny, it kind of helped in a funny
way where it pushed me into these other dimensions of singing.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
You know, yeah, yeah, it really does. It's a perfect fit.
So you're coming together putting an album like this together.
How do the songs get constructed? Are you doing a
lot of the lyric writing? I know that's very tough
to do do lyrics and put melody to it. How
are these tracks coming together as far as like when

(16:05):
you start and you germinate the idea for each track.

Speaker 5 (16:10):
It's a combined forces thing, like like Mike did the
lyrics for a Planet Earth and then I put my
kind of feel and vibe to it, but that was
sort of his construction. But then songs like Story of
Forever was one where the guys actually wrote it to

(16:32):
be an instrumental song, and I heard it and I
could hear these pockets within the song that I like
and just the way I wrote the lyrics and the
malady for that, and it just kind of flowed. It
was something I could I couldn't help but hear and
I presented it and because originally they were very solid

(16:54):
that that was his mental song and I think it's
one of the best songs, and so it just appears right,
and so you go with Again, it's always that gut
feeling and feeling it out. But Mike does a lot
of lyrics and Charles contributes to He gave me, you know,

(17:15):
little suggestions for the d that I took on. But yeah,
again it's like always collaborative, and I think that's what
makes a real band.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah, it seems like yeah, I mean, I'm sorry to
jump in. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
I mentioned the song Planet Earth earlier, which is kind
of what kicked off the CP. So Planet Earth was
saw that I wrote probably back in the late late nineties.
It was, you know, really about kind of environmental issues,
and you know, the sort of story of you know,
we screw up the Earth so bad that we basically
have to leave the planet to find another home to
colonize and eventually come back. And really interesting because the

(17:55):
movie Interstellar just had its tenth anniversary and it took
my son to see it at the Chinese Dare and
Imax out here, and it's like, I'm not saying that
they stole the idea for me, but they're no. But
seriously that in the movie Wally both had similar themes,
and you know when I wrote at the time, it
was like, you know, hearing these warnings of someday in
the future, there may be a thing like this, and

(18:17):
more and more we're starting to see these things playing
out where you know, these fires here in La it's like,
and we have two entire regions of Los Angeles that
are mostly on Cific Palisades and Alta Dina, and so
it's like kind of scary that we just put this
song out and it's like a lot of the like
warnings leading up to a story you're kind of ending
up started coming true. So kind of back to my

(18:40):
main point, it's like that sort of kicked it off,
and that was a song that I did write, but
John had the idea like, well, let's get together and
you're like this one day's session down at his studio,
we had engineer Chris Henry come in and kind of
engineer and produce the sessions that day and we got
a roll.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
A good outcome.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
And so even though it was sort of my song,
I think, you know, starting with that that session, it
really kind of was a collaborative effort of arranging it
recording it one day. And that's also what led us
to work with Rich Mauser, our producer, because we had
a mixed it. Because he was on our radar, we
took the song to him. We actually sat there with
him during the next session. He did a fantastic job
on it. S like, yeah, I think this might be
the guy who produced the other songs on the EP.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Rich also work for with Tears for Fears And I'm
not sure which project that he worked with Tears for
Affairs on, but yeah, that name does ring a bell.

Speaker 8 (19:31):
Yeah, I looked it up on discogs and it had
something to do with some bonus tracks on their Greatest
Hits album, But I don't really I forgot to ask him.

Speaker 6 (19:40):
Yeah, you know some of his discovery What are some
of the other projects that Rich has worked on. He's
in our genre and sort of that like rocke Ish kind.

Speaker 8 (19:48):
Of let's see Neil Morrispan Transatlantic, Low Baight Scarp who
are we know those guys personally, And.

Speaker 6 (19:59):
I was working with like Mike Mike Portnoy from My
Dream Theater lots.

Speaker 7 (20:01):
Of times he was.

Speaker 8 (20:04):
I'm pretty sure he was a member of that band
Oleander back in the nineties. He was a guitarist and songwriter, engineer,
producer guy for them. So he's been around the block
a long time. But he seems to be doing mainly
progressive rock albums these days. I'm not sure if that's
I mean, he's clearly got an interest in the genre
and he's good at it. I don't know if that
was when he got into music where he saw himself going,

(20:26):
but he's definitely taken that ball and run with it.
So he's you know, he's a great guy. And it
just kills me that his studio is gone. And his
studio was also his house. It's like he had a
big two story drum room, mixing kitchen, all the stuff
downstairs for the band, but he had his own private
second story you know, bedroom and sweet and everything up

(20:49):
there where he and his wife lived, and the whole
thing's burned down. So not only is his studio gone
and all the awesome vintage gear he had, but his
house is gone too, So I mean, geez, I feel bad.
We shared some some links to his Kickstarter, so we.

