Photo By: Heather Koepp
After a quick introduction, Fencer’s lead singer and guitarist Field Cate jumped right into talking about the band’s latest single.
Let’s talk about “Joseph Courtney.” Can you talk about the writing recording process?
When we were getting this record together, there’s like a whole back catalog of really old Fencer tunes that never ended up getting recorded. That’s kind of the case with, I think, most bands like starting off for their first few years. And when we were going through and making the track listing, we were trying to figure out if we wanted to bring any of them back and, ultimately, didn’t with most of ’em because we kind of wanted to represent a bit of where the band is at right now. But one of the super old school ones we decided to bring back was called “Joseph Courtney,” and that was actually like maybe the first Fencer song before we had even named ourselves. Cameron, our drummer, he and I would used to get together at his house. I’d come over at like 9:00 PM, and I ended up leaving at like 5:00 or 6:00 AM. We would just sit down and write and record a song from scratch and like, do you know, like a demo? And the first one we ever did when we sat down and do this was “Joseph Courtney.” And so over the years, it’s kind of just been a fan-favorite of people who have followed us. We’ve still played it all the time. It’s just like one of our classic songs and had never officially released it, so we went ahead basically and kind of redid it from the ground up a little bit and ultimately brought it back. So we’re super excited to have it out.
Did anything change when you guys like decided to professionally record it?
We redid a bit of it. Most of the chorus ended up changing, a lot of the lyrics, certain beats here and there. I mean, we had just written it [when] Cameron and I were like barely 19 or something, and Fencer didn’t even exist. We had met in this other pop punk band where I was playing bass, and he was playing drums. We’ve evolved a lot since then and learned each other much more efficiently. So we just went through and we were like, “All right, how would we write this song now?” We made a lot of decisions based on that, and I think it’s a lot better off where it’s at now.
Who is Joseph Courtney, and what does he mean to you?
It’s kind of this persona that I came up with and somewhat like pseudo-adopted. Basically when we were getting into all of this, I was gonna be the frontman and hadn’t done that before. I was an actor for many years, but I hadn’t like fronted a band and had to really kind of get out of my comfort zone a little bit and play this part of somebody who really craved attention and was a little manic and out of control. I came up with this character, Joseph Courtney, and that’s kind of his whole vibe. It allowed me to have an excuse to channel a lot of my more energetic and a little crazy personality into that and be able to use that as a performance. So Joseph Courtney is just this character who’s kind of a little out of his mind and really craving attention and wanting to perform and wanting an audience and all that kind of stuff.
Do you think you use him as a cathartic experience?
Yeah, definitely. I deal with a lot of mental health issues so it’s really nice to have a platform and a bit of an outlet to channel that into and kind of get away with it a little bit. It makes me really confident.
Speaking on mental health, can you talk a little bit about being a really big mental health advocate and what that means to you?
I’ve dealt with a lot of mental health stuff in the last many years, and so a lot of our lyrics and songs end up revolving around that concept. It’s something that I’ve struggled with and basically had to become super passionate about to learn myself and others and how to navigate that whole thing because I think that’s such a big part of life. Luckily, our generation has been a little more receptive to that kind of thing than past ones. I really like focusing on it and talking about it, and it’s a lot of what I think about. I got into life coaching recently. I have done a lot of like dialectal behavioral therapy and regular therapy. I’ve got this personality disorder called borderline, and so it’s been just something that takes up a lot of brain space, for better or worse. I really like to be able to channel it into the platform we’re buidling.
How do you mix advocating into your music?
I just write it about that all the time, about the experiences I go through and how that affects my life, my brain, and my emotional regulation. I think just inherently that ends up being the focus of a lot of what we talk about and a lot of what the songwriting kind of focuses on. That’s been really helpful and somewhat therapeutic. There’s just not a tremendous amount of info, let alone people or figures out there who talk about that type of stuff. I really like the idea of maybe eventually being able to be a face for that conversation.
You mentioned being a child actor. How did those experiences influence you? Why did you make the switch into music?
I started that really young. I was always into performing and doing that kind of entertainment. I started like professionally acting when I was six and did it for about a decade. I went on like over 800 auditions, and at that time, it was all in-person so that was like my entire life. I really loved it. I had some decent success, but starting something so young, you change a lot as a person and develop other interests, and your personality changes. I kind of just got a little burnt out. I remember starting to, when I was like 10 or 11, really find my own bands and things I liked. I’ve been singing forever. I did a lot of musical theater when I was younger. Singing has always been like one of my big, big passions. I started learning bass when I was like 13 or 14, and I did that for many years and tried to start some bands, but I didn’t really know anything. Ultimately, I met Cameron, and that’s kind of where everything took off. We needed a guitar player, so I quickly was like, “I’ll just learn.” It all went from there. And I remember, around that time, I was like, “I think this is what I wanna do.” A lot of people put acting and music in a very similar category, but I think the cool thing about music is there’s just so much freedom and no rules at all, which is a blessing and a curse. It’s nice with acting because there’s a clear roadmap to success with this. You do this, you go on these auditions, and you play the game. With music, there’s no roadmap at all, so it’s a little daunting to just kind of being thrown in. You’re looking for a treasure, but you have no map. That’s intimidating but also very freeing because everything works. I think my acting background and my musical theater has influenced the way I perform and with how I sing in the band. It’s very theatrical, and I like that kind of edge to what I do.
