Foe Destroyer

Most people don't know this but Foe Destroyer and I were married for a few years back in the late 80s. I know what you are thinking “QUE?” but there really isn't much to tell. I'm sure you have heard the story a million times before.

Boy meets band
Boy falls for band
Band takes boy to the Jr. prom where they are name king and queen
Boy wakes up in a with strange hieroglyphs carved in his haunches in a drainage ditch on the side of the interstate
Boy realizes a month later that he is pregz
Boys dad drives his pick-up truck on to bands lawn
Boy and band get married via shotgun
It wasn’t an ideal situation but none-the-less I loved these burly piss scented assholes. We had a great two and a half years together. Our love child Vance is the potato in our eggs and potato scrambler. Dude has the emotional range of a basement couch with a complexion to match.

Sadly things between Foe Destroyer and I didn't work out. Those assholes are just to schizophrenic for me. Lucky for you, the very thing that makes them failures as life partners is what makes them the tits as a band.

These shit falcons are all over the place.

Listening to their self-titled album is like being in a pillow fight in a dark room. You lose all sense of time and space and are giddy with the excitement of not knowing when that final blow from the dickhead who thought putting a can of Coke in his pillow case was a good idea.

Foe Destroyer keeps you on your fucking toes bro bro. I have listened to this album pushing north of 20 times and I still have no idea what's coming next. It gives me antici-wood every time I throw it on.

The music bounces around, mixing genres in unexpected and wildly rewarding ways. If I had to describe it I would say it was a little like Dr Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band covering that first Van Halen album or vice versa. I still haven't completely figured it out, just know it is my favorite music goulash since Len put out that Steal My Sunshine jump off. That fucker was my jam back when I had my labret pierced bro.

The awesome thing about Foe Destroyer is how fully they embody and then hate Fuck whichever the Fuck sound they are running with.

Want something for the muscle car fanatic with a sensitive side vibe? Just check out "Hot New shit", "King" and "Waterbed". Maybe something for the guy that you used to mock in high school for driving a Fiero and dating underclassmen, only years later you realize that said dude was cleaning up, well I suggest you throw on "Animal". Or perhaps songs like In "In My Mind All The Time" and "Forever" which sound how Bon Iver would sound if he was into fucking on the first date and wasn't worried about offending anyone. They even slaughter the world of adult contemporary with the Ben Folds having meat sweats vibe of "Growing Old" and the Jason Mraz going through herion withdrawal feel of "Unconditional" Love. I don’t know, maybe you are just like me and you just want to hear two of the best songs of 2013, well asshole, I suggest you throw on "Memo" or "Best Friend" and shove your thumb up your needy ass.

All you need to know about Foe Destroyer is that these Fuckholes kick maximum amounts of ass and know how to make a record; an epic fucking record. - Shut Your Fucking Face And Listen

Instead of a traditional orchestra, Fly By Night boasts the talents of acclaimed Brooklyn/Austin rock band Foe Destroyer, who bring their musical prowess and wildly eclectic sound to the show’s New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons. Equipped with sardonic wit and a plethora of opinions, the three mad geniuses behind the noise—a.k.a. Daniel Garcia, Chris McQueen and Cade Sadler—discuss with PH's Literary Resident Kari Olmon their songwriting, collaboration, and why they are uniquely suited to play in musicals.

How did Foe Destroyer come about?

DANIEL GARCIA: Various failures, I think, have led to this current failure. No, it’s like every band—you play with enough people until you find the ones that feel good.

CADE SADLER: Danny and I went to high school together in Denton [Texas], and we were in a band together, where I played guitar and he played bass.

CHRIS McQUEEN: I went to college in Denton, and that’s where I met Danny and Cade.

CS: And then I got kicked out of the band for Chris. He replaced me. He was already in college and studying guitar, so he was obviously better—

DG: Looked way worse. Cade looked like a rock god.

CS: Danny was going to quit the band that he in Chris were in, Oso Closo, but then Chris was like, let’s just start this other band. So they started Foe Destroyer and brought me back in.
How many years have you been together now?

CS: Three years.

How do the three of you collaborate, both in terms of writing and recording?

DG: I write the hits. Cade writes the weird ones.

CS: I write the deep cuts.

CM: I write the filler.

DG: No one writes the words.

CM: It definitely varies from song to song. One person has an idea, takes it to the next guy, and those two people write it. Other songs start with a jam session, and others one person wrote almost entirely.