Speaker 6 (21:05):
Both, I guess we feel very fortunate that, you know,
we had that opportunity to kind of at least create
our project in that studio before again, it just recently
got lost in the fires. But you know, it was
an awesome place and it was so cool about that
is we got to make a record old school scott
old school style. We went to one with demo tracks.
So here's the demos. He went through the demos, even

(21:26):
one of them he didn't particularly like. He goes, hey,
you know these are all feel in the little middle
of the road. Here you got something more upbeat, you know,
we pulled a different file up and he's like, yeah,
let's go with something more like that. I think that's
got more energy, which actually turns out to be our
opening track on the record. And then from there, you know,
we actually developed the songs a little bit more, went
to his studio to do all the recording, did all
the mixing, did all the mastering. And he doesn't just

(21:46):
do everything in the box. You know he's got you
had a great, big, you know, vintage Harrison console and
real outboard gear for reverbs and compressors and a real
plate reverb, and and he actually printed the mixes to
real to real tape. So I mean, this wasn't even
just day do a record the way they're done nowadays
and do it on on the low budget easy way.
I mean, we got we had an opportunity to kind

(22:07):
of work with a phenomenal engineer, producer, mixer, and and
work in a studio kind of what I think of
like the old school days. And I think what's kind
of great for a band like us, It really translates
more like what I call like an analog sound, you know.
I mean, you know a lot of our the bands
that we kind of pull a lot of our the

(22:28):
bands we grew up, and you know, we liked that
sort of you know sound where they sound like real instruments.
It doesn't sound like samples or everything's overprocessed or auto
tuned or digitized and edited to death and quantaized. So
you know, we wanted to. I mean, I think Rich
brought out the best of our musicianship, but you know,
I guess we wanted to sound like, you know, musicians

(22:48):
or a band.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Yeah, and I don't know if we mentioned it, but yeah,
Richards Howison's actually up in the hills of Altadena, so
we end up there probably like fifteen times between pre
production and recording sessions. So yeah, it was tragic because
he had a you know, beautiful location, beautiful house, incredible studio,
and we spent a lot of time up there. So
when you know, seeing the fires happen, you know for

(23:10):
several days like how we hope each his place is okay,
and unfortunately it wasn't. But you know, we were driving
by that entire neighborhood just multiple times. And even the uh,
the photo of us at the in the bar on
the artwork on our our album was actually taken at
the Altabina Wine and Ale House, which is right down
the hill from rich maybe about three quarters of a mile,
and that was sort of our home away from home

(23:32):
while we were out there. So yeah, it hits pretty
hard everything going on there.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Yeah, I got that photo, that's really really nice.

Speaker 6 (23:38):
Yeah, everything that revolves around there, sending sending Bob some
photos of us.

Speaker 4 (23:44):
At the studio.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah, Oh, that's just tragic and to hear about a
real to real I mean, I love that vintage equipment.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
It's just like, there's nothing like that. You'll make that
like that.

Speaker 6 (23:55):
It was pretty special.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah yeah, and you could tell that in the final
mix with with a lot of these songs, The Deep's
just you know, really beautiful and and really just edgy
with just very just like total energy. It's just great,
great thing to work out.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
To as well. It's got a lot to it.

Speaker 7 (24:14):
You know, several of us in the band are like huge,
huge Rush fans.

Speaker 8 (24:20):
Yeah, for whatever reason, we didn't set out to imitate
Rush at all, but I think it just gets into
your DNA. That song The Deep reminds me of an
older Rush song called Mike Oh Yeah, first song chorus
of Steel Besteel Steel Day. Yeah, it's got a little
bit of a vibe from Bestiel Day, just just a

(24:40):
little bit. And Rich was listening to the demo. He's like,
you're going for like an early Rush vibe on this,
and like, oh, this guy gets us. You know, It's
we weren't really going for it, but he pointed out.
I'm like, oh, yeah, that is really similar, isn't it not,
to the point of being a.

Speaker 7 (24:53):
Ripoff or or an imitation.

Speaker 8 (24:55):
You remember all those bands back in the eighties that
we're doing with Zeppelin ripoffs.

Speaker 7 (24:59):
I hope we're not that.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
But no, no, I know it's more of like you know,
kind of throwing shades of attributed, shades of tribute, and
then there's nothing wrong with it. Everybody drives off of something.
It's just everything just leads to one another. But yeah, once, like,
I'm sure record execs and our people probably say, hey,
that's working, let's get you to sound like this. I'm
sure that happens. So when the band started, I mean,

(25:24):
this started with Mike and Charles and it kind of
went from there. From the music Institute.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Well yeah, sorry, sorry, go ahead, min No, no, no,
that's fine, go ahead.

Speaker 8 (25:37):
Okay, I was saying there were actually two separate camps. Well,
I guess ultimately it's all everything revolves around Mike because
when he was growing up, he knew a keyboard player
named Steve camp Ptelly, and Steve moved out to he
went to Penn State, right, yep, yeah, okay, so he
moved out to Penn State.

Speaker 7 (25:55):
He's a keyboard player, and when he was there he met.

Speaker 8 (25:58):
John and Bill Bill who was our previous singer, and
so they had a group together. Meanwhile, Mike and I
met at Musicians Institute in Hollywood, and then ultimately, when
Bill and John decided to move out to La Mike
had already met them when he had gone to visit
his friend Steve. So it's kind of like the four
of us. You know, Hey, you're a guitarist, bass player, drummer,

(26:21):
there's a singer. Let's do some stuff. And there was
an aborted cover band for a while that we've learned
some songs and never played any shows, but we all.

Speaker 7 (26:29):
Still kind of stayed in touch. We were all still buddies.

Speaker 8 (26:31):
And there was a barbecue at John's backyard one time
and the four of us happened to all be there
at the same time, and somebody, my memory says it
was me, but I can't be trusted. Somebody said, hey,
we should try to do that band again, but this
time let's do our own music. And that was seventeen
years ago.

Speaker 7 (26:52):
So we've been pounding away at it on and off.

Speaker 8 (26:55):
We took a break in the early twenty tens for
about five six years, but yeah, came back together and
we're back at it again.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, it really shows good result.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
And Bill Moore went off to go and teach from
what I understand the reading the notes here.

Speaker 8 (27:16):
Yeah, I'm sure you to jump in and correct me
if I got any of the history wrong.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
Well, I just think to add, I think the barbecue
at John's place that was John's twins first birthday party,
I think, and I just had a kid as well,
you know, pretty much a new board at that point,
and so I think part of the motivation for John
and me was like, well, we're relatively new dads and
kind of dealing with the kids, and I guess we
had understanding the families to be able to kind of

(27:42):
sneak off the day a week and sort of rehearse
and hang out. So I think that was sort of
the impetus was initially more of a kind of a
social thing slash musical thing, but the longer we.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
Did it, the more serious we got.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
And I think after about a year we started a
gig and you know, gigging more and more regularly, and
then culminating in two thousand and nine with our data album,
the self titled.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
Final Gravity Album.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, and let listeners know, how does how did the
name Final Gravity come about.

Speaker 5 (28:10):
That's what I just wanted to interject, Like, wasn't part
of why you initially started the band was beer.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Start with beer.

Speaker 5 (28:22):
You can take it from there, but I remember beer,
Like everything.

Speaker 6 (28:25):
With our band starts and ends with beer.

Speaker 7 (28:28):
It was about.

Speaker 4 (28:29):
Fellowship of new fathers, and.

Speaker 5 (28:32):
It was formed so that there was a good reason
to drink beer. And you guys felt like like your
beer reviews, and you even had beer songs in that
first album.

Speaker 6 (28:45):
You know, Melissa's right. You know, actually when we really
started the band, we were we didn't have delusions of grandeur.
We weren't trying to make it. We were all friends,
you know. We were we were drinking buddies. We'd often
go out to a bunch of like you know, craft
beer places or beer festivals. And even when we started rehearsing,
and even with Melissa, we spend two hours rehearsing in
the garage and then spend two hours outside in the

(29:05):
patio drinking beers and smoking cigars and hanging out. So
we were friends, you know, we weren't just trying to
make it, you know, we were I think we were
creating music for the right reasons. We were good friends.
A lot of the same musical influences, we enjoyed hanging
out with each other, so all that kind of evolved.
But yeah, I mean we definitely a beer is definitely

(29:25):
a little weaving interweaving, kind of a little theme. But Mike,
why don't you be given the specific story on how
where final Gravity comes from.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
Yeah, so given that kind of origin story, we of
course had something referring to alcohol. So our initial name
was going to be Amendment twenty one, which is the
constitutional amendment that repealed prohibition.

Speaker 4 (29:45):
And so we're like, yeah, that's really cool.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
And after a few months we're like, oh, there's another
band that has albums called Amendment twenty one. So back
to the drawing board. Well, I got really into craft
beer and homebrewing and to the point where actually became
a certified beer judge back in the two thousands.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
And kind of drag Charles into the beer world as well.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
So we're both super into it, and so you know,
as we were kind of like thinking of a new name,
you know, I was kind of running out some brewing terms,
and the term final gravity kind of resonate with everyone,
and final gravity it's basically a measurement of the density
of fermented beer or fermented alcohol relative to the density
of water. There's also a term original gravity, which is

(30:26):
before you ferment it. So the difference between original gravity
and final gravity is basically will be an indicator of
the alcohol content.

Speaker 4 (30:33):
So we like that. And then you know, with Bill being.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
A scientist and you know, all of them is really
being kind of science geeks, we're like, well, there's some
double meanings there too, including you know, think about a
black hole. A black hole, if you go through it
be the final gravity you ever encounter, which is kind
of cool that the new album cover kind of alludes
to that. And you know, we still like the beer connection,
but I think we're trying to maybe de emphasize that
a little.

Speaker 4 (30:55):
Bit and lean in on maybe one of the alternative meanings.

Speaker 6 (30:58):
That just sounds badass.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, I like the great.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah, and it's interesting the fonts that you use, like
on four Pack, it's just how does that get decided?
Who's deciding like the kind of font placement that you have.

Speaker 6 (31:17):
I think you did a lot of the artwork for that, Yeah,
four Pack.

Speaker 8 (31:19):
I also did the artwork for the cover of that,
but I did take the band name from the previous album,
which my friend Eric, or I should say our friend Eric.

Speaker 7 (31:30):
He's a graphic designer.

Speaker 8 (31:31):
He did the packaging for our first album and also
for Surviving Humanity. So the element that carried over from
the first album to four Pack, just the logo was
his design that I did everything else on it.

