Feature

FALLOUT BOY

The New Sound Of Chicago…

FALLOUT BOY

by Corine Jurgerson

You might not be familiar with their music just yet, but you’ve probably heard their name tossed around by now.

Quirky as it sounds, they’re kind of like the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot: you hear tales of their greatness, but no one you actually know has seen them.

Given that idea, its only fitting that the next big thing in rock would come out of Chicago, a city that has been spawning musical legends (but no proof of Bigfoot yet…) for the past several decades. But if you told them that they might one day be regarded in the same light as Alkaline Trio or The Smoking Popes, they’d probably laugh.

Pete Wentz, Patrick Stump, Joseph Trohman and Andrew Hurley are Fallout Boy, from the ‘burbs of Chicago. They’re part of a tight-knit group of rockers blowing up around the city that got their start playing small Knights of Columbus Halls and other tiny venues.

Soon, they became noticed by Florida punk label Fueled By Ramen, where they launched their debut album, Take This To Your Grave. A sweet deal for a sophomore release on Island Records was offered shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, the guys managed to set a record on independent music site PureVolume.com, becoming the first band on the site to reach the 1 million play mark. Last summer, Fallout Boy swept through major U.S. cities on the 2004 Warped Tour and have already secured a main stage position when the popular music festival rolls out again this summer. They’ve also been featured in music magazines across the country, including Alternative Press and Rolling Stone, where they were featured as one of the “10 Artists to Watch”.

This past November, the guys slipped back into the studio to record the follow-up to Take This To Your Grave, which, as of press time, is still being finalized, with a tentative release date for the first week of May.

Amidst this whirlwind, these laid-back suburban guys still can not seem to believe what’s been happening to them. Bassist Pete Wentz caught up with Midwest BEAT via telephone as he enjoyed the warm Los Angeles air while we in Chicago were still digging out from a blizzard.

Friendly and humble, he explained how a band from Wilmette that started out as an outlet for creativity, ended up signed to a major label and has developed a “cult following.”

“I think a lot of bands really want to take the time to write music that they think the people are going to like, or they write music that they’re trying to be really artsy with. We just kind of wrote whatever we wanted to write. And that was definitely one aspect of it – there was just some amount of “we were just doing our own thing.” I think that comes across in the [first] record.”

“On top of that,,” he continued, “I think that when we went out and toured originally and got a label and stuff, we weren’t an industry buzz band at all. So we would play shows to one person all the time. We played 290 days last year, so it was kind of a war of attrition: kind of like we forced people to like our music, so they just had to keep coming back to see us.”

And its likely that more and more fans will continue to keep coming back to see them. Much buzz is being generated about the follow-up to Take This To Your Grave, which could very well propel Fallout Boy to the top of the charts. If the fact that the album is being produced by Neal Avron, (New Found Glory, Yellowcard) is any indication of what fans can expect, then expect nothing short of greatness.

Wentz described the recording process for the upcoming album as being much different than their first attempt.

“The last record we wrote four years ago in the attic. With no intentions of anything. This time, all we wanted was to write a record that someone listening wouldn’t skip over any of the tracks. Rather than re-writing the same record again, we had a different process. We wrote with the idea that we wanted the songs on this record to change people’s moods and to change how they view the world, and still maintain some of the hooks and all of that. We’re not going to write a record that’s safe just to get the next batch of 14-year-olds. We’re going to grow with our fans and hopefully our fans will grow with us.”

The release of the new album comes at a time when a whole new breed of musicians are emerging from Chicago. Bands like The Academy Is, Sleeping at Last and OK Go have steadily been causing a stir. When asked about his feelings on being a part of this explosion, Wentz once again relays his feelings in a modest manner.

“The explosion that I guess we’re coming from is a different one that happened in the suburbs rather than in bars. It started in Knights of Columbus Halls. When we first started playing, we didn’t really have anywhere to play and there wasn’t really “a scene”, so we kind just picked this Knights of Columbus Hall and kind of built it around ourselves and just played there every weekend. And the cool thing is that The Academy Is are like little brothers to us. We called up Fueled By Ramen and we were like, ‘You have to sign this band, they’re going to be awesome!’”

“They came up on the same team and now there’s bands following them like this band called October Falls. It’s really cool, because it’s like a really intimate scene and we still go and play really small shows unannounced and still talk to those same people on a regular basis. Those people are friends more than I would ever call them fans. Its all really near and dear to us.”

Fallout Boy has a lot on its plate in the months to come. Right now could be “the calm before the storm”.

In February, the guys head overseas to the UK, where they will do several shows before returning to the U.S. to headline the Fueled By Ramen & Friends Tour. (They’ll be visiting the Chicagoland area at the end of March.)

Next up, the release of the sophomore record and of course, the 2005 Warped Tour. After that, it’s anyone’s guess, but rest assured, these four guys aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. But it’s doubtful that they’ll ever get used to all of the attention.

“We’re pretty much the most ordinary kids you will ever meet in your entire life. We just happen to be in a really extraordinary situation,” Wentz said. “That anybody even cares about our band at all is so insane to us, we feel like we’re pulling a scam over on everybody and we should be seen through at any moment. We’re happy. But if it ended today it would have gone way further than it was ever supposed to.”

Want to know more? Then check out Fallout Boy’s website at: www.falloutboyrock.com .

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