CS: Sometimes we’ll go back and find old recordings and rework them or re-record parts of them to fit what we want on the record.

CM: It’s loose, but there’s a central focus of what needs to happen for a song to feel like it belongs on an album, that it sounds like our band, and it represents who we are.

How would you describe that ethos?

CM: I think all three of us are interested in making songs we feel like we haven’t heard before. Songs don’t ever really feel like they’re done until they sound like something new, something that is exciting to us, something that we’d like to hear ourselves. It usually ends up being a combination of different genres, different influences.

Listening to the record [Foe Destroyer, March 2013], what’s most immediately striking is the sheer diversity of styles and genres—both in the album as a whole and in each individual song. How would you describe your sound?

CM: We wrote a bio talking about the genres we combine, and every time I read it, I hate it. What does our sound sound like? I guess we try to go for meaning, and it doesn’t really matter what genre or what instrument we’re playing, if we’re feeling it and we’re meaning it. We love to write songs, we’ve all been writing songs for over ten, fifteen years.

DG: There’s no clear direction on how to make good music, and we don’t really have a clear direction on how to sound. Most of the time it just comes out, without us over-thinking it.

CM: We have the highest standards anyone could have with regard to our music, so if we’re happy with what we’re playing, then that’s what we’re gonna put out.

How did Foe Destroyer come to be a part of Fly By Night?

CM: We already had a relationship with the Dallas Theater Center when we came to Fly By Night in Dallas. My old band, Oso Closo, did The Who’s Tommy at the Dallas Theater Center, and it was awesome. When they were getting ready to do Fly By Night, Will [Connolly] and the others [co-writers Kim Rosenstock and Michael Mitnick] went to the theater and asked about getting a real rock band to perform the music in their show. We met the writers at the first big meeting for Fly By Night in Dallas, and it all sort of clicked. We stayed in touch after Dallas, and they brought us in for the New York production at Playwrights.

What was your role in the process? What changed from Dallas to New York?

CS: In Dallas, we spent a full month working on the music with the writers.

CM: We arranged the music in the rehearsal room, as a band. The writers wanted to take the songs from being ‘musical’ songs, in the traditional musical theater sense, to songs that sounded like the work of a current band. Will would come to us with what he was hearing for a song, he’d play it on acoustic guitar, and together we’d develop it as if it were a song for our band, yet still make it fit into the musical. We’d flesh out the songs and contribute our own style.

CS: Everything is a lot quieter than we’d generally play. In Dallas, when we were onstage, we were in a closed room with a window—we were in a box. That way, they had more control over how loud the band was.

For this production, we busted you guys out of your box. What kind of direction did [director] Carolyn Cantor give you, and how were you more integrated into the production?

DG: We hand off props to the actors throughout the show. For instance, McQueen gives Miriam a newspaper and I give Daphne a blanket in Act Two.

CM: Carolyn wanted to have us doing as many of the sound cues as possible ourselves. She wanted us to organically create them with our instruments.

DG: We’ve been with the show for a long time, and we know the writers well. They’ve given us room to experiment and try whatever we want. If they don’t like it, they tell us.

Cade, you make a big show of ringing the bell for the deli door.

CS: Yeah, I was talking to Kim and Mitnick about it after a [preview] performance. I was apologizing, saying I’d missed a couple of the cues today, and Kim was like, ‘What bell?’ ‘The deli bell.’ And she said, ‘You’re the one ringing the deli bell?’ I was like, ‘You didn’t even notice?’

CM: We’ve had to play much more quietly than we’re accustomed to. This theater is small and we don’t have a box, so we’re learning to play very dynamically at a lower volume, which is actually fun.

When you’re onstage, are you supposed to be in character?

CM: I think so. We feel we’re existing in the same realm as the narrator, more or less. We know what the story is and we’re reacting to it. Subtly, on an emotional level—not in any overt way. There’s times like, in ‘Circles in the Sand,’ when we’re pretending to be the guys in the club—

DG: We’re not pretending. We’re acting. I create a backstory for my character. I’m Ned Storms. Brother of Joey Storms. I also flip sticks off my snare drum to Chris.

Coming to the production as an established band, what has it been like working with such a large company of writers, directors, designers and actors?

CM: We’ve definitely had to learn that we can’t just give our opinions about anything, anytime. Within our band, we’re very open with each other. Anyone can say anything they want at any time, and no one’s gonna be offended or weirded out.

DG: Or better yet, they are offended by it. And then we dig through the weirdness.