Speaker 6 (31:45):
By the way, beer drinking friends just want to point
that out.

Speaker 8 (31:48):
Yeah, another beer friend and that on the cover of
four Pack, that is Melissa.

Speaker 7 (31:52):
I made her go out to the beach and carry
a little four.

Speaker 8 (31:54):
Pack of beer prop that I made and took a
bunch of pictures, and then there's the cover.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Beautiful and carrying that four pack looks great.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
I like the jewelry on and all. That's all the
accouterments there. That's very nice.

Speaker 4 (32:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
So on the new album, you got some really interesting
tracks here, and one that really really screams gettyly to
me is the story of Forever. It really just harkens
back to that and just has that really deep vibe
to it.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah. I really enjoyed that one.

Speaker 6 (32:34):
What's that Do you want to maybe tell them a
little bit about that one?

Speaker 8 (32:38):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (32:38):
Well, yeah, I sort of said earlier that that song
was meant to be an instrumental story of Forever, and
it spoke to me. It just screamed at me, you know,
and coming up I did, and coming up with the
words was like so natural. It's like it just flowed

(33:01):
like effortlessly, and it's about it's about sort of that samsara, like,
you know, the cycle of life. You just keep going
through cycles and cycles, and you know, hopefully you're evolving
a little each time you go through the cycle, like
you know, like a spiral, or you get stuck, you know,

(33:25):
and you can't get out right, And so it's it's
that questioning, you know, are you stuck in the story
of forever or are you evolving from the story of
forever into your transcending. That's what it speaks to me.
But the sounds of it also spoke to me, where
it just felt like all those sounds were very natural.

(33:48):
But Rich added a lot of like elements to it
beyond what we had done it when we demoed it originally,
and so he added these little kind of colors. So
there's that little section was that where it's between the

(34:09):
choruses and the verses, and I think that sounds really cool.
And even the bridge pot in the middle, Like, originally
that was going to be more intense and higher, and
he kind of like moved it into more of this
like kind of like flowiness, and I think it was
a beautiful balance of what our original idea was then produced.

Speaker 6 (34:35):
Yeah, our producer Rich Malser definitely had a great amount
of input in taking the ideas we had and really
helped bring them to life and and and take the
stuff fither. But we actually did something a little different
for this record than we've ever done before. Most of
the times in the past we've we've recorded a song
and then after you record it, you play it live
and you're like, oh, you know, and the more times
you play it live, the more I don't know it's

(34:56):
the word you sort of digest it or own it,
and then you'll like, oh, if we only got to
record it, we got you know, I wish we could
do a little bit more like this, or man, you know,
we could have this, this song could have become a
better song to have played live if we just maybe
gave this a little bit more fourth more fourth thought.
But what we did this time is we actually took
all the songs that we went to the recording studio
to record, and before we went to go record them,

(35:19):
we actually went and played them live. So we played
a show for at the Whiskey of Go Go in Hollywood,
and we actually played these songs, basically unreleased songs. And
the coolest part for us was we kind of almost
learned what worked or what didn't work, you know, what
went over with the crowd or what kind of fell
a little bit flat. So we sort of developed the
songs a whole bunch by the time we went to
the studio. And then again working with a producer like

(35:39):
Rich Mauser. He, as Charles mentioned, I think he got
us and I think we had the songs so well developed.
He's like, now, let me help bring this up to
the whole, you know, the whole next level for you,
and you know, help me. He was able to sort
of construct, you know, a real song out of out
of out of the idea he or he really kind
of brought it to life for us. So that was

(35:59):
the That was a pretty interesting process for us, first
time we've ever done that.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, so you could really feel that from the audience,
you know, playing something totally not even recorded yet, but
you're kind of like testing it out on them and
I think that's an interesting thing. I know a lot
of artists do that, but I think that really kind
of translates well, like Okay, yeah this works, that doesn't work.
You get a producer together and you kind of figure

(36:23):
it out from there. I think that's an interesting process.

Speaker 6 (36:27):
That was fun.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (36:28):
I think we really trusted Rich a lot too, So
like we went into that whole recording session and working
with a producer where it was like, Okay, we've gotten
it to here, let's not get attached and just do
with it as you wish. And so we gave him

(36:50):
really like free range. Not that he like slaughtered the
songs or anything, but I think just having that energy
of like the openness and trust meant that he could
fully unleash he's creativity too, because sometimes you can get
a little bit too controlling or attached to something you've created.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Right.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
I think Story Forever it is the first one we
started working on with him, right, but that was our
first pre production session.

Speaker 8 (37:18):
It was Yeah, Rich had a very interesting way of working.
That's why he gets an arranger credit on the album,
because he would listen to the demo and then just
kind of sit at the control panel with some mini
surfaces and essentially build the song up again from scratch
using drum programming, and he would have Mic sit there
and play some scratch guitar parts, and so it's like

(37:41):
he listened to our demo and he goes, okay, so
now let's start over completely and build it up again.

Speaker 7 (37:48):
In this way, he had it all in pro tools and.

Speaker 8 (37:50):
He could move it around, shuffle it and deal with
it and change things and extend things, shorten things that
he I guess he wouldn't have been able to do
if we had just set up and played live in
the studio to record the demo. And it was a
little off putting, I'll say it first, because we're just
kind of sitting in the room watching him work, and

(38:10):
we're looking at each other going do we.

