Fastball - Riding High at the Sonic Ranch

Fastball

Riding High at the Sonic Ranch

By Jay S. Jacobs

Fastball has been throwing the high heat right down the middle for 30 years now.

The band came together in the early 1990s in Austin, Texas. They teamed up after playing with local bands Big Car and The Goods. The trio has been made up of the same lineup for all these years – a trio of singer / songwriter / bassist / keyboardist / guitarist Tony Scalzo, singer / songwriter / guitarist Miles Zuniga and drummer Joey Shuffield.

Fastball signed with a major label (Hollywood Records) in 1995 and released their first album Make Your Mama Proud the next year. However, it was their sophomore album, All the Pain That Money Can Buy in 1998 which totally exploded the band, spawning the smash hits “The Way” and “Out of My Head,” going platinum and getting nominated for two Grammys.

While they have never quite hit those heights again, Fastball has soldiered on, releasing eight albums over the years – not to mention solo albums by Scalzo and Zuniga in the 2010s – and touring worldwide. We had previously interviewed Zuniga about the band in 2004 around the release of their then-current album Keep Your Wig On.

They returned to the pop cultural zeitgeist in 2016 when Machine Gun Kelly and Camila Cabello featured Cabello singing a variation of the chorus of “Out of My Head” as the anchor of their huge hit single “Bad Things.”

This has led to another spurt of creativity in the band, with Fastball releasing two albums and a live record (with another studio album upcoming) in the last five years. Later this year – probably in the summer – their ninth album Sonic Ranch will be coming out on Sunset Boulevard Records.

We recently hooked up with Fastball singer / songwriter / multi-instrumentalist Tony Scalzo to discuss the “Celebrating 30 Years” tour and their upcoming album Sonic Ranch. Also, check out an exclusive preview of the video for the upcoming single “Rather Be Me Than You” below.

Fastball has been together for about 30 years now. How crazy is that you guys have been doing it for that long?

It makes sense when you really think about it. (laughs) We could have done other things, but, honestly, I don't think we would have done as well as separate careers. I think we had just the right amount of success to where we can make that make that success be the thing to build on and just keep it the band. It's like a small company that just didn't get too big to lose the mom-and-pop aspect of it. (laughs again)

Do you think having two singers and songwriters in the band keeps the band interesting?

You said it right there. There are more dimensions to the band because there's two different frontmen and two different songwriters. And really a third songwriter, when you think about the collaborative end of things. So there's a lot of variety going on, at least the ideas that are coming out in songs. I mean, yeah, we're a pop, rock and roll band. I don't stray too far from that original mission statement, I guess.

When our writer spoke with Miles twenty years ago about your Keep Your Wig On album, he said that mostly you did your writing for the songs that you were singing, and he did it for the ones that he sang. But I saw in the press release that you guys wrote the new single “Rather Be Me Than You” together.

That’s true.

Is that something you’ve been doing increasingly over the years?

Even Keep Your Wig On, that record has a couple of collaborative compositions on it. I think every album we've included, maybe one, for the last few years anyway. That single “Rather Be Me Than You” is something that the two of us came together and turned it into an actual song when we had been struggling with the ideas that went into it on our own. We set a goal, let's try and make something out of this evening that we had open. That's a great thing when that happens because it's just all fun. It's not like labor. It was a good time, and we managed to get something out of it that didn't take a lot of pain. (laughs)

Special exclusive: "Rather Be Me Than You" video preview!

How do you feel that your musical artistry has changed over the years? How do you think that Sonic Ranch is different than say Make Your Mama Proud or All the Pain Money Can Buy?

The Make Your Mama Proud example is the easiest one to discern for me, I would say. (laughs) That's a record that that we recorded in 1995. It was during a time when all of us in the band were ready to do something. We were just very proactive on the business end of things and on musical delivery. We were a lot younger, and you tend to yell a lot more. (laughs) It was like Rebel Without a Cause, you're so adamant about all these things. It was just really poetry that I was just trying to make, turn into a song, to have songs to play in my dad's. This feed the machine of the band with more material, eventually, I think we improved as songwriters. We matured. All of our experiences feed into our art.

Of course.