CS: And because there’s only three of us, that process isn’t too complicated.

CM: But as far as working within the theater world, it’s different. In this particular group, we feel that the writers trust us, that Carolyn trusts us. But we also have to be careful, because we have loud opinions—

CS: And loud mouths—

CM: We’ve learned we can’t tell someone else how to do their job.

What are your favorite numbers to play?

CM: I really enjoy ‘Eternity’ because it’s the one where I try to catch sticks in the air and play my guitar with them.

CS: I like ‘Breakfast All Day.’ It’s the most fun to play. It cruises. It’s the most 1965-style song of the show. It’s only a minute and a half, but it’s my favorite one to play.

DG: I like underscoring the death. I like the nightmare. I like any time something sad or scary is about to happen.

Do you have a favorite moment in the show?

CM: I think the way they’ve done the stars is pretty incredible.

DG: All the actors in this production are really inspiring in a new way. I like watching actors work.

CM: I think ‘Cecily’ is a really great payoff.

CS: I like Crabble’s moment, when he runs down and directs the traffic.

CM: The writers built each of the characters to have a terrific story arc and a great payoff during the blackout, but McClam’s and Crabble’s moments are especially great.

This isn’t the first time you’ve played in a musical. You did The Who’s Tommy, and next up you’re doing The Rocky Horror Show back in Dallas. Was it intentional, or did you just fall into it? Why do you think the band is suited to it?

CM: I think it’s both. Like anything else, you do one thing and you meet people that you like to work with, and then they set you up for the next one. So you end up falling into unexpected, cool projects. But I also think that we are fairly well suited for this, as it turns out, because we do obsess over the stories and the characters and how it all happens.

DG: When we go home, we spend hours talking about the show.

CS: I was in theater when I was very young; I took acting and music theater classes. I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t that great. I was never chosen for leading roles or anything. So it’s cool to be a part of it all again, in a completely different capacity.

Two-thirds of the band just moved to Brooklyn, and Chris, you’re going back to Austin after Fly By Night closes. How do you envision Foe Destroyer’s future?

CM: Our first album was made when we were all living in different places, so we’ve adapted to working like that. We work in spurts. When we’re apart we work separately, and then we come back and put our ideas together. Whenever we’re in the same place, we always find time to be a band. - Playwrights Horizons

A Texas-by-way-of-Brooklyn trio that trade instruments and all sing, playing music ranging from punked up distortion to chilled-out. It was the best surprise of POP so far, and it made me seriously regret not checking them out Wednesday at l’Esco with proper sound. - killer baby tomatoes

Foe Destroyer is an eclectic Texas trio known for taking turns playing drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and singing during live performances. On top of their touted live shows, Daniel Garcia, Chris McQueen, and Cade Sadler pride themselves on pushing each other to the limits of their musicianship while grabbing creative impulses from a bevy of musical styles and genres. Recently, the band released their stunning debut self-titled album, a unique yet accessible hybrid of sounds that seamlessly morph in and out of one another like a colorful whole.

With its many masks, Foe Destroyer's debut might be a grail for this generation of restless listeners. Gnat-like attention spans are contained by constant shifts of sounds and styles, causing the listener to never get comfortable or become fatigued by predictable transitions. FD sets this tone right at the beginning with the light, accessible bounce of the opener Strut quickly stripping its pop gauze for the garage grit of Memo, immediately erasing any early notions you may have formed. There are many of these moments throughout the album. Right when you think you have their direction pegged, FD veer left and take a detour: scenic routes full of vibrant pop rock (Strut, Growing Old) turn into back paths caked in dirty, screaming guitars (Memo, King); shimmering forests draped in electronic foliage (end of Hot New Shit, Animal) morph into highways lined in fields of strings (Unconditional Love, Best Friend); and sunny pop-turnpikes swiftly change to rainy roads paved in pain and loss (Chasing the Rain, Forever, In My Mind All the Time). Despite their mapless navigation, Foe Destroyer's trip always feels smooth and effortless, like chaos on cruise control.