Speaker 7 (38:12):
Have any input in this? But it turns out it
was actually that's his method.

Speaker 8 (38:16):
And then as soon as he gets a skeleton, or
at least the framework, then it becomes more collaborative and
things like what if you guys tried this and we
would say, oh, but we like this part, and you know,
then we would build it up together. But the songs changed,
It's like they didn't really change they're still recognizable, but
the song's changed either a small amount or, in the
case of far Away, a large amount. That song used

(38:39):
to be twice as long and it had more parts
in it, and he just.

Speaker 7 (38:41):
Kind of listened to it. He goes, these parts aren't
speaking to me. Can we take them out?

Speaker 8 (38:46):
And you know, it's kind of like an editing you
have to kill your children, right, Sometimes your favorite bits
don't work for the overall movie. So you wind up going, Okay,
I guess we can just put that back in the
parts bend, and maybe we'll use it again someday.

Speaker 7 (38:58):
Maybe not. Sorry, I keep looking up because my screen's bay.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
That is so true in the editing process, to whether
it's audio or video, and you hear demos like many
years later on anybody's projects, it's like, wow, it's like
there was all this other stuff there and we just
nixed it out for the initial release. But yeah, I mean,
I think it is kind of like more of a
gut instinct. I know that as a storyteller myself. It's

(39:24):
just like, you know, some things just just don't feel right,
and so that's how you make those decisions.

Speaker 8 (39:30):
And it's great to have an impartial outside sort of authority.
I guess telling you, you know, let's lose that. If
we decided to fight him, I think we would have
had a different experience. But we thought about it, I
think in the moment, and it's just like, yeah, he's
totally right. We're trying to jam too much into this
tune or there's just not enough of this part.

Speaker 4 (39:52):
That's good.

Speaker 7 (39:52):
Maybe we should repeat that song.

Speaker 8 (39:54):
You know, he really helped the songs take the form
that they have you hear on the recording. If we
had produced that ourselves, it would not have sounded like that,
and I think it would not have been as good.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah, you got to put that on that producer.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
I think with with Far Away, that probably is arguably
the one that changed the most, and that was actually,
you know, pretty much on everything we put out. One
of our favorite bands, particularly Charles Means, the band King Zax.
In fact, when we met, Charles put up an added
musicians institute saying guitarists wanted and one of the influences
included was King Sex.

Speaker 4 (40:27):
I'm like, oh, I got to call this guy. So yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Think they're on their second album at that point or anyway,
so you know, I had kind of written a lot
of what the former version of Far Away was called
Velvet while Prison, and I wrote a lot of it,
and it was very in the king Zax realm. Especially
the chorus, which is one of the things we dropped.
It was very you know, kind of groovy, king sexy,
and I think with Rich that was one part that

(40:53):
got dropped. We did kind of take a pre chorus.
It was almost like an interstitial part, and that became
the new chorus, and then had a rift that had
been kind of sitting around, and we kind of use
that for that big bridge part where we're doing the
kind of guitar solo and drum films and all that.
And again, you know, as Charles said it, at first,
it was a lot of putting because I'm like, wow,
this has really changed a lot. But then kind of

(41:13):
thinking about it, it's like it still has that kind
of king sex vibe to it, but it doesn't sound
as much like we're just kind of aping kings x
or whatever. So I think you helped us still kind
of retain that character but make it sound a little
more like us, maybe a little less like you know,
so the bands were influencing us there.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah, Wow, that's it really comes in.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
Another track that really gets to me is Automatic Pilot,
and that just like how it starts off slow and
then very lifts up and heavy and you feel that bass.
It's just I like that that crescendo. It's I'm sure
that's something that you'd all kind of come to and
we're like, Wow, this could be really amazing. I like

(41:53):
songs that just lift up like that.

Speaker 7 (41:56):
Oh, John, you want to talk about that one.

Speaker 6 (41:57):
Well, I'm I agree with you. I'm a big fan
of the songs that kind of like lift up like that.
I mean, I like a chorus that really kind of
like pops and and you know, Rich was kind enough
to kind of like listen to our idea how we
wanted to give this kind of I don't call it
a poppy, but you know, hookey kind of like chorus
to it. And you know, we definitely wanted to have
a little bit more space during the verses that just

(42:18):
kind of like vibed a little bit, because sometimes you know,
it's it's really hard to you know, I mean, we
we appreciate dynamics and if everything's loud, nothing's loud, right,
So you know, we definitely want to have a little
bit of space with the with the verses, and Rich
our producer, really introduced us to the idea of like
hitting What was the work he used, Mike, was it
called accents elements.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Events?

Speaker 4 (42:40):
Well, we talked about events and that's.