Also, our influences have expanded over the years. Music hasn't faded from our lives. I honestly believe that there are a lot of people who start young and who are in a band and after a while, things don't work. They go back into the normal world of having a job and doing all that. We're fortunate enough to have this smallish but also successful thing that we build on. That has given us the incentive to stay in the music world, to stay focused on music. I think that like any art form, or any kind of profession, you have to focus pretty much on that world, for the majority of your life, if you want to improve and you want to grow.

In 1998, All the Pain Money Can Buy got the band two big hits with “The Way” and “Out of My Head” – both songs that you wrote and sang. You were all over the radio and TV for a few years. What was it like to be in the middle of that sort of whirlpool? Was it sort of surreal to be you at the height of your popularity?

That's the word I was definitely going to use. The whirlwind of activity, coupled with the constant adulation and back slapping, and people holding you up; all that stuff combines to make a really toxic…  not toxic, intoxicating… cocktail of surrealist ideas. You think this can never end. Why would it end? This record has sold a million copies. The next one is sure to sell three million copies. I was surrounded by people who were very successful, much more successful than us. Like we were opening up for the Goo Goo Dolls for the summer of ‘99. They were indie guys. They were a punk band. They did pretty well, nationally, on an indie level.

Right, the early Metal Blade albums…

They got a deal and not much happened. Then the next record, stuff started happening. Then by I guess the third or fourth album, boom, they've sold multi-million copies of records. They've been able to build on that really well. I assumed, because I was in that scene – in that zone of the music world – that would happen for us as well. I didn't take into account that it's a game. You have to understand how that game works and you have to play it well. You also have to be united as a team, just like a business. We're a team and we didn't know how to really do that effectively.

Okay….

For years and years, we managed to stay afloat and stay a band, and do lots of gigs. Gigs only slowed down to a rate of maybe… ten a year was probably our lowest point. Not counting the pandemic, where we didn't do very many shows in 2020 and those were on the front end of 2020, before everything happened. So, we've always been active, and we've always been doing it, but we've struggled. We've had some pretty hardcore longtime fans that won't give up on us. (laughs) That's really great. They've helped us build things to where they are now, which I feel like is on an upward trajectory.

Good.

We started a Patreon. That really helps with keeping money coming in. It's not a lot of money, but it's the kind of money that we're able to pay for things that come up. We need an extra $2,500 to finish a music video, or we need to print up shirts to sell on the road. Little things like that. That's helped. The fans and the Patreon subscribers have been a very functional part of keeping the band going and helping us put out new material. Thank God for them. I'm really glad that there's things like that today that can help people do their thing. I subscribe to a few Patreon, not artists, but podcasters are my thing. I like to take care of some of those people, because I'm so into what they do. If I’m going to expect people to support what I do, then I'll support people that I'm a fan of as well.

I read that “The Way” was based on a true story that you had read about. Is that true?

Sure, that's true. Naturally, it's a story I've told hundreds of times. I'm cool with it. I was at a loss for a subject matter to write about. I'm sure as a journalist and a writer, you have to figure out: Do I have something important to say? That's a dilemma I've grappled with all my career. I just couldn't find anything interesting to say. I called a friend of mine and asked him what he thought. He said, “Well, the Beatles did that thing with ‘A Day in the Life.’ You can maybe look at something in the paper or turn on the news.” I read an article in the newspaper about a couple that had been missing for about a week or two at that time. They were elderly, they're from the country and they had an extended family that was putting out the word and trying to help. Maybe on the TV news, they can show pictures of them. “Have you seen these people?” I just started running on that.

Nice.

I wrote that song, and it was like, maybe they're all right. They just wanted to get away from everybody. I've been married for a long time, but I've also had a lot of kids, and I can't wait until the day of the last bus. (laughs) So, I thought about that. I found out later that they had a tragedy. They crashed their car, and it was in a place where nobody could find it for a long time.

Yes, that’s sad.

