Fresno Famous

Famous: Is foot of feathers a wizards and warriors reference?

Kent Stahl: No, but I like that.

Famous: Oh, because in Wizards and Warriors you can get this thing called foot of feathers and then you can run around all fast and stuff.

Kent Stahl: I love that. It was actually really random. It came up on a random word generator on the Internet. After hours of hitting random, random, random. I was like, "I think that looks interesting."

Jenny Klug: This is pre-me.

Famous: When did you get into the band?

Jenny Klug: A year ago.

Famous: How'd you end up joining the band?

Jenny Klug: We were playing a show together -- I was playing with another band. They saw me play and Joe, the former drummer, wasn't really interested in playing anymore, so they asked me. And I said ok.

Famous: And then you kicked your old band to the curb?

Jenny Klug: No. It kind of fell apart on it's own. Members living in different towns It was sort of nerve wracking when I first joined the band because I had never really joined a pre-existing band. You know, they were like, "These are the songs, this is how they go." There's this whole balance of trying to stay creative to an extent while trying to stay within the parameters of the song. I had big shoes to fill to.

Famous: What happened to your old drummer? What was his name?

Kent Stahl: Joe Williams. He was one of these guys who played a lot and he was doing a lot of different things and he's a jazz drummer and he didn't want to practice. He didn't need to practice. He could come in and wing it, but the rest of us couldn't.

Jenny Klug: He's sort of a little celebrity. Everyone wants to play with Joe. It is sort of tough because I get a lot of, "Joe is not playing with us anymore, do you want to play with us?" And usually I'm like, "Thanks for picking me, but no."

Famous: Joe leftovers, huh.

Jenny Klug: Yes, Joe leftovers.

Kent Stahl: He was a great drummer but it just wasn't the right fit.

Famous: How may of you guys are going to be onstage Thursday night? You're a trio now, right?

Kent Stahl: We're officially a trio but there's a fourth person who has played with us for the last two or three shows. I'm afraid I'm going to jinx it if I say he's in the band, because he likes getting his fingers in all the different pies, but he deserves to because

Jenny Klug: He's kind of a slut.

Kent Stahl: Yeah, he's a band slut. But he's really talented. So I'll let him play with us if he wants to.

Famous: How long has foot of feathers been around?

Kent Stahl: We're a little over 2 and a half years old.

Famous: Are you guys all from Visalia?

Kent Stahl: Yeah. We started it with Aaron [Alberstein] the bass player, my friend Rich, who now lives in San Francisco, and Joe.

Famous: What was it that got you guys into the studio?

Kent Stahl: We wanted to document what we've been doing and to use the album as a steppingstone to get us out of town and to send places. I think it will help push us to the next level as far as getting out of town and being taken a little more seriously.

Famous: The title of the album is the woes of broken bones and noses have you ever broken a bone?

Kent Stahl: No, actually I haven't. I haven't broken a bone or a nose.

Jenny Klug: I once had a really bad wrist sprain. I was in eighth grade and I had just gotten some roller blades and I went to the doctor and he was holding my wrist in his hand and he said. "Let me break it, it will heal better." And I said no. He swore that it would have healed better, but I wasn't about to let him break my bone in front of me.

Famous: Who wrote the lyric?

Kent Stahl: I did. But Jen was the one who suggested that line for the title of the album.

Famous: Where did you guys end up recording it?

Kent Stahl: Above this Chinese Restaurant called Gum-Bo (in downtown Visalia). A friend has a little studio up there and he's the same guy who does the sound over at Howie's pizza. The guy who actually engineered the album was Aaron Estes who plays guitar with us right now. He's just brilliant twiddling knobs and we really fortunate not to be under any time constraints. We pretty much had free reign to record there.

Famous: Does one person write all the songs or is it a collaborative process?

Kent Stahl: I usually bring something in and then it just gets built in the rehearsal space.

Famous: What do you do to get into songwriting mode?

Kent Stahl: Usually I'll just be driving in my car and I'll have a tune get caught in my head and if I am lucky enough to get off the road and get back here, get back to my guitar, and then I'll work it out and if I play it long enough I'll remember it the next day. If it's good enough I'll remember it the next day. If it's a piece of shit then I'll forget it.

Famous: How do come up with the lyrics?

Kent Stahl: That's tough. A lot of times I feel like I don't have anything to write about, so a lot of the songs end up being stream-of-consciousness type things. In a couple of the old songs that I wrote I ended up talking about being petty and immature and stuff.

Famous: And then you got over that

Kent Stahl: It's an ongoing thing.

Foot of Feathers will be performing in Fresno on Thursday, January 6th at Tokyo Gardens. For more information, please visit www.footoffeathers.com.