Speaker 6 (42:41):
The way it events. So yeah, you know, rich Mousers say, hey,
look I love all the space app here, but let's
stick this cool little like punch of this little accent
here and make it interesting so it doesn't sit flat.
So it was really fun just the whole evolution of that.
And and lyrically, we were just trying to come up
with something too, I mean, specifically the lyrics are. I mean,
I really appreciated that anyone listens to a song and

(43:03):
they can interpret it to be whatever they want it
to be. But I was almost trying to write some
of those lyrics, which I wrote some of those lyrics
a long time ago. It was about on the plight
of the inner city, and you know, some lyrics about
like I can see your screams, I'm scribbled on the walls,
talking about like the graffiti and and and how cities
used to be these you know, bustling metropolis and a

(43:24):
lot of them like I don't know, I mean so sad.
And you see cities like Detroit or other places that
you know, were these once you know, dominating places that
just sort of got forgotten about and they kind of like,
you know, fall apart and people keep looking for someone
to save them from it. But I wanted that also
to sound you know, kind of like you know, anybody
can put a personal attachment to that too. So that's

(43:47):
a little bit of the thought process that if you
kind of don't pay attention to things, if you don't
stay on top of things, and you just get lazy
and complacent, you know, you might just wake up one
day and all of a sudden everything just kind of
fell apart and you sort of didn't maintain it. So
it's sort of that little reminder of you know, hey,
you know, pay attention, you know, notice care, you know,
be in the moment. So that's a little bit of
the thought process behind that.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Yeah, I like that question and answer kind of response
in there too, just feels like something unique and different
that you you know, hear in many tracks.

Speaker 6 (44:18):
Well, I appreciate you said that. I mean, that's one
of the things we actually do put a little bit
of effort into is trying to make all the songs
we write different. And we, as we were mentioning earlier,
we do do a lot of collaborative writing. We often
literally all four of us sit in the same room
and like jam ideas. I mean, we just sit there
and hash it out, and then once in a while,
somebody brings a little riff and we just kind of

(44:38):
work on that and jam it and see what happens.
And Melissa sometimes we'll just like vamp you know, baby
talk lyrics on top of it, or make believe words
just to kind of come up with a rhythm or
a melody, and we kind of, you know, let some
things evolve, but we specific and when we're writing, though,
we will sometimes say, hey, let's not do that. We've
already done that before. We've we've done that a few

(44:58):
different times. Let's go a different area. So we actually
do put a little bit of effort into making our songs.
I mean, we want to have our own sound, but
we don't want every song to sound the same. That's
a pet peeve of mine. I hate getting a record
by a band and I just heard nine versions of
the same song, so you know, so we really try
to as much as I don't know if we have

(45:20):
a sound, but I mean, I guess we are who
we are, but we definitely want to show off as
many flavors or as many colors as we can.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Yeah, and you all come to this band with other
talents outside of music, which is very helpful, especially when
it comes to marketing, and I know Melissa has been
very big into that doing working with Universal, doing those
kind of things. So I mean that's definitely got to
help as far as getting that word out there as
to what you're doing.

Speaker 5 (45:53):
We're working on it, but yeah, it's all of it
helps where we can we can do a lot of
the work and create the foundations and so that then
when we are reaching out to external resources, we've already

(46:15):
kind of got that game plan or like a foundation
for people to expand upon. So like like employing Windy,
she's someone that's been helping us to promote this album,
and it helps that we can put together like a
solid ePK where you're not they're not sort of like

(46:36):
scrambling to find out all the information about you. But
because I know how to do that, and we know
how to do all these different steps and Child's can
create all the graphics and things like that that are needed,
and all of these things are really important if you
want to be able to be in the music business,
not just the music creation.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Right, Yeah, it's beyond just simply creating. You've got to
get that word out and know how to work with
all that.

Speaker 5 (47:05):
That's right, That's right.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, that's very very very big.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
And then that translates into where you make the moneys
on the road. So how are your plans shaping up
for future touring.

Speaker 6 (47:19):
Well, we've been talking a little bit. You know, one
of the things we have never really done. We've always
played more Final Gravity has always played a little bit
more local. We've always played in the LA area, And
I think this is we sort of got a little
inspired from this little EP package that we thought, you know,
it'd really be kind of cool that we were finally
talking about the idea of maybe going on the road
for a little bit and doing some like little week

(47:42):
long stints, maybe opening up for a band of like
a similar genre and kind of like partnering up a
little bit. So up till now, we've done so many
shows that are like one offs, and here in Los
Angeles there are great venues to play. And you know,
we've played the Viper Room, and we played The Whiskey
of Go Go, and we played this great new venue
out in a Lancaster called a trans Plants Brewing, big stage,
great place. But you know, everything we've done up till

(48:03):
now has definitely been the LA market. And I think
this is the first time we've really kind of seriously
considered the idea of disappearing for a little bit and
trying to do some extended shows and and maybe you know, again,
we we love the idea to maybe partner up with
somebody else that has a similar kind of game plan
that we do and maybe like be an opening band
for them. So I guess we're in the baby steps

(48:26):
of that. So we'll see where that evolves.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, hopefully we could see that and you get outside
of LA and expand your horizons. So yeah, hopefully for
the future it can really do that. It's nice to
be on the socials and people can discover you that
way as well, but nothing like seeing you live.