There are many standout pieces-- Strut, Memo, Hot New Shit, Forever, King-- but this unveiling is best consumed all together in one sitting. It's an album for people that like albums, but also has elements to hold the attention of those that prefer consuming random singles. This is a solid first impression from a young band with an expansive bank of stylistic knowledge and, if they can continue to build on their chemistry with producer Jason Cupp, will have no problem destroying any foe that gets in the way of their final destination. - Ground Floor Go

Woah. Listening to the first two seconds of ‘Strut’ was enough for my lips to utter that very word. There is a little more than what meets the eye with Foe Destroyer. With the sweet sounds of pop come garage rock undertones catapult you into your day. The transition from track one to track two is easily the greatest example of this. You have the calm and cool ‘Strut’ followed by the fuzzy yells of ‘Memo’. You wake up easy only to have your bones rattled. It’s an electric jump to your heart and really, the only way things should get done. @LeahLovecat - Dingus (dingusonmusic.com)

Foe Destroyer started off the night with a concoction of tunes that ranged from punk to rock to crooning love songs. Band members, Danny Garcia and Chris McQueen started out on ukulele and drums, respectively. After their first song Garcia traded the ukulele for an electric guitar. The two would swap instruments nearly every song and with their change in axes, they would also change their sounds. Garcia and McQueen were amazing at traversing through a myriad of genres on every song. Foe Destroyer were a tornado of awesome that was over too quickly, I can see these guys being a headliner act sometime soon. - MyDentonMusic.com

Foe Destroyer played magnificently Friday night. Garcia's vocals had a Polyphonic Spree quality to them, with a rougher edge and without the gimmicky choir. The instrumentals were precise and yet had an unexpected dissonance at times that was used to great effect.

These guys possess a serious UNT jazz pedigree (the name Foe Destroyer came from a song that the band's guitarist, Chris McQueen, wrote for the UNT One O'Clock Lab Band). But lyrically the band strives for a universal appeal -- something "so personal everyone can relate to it," McQueen said.

Garcia and McQueen write most of the lyrics; each band member writes his own music. The end result is a well-thought-out, yet still organic sound. Perhaps even more important than the band's musical skills is the bond between the members -- something that comes through powerfully when you watch it live.

"I think being friends with the people in your band has a lot to do with it. It has a lot to do with the chemistry music-wise," Garcia said. - dfw.com

Foe Destroyer played magnificently Friday night. Garcia's vocals had a Polyphonic Spree quality to them, with a rougher edge and without the gimmicky choir. The instrumentals were precise and yet had an unexpected dissonance at times that was used to great effect.

These guys possess a serious UNT jazz pedigree (the name Foe Destroyer came from a song that the band's guitarist, Chris McQueen, wrote for the UNT One O'Clock Lab Band). But lyrically the band strives for a universal appeal -- something "so personal everyone can relate to it," McQueen said.

Garcia and McQueen write most of the lyrics; each band member writes his own music. The end result is a well-thought-out, yet still organic sound. Perhaps even more important than the band's musical skills is the bond between the members -- something that comes through powerfully when you watch it live.

"I think being friends with the people in your band has a lot to do with it. It has a lot to do with the chemistry music-wise," Garcia said. - dfw.com

Technical kinks aside, Foe Destroyer really are great showmen. Their jazz-influenced sound is as difficult to pinpoint as it entertaining to watch. Influences of prog, jangly rock and even elements of pop find their way into the band's polished sound, with the writing coming off so epic, powerful, and harmony-rich that all I could think of was that it reminded me of some kind of showy Ozma-meets-Queen affair.

Lead guitarist Chris McQueen frequently showed how he earned his DOMAXXII nomination for Best Instrumentalist. Aside from his much-heralded guitar skills, it actually turns out he's likely one of the best keyboardists in the Metroplex as well, and his vocals were not too shabby either. Contrary to the way things used to go down when Oso Closo was together, the Foe Destroyer boys divide up songwriting and lead vocal duties.

Typically, I am not big on guitar solos, or frivolous guitar wankery in general, but in the case of Foe Destroyer and Chris McQueen, I found myself eagerly awaiting each upcoming solo, finding each display of fret board wizardry more impressive than the last. The set culminated in a Garcia/McQueen double solo that was without a doubt the aural equivalent of stumbling across a complete double rainbow in one's own backyard. Still though, not a drop of wankery in sight. - The Dallas Observer

Straight out of Denton, Texas, these guys are blowing away crowds left and right. Formerly known as the band, Oso Closo, Foe Destroyer's a blend of in-your-face alternative sound and complicated musicality. I'll never forget the way I was first introduced to these guys from outside of one of their concerts when one of their fans ran up to me after I asked what kind of music they play and screamed, "Its rock the way rock's supposed to be." Maybe you'll agree or maybe you won't, but give a listen to this seriously catchy tune, "Figure it out." - Ropeadope Digital