Photos and feature by Lauren Khalfayan, find more of her work here.
There’s something refreshingly familiar about RFA. Seated in a squeaky vinyl booth at a diner in the lower east side, the green fluorescents flickering above, it feels like this is our regular haunt even though the company is brand new. Or mostly new at least. I’ve caught RFA a couple of times before. I saw them play at Baby’s last summer and ran into Dan after he successfully snuck into the Grapetooth show last fall. Catching them around the city isn’t the only thing that makes them familiar, though. For a young, talented group, they’re all unexpectedly down to earth. They feel like the people you grew up with. They obviously got into music for the love of it — not the aesthetics or the scene or the groupies or the machismo. Clearly influenced by the garage rock revolution of the early oughts, they’ve taken all the guitar and none of the attitude. Their shows aren’t a moody staring contest, betting against the audience that they’ll blink first, but an uninhibited, joyous release. It’s escapism at it’s finest. I caught up with the band before their show at Mercury Lounge to talk about retro-fetishism, over-intellectualization, and being inherently restless.
I asked everyone to introduce themselves so I could try to differentiate who was saying what on the recording (I may or may not have succeeded)
Brendan McHale: Brendan ‘Branzo’ McHale
Alec Powell: Alec ‘Anzo’ Powell
Christian Turzo: Cranzo T
Dan Cousart: Dan ‘Danzo’ Cousart
Alec: Those are our clown names
Brendan: Alec has this dream of us becoming clowns, it’s this whole thing
Alec: Sorry I can’t talk about it
You physically can’t talk about it or they don’t allow you to?
Dan: The clowns are inside us this whole time
I was actually just talking to someone and she was saying how she has her onstage persona, but offstage she’s a completely different person, like she disassociates herself from that.
Alec: That’s interesting
Brendan: It’s acting in a way for some people
Alec: I feel like the only true version of myself is the one that’s onstage.
You’re the drummer?
Alec: Yeah
Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s very physical so it’s probably hard to be performative while doing that
Alec: I just have to turn my head off, turn my brain off
Christian: That’s probably what you have to do to be the best at it, the best you can be, I suppose
To turn off?
Christian: Yeah, you gotta be in the moment
Brendan: For me it’s like a 50/50. Cause you can be completely in yourself and like “character” or you can be completely focused on the crowd and what’s happening. Or you can have both.
Dan: It depends how mechanical it is, too. With songs that we’ve been playing for a long time it’s second nature, but if it’s new you’re still kind of on your toes bit
But some of these songs you’ve been playing since like 2014 right?
Dan: Yeah
Do you feel like you’ve outgrown them at all or do they still feel relevant?
Dan: Some of them
Christian: They’ve evolved, a lot of them
Dan: I think we put out like four EPs before we put out a record so some songs weathered and some of them haven’t. We got a bunch of new stuff that we’re playing and it definitely feels better to play new stuff and keep the ball rolling.
Brendan: It’s like a new energy with the old stuff, too. You can just tell it’s different from when we originally recorded it because we’re different people I guess.
Christian: We’re all pretty restless in general
I feel like restless people are driven towards an inherently restless job
Christian: Yeah — fair enough
Alec: Yeah, why would anyone choose this if they didn’t have to
After making all the EPs, was it a different thought process approaching the record?
Dan: Our record was kind of rushed honestly
Christian: We cut the basic tracks in 5 days for 11 songs
Dan: We were trying to meet some deadlines we set before we even recorded it. We were on studio time and our friend Todd was just helping us out with that. But I think we’re definitely getting better at studio
That’s interesting cause I feel like a lot of people don’t talk about that as a skillset you need to acquire but that makes sense
Christian: Oh yeah, for most of our existence we’ve been very focused on being a live band and that’s something we all love, but it’s been cool to focus more on recording
Brendan: It’s just different from what I imagined it used to be. We have a process now where we do demos on our phones and listen to those as a low-quality recording. Once we get a sense of how those sound we figure out how we can do it better in studio. It’s helpful in way, with technology.