Speaker 6 (48:48):
And we enjoy playing live, I mean, and that that's
fun for us. I mean, I think that's a comfortable
place for us. And what's really fun too or one
of the things I've been personally proud about. We've often
played some shows as an opening band where the majority
of the crowd possibly didn't know us right, you know,
especially in LA, sometimes you're playing a night where there's
four or five bands on the bill, and you know,

(49:09):
they're often showing up for the headliner, or they're showing
up for their friends, and it's really fun when we
get to win people over. I think Melissa's got a
great stage presence. I think she really feels comfortable. I mean,
there's there's some bands that just go up on stage
and perform, but I think we really try to connect
with the crowd and that's important to us, and we're
really trying. We're excited about our music and we're trying

(49:30):
to expose it to people. And it's so exciting when
the fans resonate to it because if you look up
and you see them kind of responding to it, and
you almost see the surprise look or people you know,
nodding their head. That gets you inspired and when you're
inspired to start playing even better. And it's that whole
exciting energy you share, which you can only get in
a live environment. So it's fun to record, it's fun
to listen to it. You know. It's great that there's

(49:52):
YouTube and all these other social media platforms, but there's
still nothing like a live rock show.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah, and having somebody like Melissa really help.

Speaker 5 (50:01):
Oh thanks, But we actually love performing, like performing is
one of our specialties. I know that there's some bands
where they're like, oh god, performing whether they get nervous
or no, that's not really our deal. Our deal is
like performing is fun, it's fantastic, and the more we

(50:22):
can do it, the better. So I think that's a
good things.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
And you also have that TV presence too.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
You have a little bit of a background with that
as well, so I'm sure that that helps, not just
being photogenic, videogenic as well, which translates into the audience
really connecting.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
I think that really helps.

Speaker 5 (50:44):
I'm definitely comfortable on stage, probably more comfortable on stage
than in like real life, but yeah, I did TV hosting,
but even before, well then there's just something about once
you're on that stage, it's it's a different world, right,

(51:08):
you tap into now the world and nothing else matters,
Like your problems are gone, you're right, whatever, whatever, it does,
nothing exists except in this moment. It's it's one of
the greatest ways to be present and in the now,
I think, and you know, that's what a lot of
us strive to do, like through like meditation and all

(51:31):
these things. And for me, like the greatest meditation is
to just sing and perform live.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Yeah, it's su true.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Bruce Springsteen said that, you know, I wish I was
that guy up on stage all the time.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
It's like, it's funny how you look at that.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Yeah, and then you know, coming off stage, and that's
where it translates into that too, It's like, yeah, how
do you come down off of that?

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Like, you know, all these people have their attention on
me for something.

Speaker 6 (51:58):
That's actually easy for us because most venues we plan
have a bar and there's plenty of beer, so we're
fine off stage two.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
There's the common denominator beer.

Speaker 6 (52:09):
You've noticed.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
It all all points lead back to that, from songwriting
all the way to the final mix and touring.

Speaker 6 (52:16):
It's we just call a liquid inspiration.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Yeah, But getting back to that closing track, that's the
parting shot, right, especially what's going on with La now.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
It's just like you know about.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Survival and what we're doing to plan on Earth and
they're gonna be talking about this for centuries, I'm sure
as to what happened, And of course the blame game
and the finger pointing always goes on there.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
But that's just it's.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Kind of interesting how that's all come about, How you
have that kind of a track and it's coinciding with
everything happening now.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
Yeah, and it's scary because I mean you look at
like recent hurricanes, and there've been probably three or for like,
just really incredibly devastating ones over the past few years.
There's the fires here Paradise, California, other areas, and you know,
I feel like with these recent disasters for the past
five years, in particular luckily aftermath, and it looks like

(53:15):
a nuclear weapon went off. You know, it's like these
aren't like old school fires, old school hurricanes, which are
incredibly destructive. These are like totally destructive, and they're getting
more frequent, they're getting worse, and you know, these are
things we've been getting warned about for a while, like
if we don't change our ways, this will happen, and
now it is happening, and I think, you know, we're
a long way from literally having to leave the planet,

(53:37):
but you know, I think collectively humanity kind of leads
to get us back together, or we could actually get
there at some point.

Speaker 6 (53:43):
Well again, you know, Mike had actually written this song
a whole bunch of years ago, and we'd never sort
of incorporated into our set or we'd never recorded it before,
but it always resonated with me. And the cool thing too,
I mean I remember a long time too, you know,
when I was studying music, they're saying, hey, if you
want to get your message across all the time, we
can't just scream it. And so what was kind of
neat was you know, Final Gravity had never done a

(54:04):
ballad before. I mean, this is almost a very acoustic based,
acoustic guitar based kind of song, and I think, you know,
there is a great message in there to be heard.
So I think that was fun for us to do
an acoustic kind of song, give a chance for that
story telling to come true, come come through. You know. Again,
Melissa did a great job interpreting you know, the message

(54:26):
in the vocals that you know that the listener can
really get to it. And it was fun for Charles
and Mike and myself to kind of do an acoustic thing.
And as we were mentioning earlier. We did most of
this record with the producer Rich Mauser, but this one song,
this was even before we specifically set out to do
an EP. We actually were just sort of recording a
single and we reached out to a great engineer named

(54:47):
Chris Henry who's worked with the likes of you Two,
the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adele, some great people, and
we reached out to Chris said, hey, you know what
we want. We got this little project that we want
to do the song. But here's what we want to do.
We want to go to the studio and do the
whole song in one day. It's like, well, that's not
the way you do songs. I'm like yeah. But we
actually tracked it live. So we sat in the same
room with Mike playing guitar, Charles playing bass, Meet playing drums,

(55:11):
and Melissa singing, all four of us, four human beings
in the room playing the song live together. Now, we
did go in and do some overdubs, We layered guitars, we
you know, obviously worked on some new vocals and all
these other harmonies. So the whole song wasn't completed, but
we actually performed the bass tracks with all of us
performing live, and again, I just think that so often

(55:32):
that that art form gets lost nowadays. And again, we
did do a couple of overdubs after that one single day,
but we did power through one long day and recorded
all of what probably ninety percent of that song all
got recorded in one day. And it was just fun
to not just because sometimes projects get belabored. People spend
forever just tweaking things to death, and sometimes it sucks

(55:54):
the life out of stuff. So we thought it'd be
just so again just in that effort for us to
do something a little bit different for that one particular track,
we had a specific game plan on how we did that,
and again we did reach out to Rich Mauser to
mix that song, and as Mike Andntrols were mentioned earlier,
that's kind of how we met Rich Mauser when he
mixed that song Planet Earth. And so it's fun it's

(56:16):
funny that that's the last track on our EP, but
that's the first song that spawns the whole little project.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Yeah, a great project it is. It's just really comes together. Well,
where can we find all of this material? You all
have your own website and wherever you can get your
music I suppose and digital and are you also on
vinyl as well?

Speaker 7 (56:39):
Not yet.

Speaker 6 (56:40):
We've talked about that. That'd be fun. We haven't. We've
never done that, but that I think we should, don't
you think?

Speaker 5 (56:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (56:48):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 8 (56:49):
The best place to get the music though, is at
band camp because if you buy it from them, then
we get most of the money, as opposed to if
you stream it on Spotify or Amazon or something. We
get like a fraction of a cent for every play.
So you know, if somebody likes what they hear, go
to band camp buy the download.

Speaker 7 (57:07):
It's very reasonable.

Speaker 8 (57:08):
It's a buck a song, so it's six dollars for
the the EP and uh, you know, then you own it.

Speaker 5 (57:15):
Yeah, Gravity physical media available.

Speaker 7 (57:22):
You can't see that.

Speaker 4 (57:27):
We have, so you can.

Speaker 5 (57:30):
You can go to final gravityth band dot com. That'll
take you to the band camp.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
Yeah, that's where a band camp is.

Speaker 5 (57:39):
It's kind of an easy easy thing to remember, right.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
This would translate really nice to vinyl with all the
artwork and all of that, and thank you for those
uh inside photos and everything. Uh and then the photo
of being in the studio there which is just hopefully
a new studio will be built soon.

Speaker 8 (57:59):
Rich will will arise from this. There's like I said,
the GoFundMe is already made. I want to The last
time I looked was almost fifty thousand people had donated
to and rebuild his studio.

Speaker 7 (58:12):
It's going to take a lot more than that, but
it's a good place to start.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Excellent, excellent. Well, that's great.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
Well, thank you all so much for joining me today
and thank you for having it you. We'll get the
word out there and go to band camp. Please buy
this brand new project and just excellent excellent tunes.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Harry, it really is.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
It's really really well done, and congratulations on that.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
It's just something to listen to. Definitely awesome.

Speaker 4 (58:42):
Thank you.

Speaker 6 (58:43):
We're very proud of it. I hope more and more
fans will find it so fingers crossed. I want to
share the mesa.

Speaker 7 (58:49):
All four of our releases are there on the band campage.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Excellent.

Speaker 5 (58:54):
Well.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
I appreciate you all stopping by and best of wishes and.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
The future for everything awesome.

Speaker 6 (59:02):
Thank you, Bob, take care, Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
A good one by and wherever you can give to
help the people of southern California who have been dealing
with these awful wildfires.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
They are raging as I speak right now.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
By the time I get this out, I don't know
if they will be out or not. Hope those Santa
Ana Wins dissipate go away forever would be really nice.
But what a beautiful place. I love, Southern California. Got
family out there, high family. I think they're all okay.
I haven't really heard from anybody, but I think they're
they're okay. They're they're around it. They probably smell and

(59:40):
I'm sure it's just just an insane tragedy out there.
And I just really really hope and pray for the
best for everybody out there in Southern California, the Los
Angeles area and everybody else who I know there.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
I know it.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
It's been a very very hard time. So I hope
by the next episode that becomes a memory and people
heal quickly from that awful tragedy. Rick Mauser is the
producer of this project Storm Chaser, and he lost everything,
including that studio they started that GoFundMe and if you'd

(01:00:16):
like to help, his name is Rich mauserm U S
E R. And he's done in some incredible work and
this is an amazing album that they put out. They're
actually more like an EP final gravity storm chaser. Get
it wherever you get music. If you can go to
band camp and buy those songs, they are wonderful and

(01:00:38):
until

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Next time heavy good one and hope for the best.