How that incident informed the song is something that has helped develop my songwriting skills over the years. Now, I tend to write songs pretty regularly. Some are good and some are not. Or some are just okay. But some are good. Not everyone's going to be good but if you don't try and you don’t move and do the thing, then it's not going to happen. So I work on a weekly prompt that a group of people give me. We all write songs. There's only a few of us our email thread. We get a prompt every week, and I managed to come up with a song every week without fail. Once you put a seed in my little garden, I tend to be able to make something happen out of it, whether it be just a quick little ditty, or something really cool might happen. That's a good thing that whole story brought for me in an otherwise obviously, tragic story. It's a big part of what I do today.

Several years ago, Machine Gun Kelly and Camila Cabello had a hit with “Bad Things,” which was based around the chorus of “Out of My Head.” What did you think of that song and how your song was reinvented for a new generation?

I was excited at the financial [prospect]. I knew there would be something if this thing was a radio hit – and it sounded like a hit to me when I heard the recording. I had nothing to do with the recording or the production of that song, but Machine Gun Kelly and Camila were working with… I'm trying to think of the name of the guys, I always forget. I'm so out of that world. This production company in LA, who write a lot of songs for a lot of different people (ed. note: It was The Futuristics) figured out a way to incorporate that chorus. It sounded amazing. I was sent a copy of the recording. I listened to it, and I was like, “Damn, that sounds like something you would hear on the radio.”

And you did.

It's nothing that I would have been able to make or do. I wouldn't have been able to update the original song or do anything with it. The sentiment is totally different than what's going on in the original song. It's a different song. But because it's so obvious that that song “Out of My Head” informs “Bad Things” that I'm in for pretty good things. I didn't have to do anything but say, “Sure. Yeah, let's do it.” (laughs) It's helped me personally over the last few years. It's turned my personal finances around, actually. To be frank and honest, it's helped a lot. I haven't gotten the yacht. Somebody else will take one of my other songs. Who knows, maybe this “Rather Be Me Than You” single that we’re putting out, maybe that be the one that puts me on a yacht, finally.

One thing I’ve always liked about your band is that you are not afraid to experiment with styles. On Sonic Ranch, there are songs of all diverse types. “Let Love Back in Your Heart” is very much power pop, “Grey Sky Blue” has a bit of a country feel, “America” has an almost spy theme vibe…

Yeah, that reverb feeling song…

“Daydream” is a bit psychedelic, “I’ll Be On My Way” is an offbeat piano ballad. Do you guys enjoy playing with styles on your albums?

I’m glad you hear that diversity is on the record. I think that's really great. A lot of this diversity comes from the two of us, as writers – Miles and myself – getting into all kinds of different music. I also can't leave out [producer] David Garza. He's just got this incredibly expansive palette musically, but also culturally. He's open to not just aping something, but really sitting in it. We’ve done some things over the years that are kind of… that's us trying to be country, or that us trying to do a ska thing. I believe that we really do pull it off, not just here, but on a few recent records that we've done. When we do something that's maybe a different style, it's not about the style, it's about the band.

Right.

It's about us playing what we like and keeping it real – to use an overdone 90s term. We're just trying to keep it real and not pretend. The pretending is over. Young people pretend. We're on the other side of that. We like sitting where we are and being where we are. We know that we have a career that we can be proud of.

“Hummingbird” is a pretty pointed song. Is it about anyone specific?

Well, I can’t really speak to that. That was Miles’ words almost all the way.

Okay, sorry, I didn’t have a breakdown of who wrote which songs on the new album.

I could talk about it as a fan of the song. I think it's really great. It's super hooky. It's got that mid-period Beatles vibe to me – that Rubber Soul or Revolver kind of vibe. Or maybe even for Beatles For Sale. It's almost to the point where they were super heady, but not quite. It's got these really colorful hooks and chord progressions, and the melody just can't be beat. As the arrangement goes, and the way it's recorded, we threw in harmonies, but they are only seasoning. They're just like a little dab here. Fastball, for our first few records, is notorious for yelling these harmonies and I can barely listen to it today. It's just like, what are you screaming about? Are you ready for the fallout? They could seize these lyrics. (chuckles) Anyway, there's fans that love that stuff, so that's great. I like what we're doing, and I want to continue to make records that sort of follow our path.

Another song that really sort of stood out to me lyrically, and again, I apologize that this is Miles, I'm not sure who wrote this. But “America” is not exactly a political song, but it is very much about the divide between people in the US these days. Why do you think people have so much trouble getting along?

That's just the way they get their information. That's all there is to it. That's the bottom line. That information is coming – not for the sake of information or informing the public – it's coming at people strictly based on capitalism, on both sides. It's a drag that there are both sides. It's not even like this whole entity. It's just this thing. It's just a line. At any rate, Miles and I wrote those lyrics together. We were definitely coming from a direction of unity. Let's see if we can be the United States, by looking at the people, and just looking at the fabric, without all the muck of information. People get so addicted to it, too. It's not like it’s coming out as through a foghorn. It's coming at us because we choose to go to these places that give us the dopamine. Each little thing engages us and makes a pleasurable experience for a minute. Then we remember that. We keep going back. Then we start realizing that it's just coming at us to spew. It really means nothing because it's not based on a concern for truth. It's based on how many customers we can line up to sell them $60 Bibles. (laughs)

Sonic Ranch is the third album you’re releasing in under five years. What do you think is the cause of the spurt of creativity? Were a lot of the songs on the last two albums written during the pandemic?

It started out just because we were almost going to abandon the idea of continuing to make a record, put the record out, record is forgotten in 14 days, and never to be seen or heard from again. (laughs) We decided we were just going to start putting up material and giving it to our Patreon subscribers and bringing it up. Then later, after we had given everybody, maybe 10, to 12, or 13 tracks, then we just turned it into an album. That's basically what we did with The Deep End, which came out back in 2022. We did that. Then we somehow found ourselves in a relationship with a record label. (laughs again)

Nice.

This record label – Sunset Boulevard Records. We were pretty happy to be an indie band for a long time. But there's going to be other people interested in what we're doing. Help to get the word out. Help to make the record. Help to form the record as an album in the way they want it formed and the way we want it formed as best we can come together because they're trying to make something happen. We're very grateful that someone wants to make something happen with us. So we've agreed to put out two albums with these guys so far. In October 2023, we put out a live record. Now we're getting ready to put this out, Sonic Ranch.

Good.

A lot of the tracks for Sonic Ranch were us going into Sonic Ranch studios in West Texas, to try and come up with more songs to keep filling the Patreon feed. Once a month, we try to put up original Fastball music before it's released. So what we've done now, because we have a record label – this is the ins and outs of Patreon versus putting out records – what we've discovered now is that the people on Patreon want to continue to give us support as a band. They also want interesting stuff. So I put up all these old demos and things. Concerts and weird interviews. They're very happy with that. I give them like two little things a month and try to keep it fresh. We're going to keep that going for as long as we can, but in the meantime, we’ve got this record to put out. I believe it's coming out June 14 now.

You’re going back out on tour. In fact, you’re going to be in Philadelphia in a couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to seeing you. But do you prefer performing live or in the studio? In what ways are they different? Some better, some worse?

They're totally different for us. We don't do a lot of rehearsing for the studio, especially on this record. Sometimes something starts working really fast. We do a little bit of pre-production, but on the last few recordings we've done, David was there to help figure out what was going to happen. We don't do a lot of performing live to record. A lot of multitrack is happening. Sometimes a guitar and a vocal, or a guitar and a keyboard and a vocal will go on first, and then a drum track will happen. It's very Sgt. Pepper. It's very eclectic, as far as how you do it.

Got it.

Performing is always fun. In answer to the actual question, I think I prefer performing live. When things are going great in the studio, it's awesome. But it's very hard work and it's very hard mentally. Sometimes it gets emotional, because there's a bunch of different artists working together and trying to make their egos gel and vibe together. It's a challenge. It's a team sport, the way we do it, and I'm grateful for that too. Because a lot of our peers, it's usually one songwriter, and the band is interchangeable with different players. I like having a relationship to keep working on over the last 30 years and the future years. It's fun. It's a challenge. It also makes me proud. It gives me that head-held-high vibe about Fastball. And I can say Fastball, even though I originally thought it was the worst name for any band, I love it now. (laughs) I love how it sounds.

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: April 2, 2024.

Photos 1 & 2 © 2023. Courtesy of Plan A Media. All rights reserved.

Album Cover © 2024. Courtesy of Plan A Media. All rights reserved.