“The Forum” have always been the best at making the local scene feel like a real community, bringing everyone together with their insane energy at their live shows and making people laugh on their social media accounts. We sat down to discuss the local scene and how they continue to make their mark with local music fans.
Small Talks: So starting off, can you give us all a little introduction?
Michael: I’m Michael Higgins, I do guitar and vocals.
Jake: Jake Farrell, Bass, Vocals, Stuff.
Ethan: Ethan Klohr, Drums, Additional stuff.
Nick: I am Nick Wheeler, I play guitar and synth.
Small Talks: Obviously in this day and age things are a lot different because you have a way of connecting with people that isn’t just going to shows and meeting people at said shows, how has social media had an impact on the band?
Michael: Social media has been everything for us. It’s the way we have retained any listeners, we reach out to people about shows on social media, to an annoying extent. Without social media I don’t really know where we would be because we’ve also just met a lot of people through social media.
Nick: I think it helps keep us connected with the people that we do meet, we all have access to all of the band accounts so we all see what messages people are sending us.
Michael: I sign all of my messages “Nick”.
Nick: It’s really cool to meet people at shows and have them reach out just to talk about stuff, that’s one of the weirdest connections but also one of the coolest.
Ethan: It’s really the only way to get on peoples radar anymore, you can promote your socials at a show and people will go and see what you’re like and get the personal side of the band as well.
Small Talks: So to go along with that, we really feel that you are one of the bands to bring a sense of community to the scene, what was one of the first times where you really felt that?
Michael: It was probably right here in Tampa honestly, we had our friends in Gainesville but it wasn’t until we branched out and got to see first hand how welcoming the scene here really is. It started with us playing a show with Youth Antics to basically nobody, instantly they became super great friends of ours.
Small Talks: Do you think that the sense of bands supporting bands is something that is really important to the scene?
Michael: There are a lot of bands that are two faced and kind of hard to build a connection with so it's extremely refreshing to meet those bands who are just genuinely good and supportive people.
Small Talks: Tell us a little about your most recent release “When Did Everything Fade?/Wounds”
Jake: First I want to say that they are very good.
Small Talks: Wow that was really beautiful.
Jake: Wounds we’ve been playing for a while, so it felt really good to finally get that out. It was a really long period of not knowing what to do with the song and once we finally locked it down live we were like “wow we gotta get this out”. It’s one of those songs that has really good audience participation, if you know the lines it’s really fun to scream out.
It’s my favorite thing we’ve ever put out. “When did everything fade?” kind of came out of nowhere and just, blew up. Nick came in with this idea and it was like “Oh shit!”.
Michael: Nick had every part already written.
Nick: I’m just saying I’ve got another one ready.
Small Talks: How did y’all know it was the right time to release “Wounds” after sitting on it for so long?
Michael: It just seemed like all of the pieces were finally there.
Jake: For a while it didn’t really sound like a cohesive song because there were bits missing, but I think at a certain point once we added in all of Nick’s synth parts and once I got all of my different bass parts down, it just really came together. We ended up adding an outro on a whim because I thought the song sounded like something that would play at the end of a John Hughes movie and I thought it would be dope if the track faded out. Who knows what would have happened if we waited another month or so but, I think it was ready.
Small Talks: How does the recording process differ from playing live and which do you guys prefer?
Michael: Oh god, I hate recording.
Jake: You hate recording?
Michael: It sucks, it’s so stressful.
Nick: Anytime we ever record in a studio there will be at least a couple of takes where we’ll be halfway through the lyrics and you’ll just hear “Fuck!” in the background. Every song we’ve ever recorded there’s a version of it with the fuck scream.
Michael: Yeah, I hate recording because well, time is money, and we have to get this right. I like it, but I prefer the latter half of it.
Nick: It can be really exhausting, we all know what we want the final product to be and I think we all hit a point where we get so stressed that we have to walk away for a bit. We’ll spend 12 hours trying to get every detail exactly right and then play it back and it ends up being something completely different.
Jake: When you’re playing live you get like, the dopamine rush, or that high of being on a stage and you’re surrounded by all this excitement. When you’re in the studio, it’s like gratifying.
Nick: Nothing feels better than when you get that final version of a song.
Small Talks: How do you want people to view you guys as a band? We’ve always felt that you guys are very cohesive and we think of you guys as a perfect group.
Jake: We’ve been playing together for about 5 years now and I feel like there’s a certain comradery between us that just comes with time.
Michael: We really care about the way people see us, we know how we want to come across and what kind of presentation we want. Only so many people are going to see us live so a lot more of our audience is only going to see us online, so visuals are very important.
Small Talks: I feel like you guys have always been very good with that, you’re on that perfect line of being very professional but also being very personable.
Michael: I compare ourselves to a lot of bands which I know I shouldn’t do but we really hold ourselves to such a high standard.
Ethan: We try and get inspiration from wherever we can and use it in areas we feel we could improve upon.
Small Talks: Any last words? Jake: Shout out Cami, shout out Si-J, without them we would be nowhere. All of our branding, and our image comes from the two of them.
Nick: We’ve played music together for a long time but what really makes us a band is Cami and Si-J.
Comments