Dan: I feel like there’s more of a grey area, too. With a lot of signed bands where they’re doing this for a living it’s like — this is when you write the record and this is when you play shows — and for us it’s more of a stream. I think we’re certainly taking a little more time off to write more songs, but we sort of just have to do both [play and write] at this stage in the game
Does learning about the music industry (and all the aspects of it that aren’t why you got involved in music in the first place) detract from the shininess of doing the thing?
Christian: Yeah the music industry is bullshit. But, I love playing music
Dan: I think money is just the ugly part of it and the way it makes people act
Brendan: I think the behind the scenes, working in the studio, that’s kind of cool
Alec: The creative process
Brendan: Yeah! Like that’s really cool. And when you’re at a show and the venue’s great and all the people there are working towards making a good show — that’s awesome. But if there are people there that are just trying to get a paycheck and they hate you, like… you can tell when you show up to a venue. They’re like “I don’t give a shit who you are.” Then sometimes when we play our set they care about you a little more, but you can’t win sometimes.
You guys have been doing a lot of Sofar shows though which are definitely different than conventional venue gigs.
Dan: Those are so fun
Do you think people are craving a change to the traditional live music experience?
Alec: I think people always are. I think it also has to do with it being an event. It’s a night where you go and sit in a room and connect like that… it’s interesting. It’s not how people consume music most of the time.
Brendan: People are there to listen to music. Why else would you be there? You can go drink somewhere else you know what i mean? They’re always BYO and you’re there to hear bands you’ve never heard — that’s why you go.
Dan: For an unsuspecting crowd, it’s a lot of fun if they vibe with us and what we do
So I’ve been listening to the record and it’s primarily go, go, go, go, go – feelings
Alec: That’s kind of how we are. Just fucking go and feel it later. Always push off the hangover
Do you think as artists you’re drawn to extremes? Were you targeting those specific directions?
Dan: I mean we are a rock and roll band and a lot of our songs are obviously about some sort of emotion, but they’re more so stuff that will turn a room upside-down. At the end of the day, the goal is to capture a range of emotions, cause if people subscribe to just one it gets very boring. You get trapped in something.
Alec: We also get more feedback when we’re playing real fun, hype stuff that gets people moving and gets the room real hot and people sweaty. It’s just fun. We love to have fun, which is a very corny thing to say. Just fucking jump around. And we know what that is to just lose yourself in a show like that. For me, that’s always something I want to provide to someone, so I go out there and bang the shit out of those drums. Cause I want you to dance, I want you to forget all the bullshit for 45 minutes.
Brendan: Writing wise, Dan will come with different ideas and plays it out and we’ll plug in our parts. For me personally, I don’t try to do a certain thing, it just happens. It’s not like we try to write this “type” of song, it just comes out.
Do you think the intellectualization of music kills it or enhances your appreciation?
Christian: I think they’re two different things. Like there are different ways to study. I think we all grew up “studying” how our favorite bands or artists made their songs, unintentionally, just because we were really into it. Figuring out, “Oh, that’s how this thing works.” “Intellectualizing” like, “Why did they make the bass drum sound like that?” — we’re on the more emotional side of things, but I think both are important dependent on the person
Dan: I think both are important. With any art form, but especially music, it’s all derivative. I think that there’s something super important to intellectualizing what made certain bands important — why they chose to do what they did — but I think something great about the internet age is that people are being more honest about things. More information is out there. You can see them [artists] as people instead of gods.
Christian: You think about what makes a good song and there are all these songs that have the qualities of another song you might love, but it just doesn’t have this intangible thing — and I really think it’s intangible. It’s as simple as that. When it’s not genuine, you can just sense it.
Do you think there’s a lot of music now that’s disingenuous?
Christian: I don’t know if it’s disingenuous… People are either trying too hard or not trying hard enough
I feel like everybody saw this, read it, heard about it, but the whole Greta Van Fleet thing and the idea of retro-fetishcism: basically catering to baby boomers and Spotify algorithms to make music. But I was thinking about it, and there is an aspect of it that’s targeting something that’s performative — they’re portraying characters. But I was also thinking about bands I see all the time around here and I was trying to separate in my head what’s the distinction between, like you were saying, authenticity and these cheap ploys?
Brendan: I think if you were to sit them [Greta Van Fleet] down and they were like, “Yeah we know exactly what we’re doing. We’re trying to be like a retro thing,” it’s a little more understandable than them being like, “No this is just us being ourselves.” It’s like alright come on.
Christian: And maybe it is them being themselves, but you have to acknowledge where you came from, that Led Zeppelin inspired you. I think that’s why people get turned off by them.
I was watching this movie, I can’t remember what it’s called, but there was a dad in it and he was a writer and his son was a writer and he was always on his son saying, “You don’t have enough life experience. You don’t have enough to write about. You need to go out and be reckless and live your life.” And I’ve heard that philosophy before, but it brought it to the forefront of my memory. Do you think that mentality is correct? Do you think you have to have lived a certain amount to share your experiences or make meaningful work?
Christian: I don’t think so. Without commenting on whether we do it or not… I don’t know if it’s a romantic belief, but I think that’s true. To really write about something and understand it you need to have experienced it.
Alec: But there are some people who are 16, 17 making incredible music.
Christian: But they’re writing about stuff they’ve already experienced.
Alec: Well I think you need to to have some [experience]. It’s not quantity, it’s quality.
Dan: Writing is also a series of trial and error and I think that some people like Billie Eilish and her brother are able to get on to that real quickly. It just catches people at different times. And for the rest of us who aren’t prodigies, it takes a long time to feel your vibe and discover who you are and what you want to talk about and what your themes are.
Alec: They way I think of it, artists are like sponges. The way we think and we observe and we listen and we gradually chip away at a way to connect that to our imagination and convey it. It’s a muscle. You can imagine it, but you have to feel it to make it real.
Dan: But you can feel it vicariously through someone.
Alec: Yeah but you have to actually feel it. It’s hard to fabricate it
Christian: But like can you write about staying up all night and walking across three states without actually doing it? Probably not.
Dan: But people have done that — think of guys like Bob Dylan. Stuff like that was his whole bag in the beginning. There’s some underlying truth in that. It’s also about having experiences as a writer and being able to at least picture those experiences because if you have no idea what you’re doing, how can you channel that?
Do you think that with how turned off people are in our generation, just like glued to their devices, do you think there’s a decrease in the quality of our experiences?
Christian: I would say that people are dealing with negative emotions in a different way than they ever have before – they’re not dealing with them. People are just afraid of discomfort. And I’m not saying I’m not. We’re all part of this generation, it’s impossible to avoid soaking up some of that. But people are weak nowadays.
Dan: Everyone’s always been afraid of discomfort but now people just can’t handle it
Brendan: And now they have an easy escape [technology]
Dan: Something like music is cheapened to the average consumer just because you can pull it up on a phone in 30 seconds
Alec: But at the same time it gives people like us access to a world we wouldn’t have access to
Dan: It’s almost more special when people enjoy our music because I feel like people’s attention spans are so tiny, so if you actually keep listening to us that’s really cool
Alec: There’s so many other things you could be doing or watching
Brendan: Cause we’re so used to getting things so quickly in an instant. We’re super overstimulated and hyperaware of things
Dan: It’s exhausting
Brendan: It’s emotionally exhausting. Definitely a bit of a mental health thing that will come out
Dan: iPhones will be like cigarettes
I heard that the other day
Christian: The thing is they’re a tool, they’re just being abused.
Brendan: People will get educated on it for sure. By the time they educate people on these though, they’ll probably be obsolete, people will have them in their brains
What new stuff do you have coming out that you want to share?
Brendan: We’re doing another show in New York on April 13th at C’mon Everybody.
Alec: We’ve got the Leesta Vall Vinyl Session on April 6th
Brendan: We’re doing a new song called “Small Talk”. And we’re doing “Lazy”, “Farewell”, and “All Dressed in Blue”. People can pre-order a song or however many songs they want and we record the song for that person. One take. It only goes to that person. So no one else has that take so we can say on the recording: Hey so-and-so, this is for you (you can pre-order those here) And in Philly we have Underground Arts on March 29th, which is a radio show with WXPN which will be fun.
Dan: We’ve got probably 8 or so new songs so there’s going to be something coming out soon. I think it’s a good progression for our sound. It’s not… getting worse (laughs)
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