You guys have an album coming out on February 3rd. What was the writing process like?
We were writing it over early 2020, right around pandemic time. We weren’t planning to do a record, just kind of doing some new songs. We were thinking about maybe doing another EP, and ultimately, with the batch of tracks we had, we were really happy about it. So we narrowed it down to 10 and self-produced the entire thing in our studio, which we were very excited about. Because this album, while we’re still independent, it’s just so through and through just the three of us. We were there for every single decision. No one else had any input. I mean, we have a great mixer named Henry Lunetta and Zach Fisher who mastered the album. But outside of that, the production was just hundreds of hours of us sitting in our little studio alone making every possible decision. And that, I think, is really cool and really what we wanted for our first record to just be: a true representation of what the band is, where it’s at right now, what we’re about. I think that’s a rare thing to be able to do that with a full-length release. I’m very excited about that aspect. I mean, there was a lot going on with the pandemic. I was going through a lot, through a couple different relationships, and that’s kind of where it generally ended up. We’re really proud of these songs. They’re fun.
What would you say your favorite on the record would be?
Probably either the opening track or the closing track. The closing track is “Bad Bet,” which I think is one of our most interesting. It’s a softer song, but very dynamic and super meaningful to me. I really, really love that song. And then as far as a more kind of straightforward Fencer song, the opening track “Come On, Keep Screaming” I really love. When we’re being heavy, I think that’s the best representation of what we do and the most dynamic example of our songwriting and what we’re all about. So one of those two.
And then on the flip side, what would you say was the hardest to write?
That’s difficult. I think a lot of the songs kind of came together pretty quickly. Maybe “Bad Bet” was one of the harder ones. I remember working on the lyrics and the progression to that song for like months and months. It was just one of those tracks that was sitting around. It was one of the last ones we did, and it just kept changing over and over. Another one was “Sanitarium.” We worked on that for a while. I mean, we had the basics of it for a really long time, but structurally, it was changing a lot over many months of us working on the other songs and stuff like that. A lot of the tracks, though, came together pretty quickly, which is cool. There was definitely a lot more of a difficulty recording and getting certain songs right rather than the writing process.
The general aesthetic of the record seems to be the color blue. Why is that?
So it’s not just the record; it’s the whole band. Everything we do, we’ve kind of saturated in blue very excessively. We wanna shove it down everyone’s throat as hard as possible. Early on, we wanted to do a color scheme. We had talked about that and ultimately chose blue. I have this thing called synesthesia where I’ve always associated words and letters with colors. I don’t know why. It’s just like something that’s always happened in my brain, specifically words and letters. When we were doing our first batch of songs, like when we wrote “Joseph Courtney” and “Battery Pack,” they were blue. I don’t know why. They just were. And so we kind of decided to keep going with that. And since then, it’s just become so much of a creative force of like everything the band is about. Now we do this super pretentious thing where, if we’re writing a song and it doesn’t feel blue, we’ll just shelf it. I’m slowly phasing out everything I own to only be blue. But even outside of that, it’s completely ridiculous. I mean like everything I own, I try to make blue. What’s funny too is we realized a couple years ago, that not only is the band super emotional and everything, but the three of us are the three different water signs. Water being blue and water signs being heavily emotional. I’m a Cancer, Scott’s a Pisces, and Cameron’s a Scorpio. So it was just this kind of weird meant to be thing. It’s slowly become like all I think about. Our lighting and our studio is all blue. Whenever we play, it’s all blue. I don’t really know what it does. It does something though. If it wasn’t there, the band would definitely be different in many ways. It’s just something we’ve adopted, and I like going really over the top with gimmicks. I love gimmicks. We don’t plan to stop. A lot of people are like, “Oh, what’s gonna be the color for the next album?” Everything’s gonna be blue forever. That’s what the band is. It’s a really striking thing too. I mean, a lot of our music videos, the concepts would come up over just like a certain prop or item or something that is like a striking weird, electric, royal blue, and it wouldn’t normally be. We base a lot of our creative vision for videos and stuff around that, which is fun too.
What are your plans for the new year?
Definitely the focus being the album. We have a record release show that I don’t think has been announced yet, but it’s coming. Nothing to announce with touring so far, at the moment. We are in talks with a lot of things, and definitely that is a priority happening in the new year. After that, I mean, I think the idea is to not stop really with putting out music. We kind of had a really big gap without releases, and we’d like to alleviate that moving forward. So album’s gonna come out, of course, but we’re already working on new stuff past that and have been recording a bit. Of course, we’re excited about it and love the album, and you know, that’s the focus right now and everything we’re talking about, but to us, it’s like old news. We’re on what’s next. So I think just continuing to be as active and play this silly game that bands and musicians have to play.
Is there anything you want to specifically say to listeners or fans?
Just stay tuned for new music coming, and our self-titled album comes out February 3rd, so we’re very excited about that. When we do announce tour stuff, please be on the look out. We are @FencerBand on all socials, so you can keep up with us with whatever we have going on, which will ideally be a lot. We’ve got a few more videos ready to go and lots and lots of music.
You can listen to “Joseph Courtney” here:
