Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Interview date: November 22, 2006
Thursday. The rain had eased off a bit. We showed up at the K-4 club with the RTV film crew right on schedule – five o’clock. We got everything ready and waited for the members of Father to arrive. In the next room the techs were setting up the lights for the evening show. The stage was still totally bare – no instruments, no drums, no amps. A slight delay. The guys were supposed to show up any minute. Apparently they’d run into some minor trouble at the border. Classic! We’ll just have to wait. I figured they’d be sky-high with stardom, since a hugely buzzed-about and successful English tour had just wrapped up behind them. Critics are hyping them to the stars. Fans are singing their praises. They put out a commercially successful debut called Inspirita. I’ll admit it! I had my doubts about the whole thing, but those doubts were washed away pretty quickly. A white van pulls up in front of the club. This time six of them climb out, the core of tonight’s Father lineup. Two smiling, funny, super upbeat guys walk toward us. Bassist Franjo Jardas is quite different from what I’d imagined. Mainly, unlike in the photo on the album, he’s grown his hair out. Singer Mihael Prosen looks calm, though a little shy. Like he’s not used to media attention. We shake hands and I soon feel that the energy of this interview is full of positivity, honesty and willingness on both sides…
Sandi: First off, welcome back to Slovenia. You’ve been gigging a lot lately. Your last big shows were in England. What are your impressions?
Franjo: Ours or the English’s?
Sandi: Yours, of course…
Franjo: Our impressions are great. We saw a bit of the world. In that Mecca of rock’n’roll called England we played fourteen… No! Sorry – thirteen shows in thirteen different cities. We were well received. Big party, big laughs, and in spring or summer we’re going back to England, most likely. Our hard work paid off, and we’re really happy… Yeah!
Sandi: Were you nervous at all? After all, playing in England isn’t exactly an everyday thing…
Mihael: Yeah, of course there were some nerves and some fear about whether we’d hold up through that many shows in one go. We played five days in a row, then a day of rest, then four more days of playing… We’d never done that, four shows in five or six days. Actually, it was in Slovenia that we played our first real tour… I was mainly worried about my voice, whether I’d survive that pace and still be able to sing. But then… We prepared well, were careful, and looked after each other and everything else. And it all went fine! Seriously – from the first show to the last we kept the same level. We played every single show like it was our last. We gave it everything, and people really noticed!
Sandi: You’re still touring in support of your debut Inspirita, which critics, the media and listeners received phenomenally. Can you say a word or two about the concept, the philosophy behind the record? What are your personal beliefs and thoughts? What’s the Father philosophy?
Franjo: (laughs) Well… Basically it all revolves around one thing, and it’s this: be your own person, believe in yourself
Mihael: …and in zebras (laughs)
Franjo: …Believe in love and keep on rocking! (laughs)
Mihael: I mean, philosophy… The album is good, and we wanted the shows to be like that too – with beginnings and endings, with their own theme. Same with the lyrics… The main thing everything revolves around is that we do something of our own, something that’s ours. That we’re authentic and original. Whatever we do, we try to do it our way – we don’t want to sound like somebody else. We try to squeeze out, to pull out, that honesty that’s in us, whatever’s in us. That’s also the reason we came to be. We all used to have our own bands in Croatia, and it was right here in Slovenia – so again we’re back to the Slovenia connection – that Father came together. Soon after we saw a band called Laddio Bolocko in Ilirska Bistrica…
Franjo: …who sadly don’t exist anymore…
Mihael: Yeah… Those are the guys who played in Mars Volta and At The Drive-In. That show completely floored us. We broadened our view of music and tried to pull the very best out of ourselves and so on, and that ended up on this album. And that’s how we’ll work in the future too, on the next album. As for promoting the album: those are the last two shows we’d planned to promote the record. We pulled off pretty much everything we’d planned. We also presented it outside our home country, across the former Yugoslavia, so for now there’s nothing more we can do there. Just release a new record and play in all the countries where we should be playing – Italy, Austria, Germany. We’ve set ourselves the goal of playing Europe as much as possible before the next record comes out, to show people material you can’t really get anymore as such… You know what distribution is like…
Sandi: A lot of the material, or rather most of it, comes from the Vasaii demo, which is the direct predecessor of the album.
Franjo: There are actually seven tracks from the demo on the album…
Sandi: So how’s the writing of new material going, the prep for a new record? You’ve had tons of gig commitments so far – how was it for finding time to write?
Franjo: Honestly, there’s been very little time this whole while. During the album presentation there was hardly any. We started collecting ideas for lots of songs, there are plenty of ideas, plenty of ambition for new songs, but there was just no time. Now we’ve basically wrapped up the British tour. We still have four shows to celebrate coming home from the tour. On our home turf – in Zagreb, Rijeka, Ljubljana and Pula. After that we lock ourselves in our hideout, the garage… We have to! Just like that! Only water, bread and a bit of salami… Nothing else! We’ll lock ourselves in and go full throttle. We’ve got plenty of drive. You know, we haven’t made a single new song, all the way, complete and concrete, in two whole years. And then the ideas keep pouring out of your head and ears… You just can’t hold that in. They spray out in all directions, and we couldn’t do a thing about it. Really! Because of all the traveling around, and gigs, everyone has their own…
Mihael: College, and work… It’s hard to coordinate, but it has to be done…
Sandi: Inspirita sounds phenomenal. You’ve set your own direction and you’re running with it. Do you have a sense of how far you could experiment while what you’re doing would still be Father? Where are the limits where you could say “On this side we’re still Father, but beyond this Father simply isn’t Father anymore”?
Franjo: We don’t think about that at all. Even now, when we work, we get carried away, and wherever it takes us, whatever part, that’s our path. That’s also where we stop, if we’re talking about songs… Speculating about limits now… I don’t know. There you go!
Mihael: We’ll get together. Two or three of us get together and make something… And the other two… I’ve also got a few songs of my own that are in their infancy and waiting for us to bring them to life. All our lives we’ve followed what interests us, listened to music, gone to some extreme limits. There are really no limits, who knows how it’ll all look in the end… It might all turn into emo… (laughs) I’m kidding.
Franjo: At our core we… We play heavy music. That’s the thing, above everything else, a one-of-a-kind physical experience that cleanses us when we play loud and hard. But basically each of us listens to everything from Björk to Pantera, the Beatles, Halid Bešić… Do you know him?
Mihael: You catch my drift?
Franjo: We’re steeped in all of that. All of it together. We run it through our… Prism… We take it and make something of our own, but aware of all the influences. Like you said – I don’t know where it might take us. I hope in a good direction.
Mihael: You can feel the differences from song to song. Different directions that add up to a whole. We’ll see…
Franjo: Maybe it’ll be even better than Inspirita…
Sandi: And what about plans for Father – short-term and long-term?
Mihael: The plan is this: after the show at K-4 we have the closing show in Pula, the so-called homecoming gig for the England tour. Then, like Franjo already said, we bury ourselves in the rehearsal space, play, and write new songs. A few more shows are lined up. There’s also a Beatles revival band in the works. We’ll be playing the Beatles, plus a few small festivals, but what’s primary is new songs, and in March we go back to England on tour, because we were invited by all those clubs, and some individuals are interested too, so we may end up selling the license for Inspirita. There are signs pointing that way. In July we’re invited to England again, to a festival where we’ll even be headliners. So… That’s what we’ve got mapped out: all next year we’ll try to make it happen and play as many shows across Europe as possible. That’s our main goal, I think: England, Germany, Austria… To try to play as much as we can for as many people as we can and see the reactions firsthand.
Franjo: Those are the long-term plans. And the short-term ones are that we all go have a beer together! (laughs) There you go… There you go… That’d be nice!
Sandi: Thanks for the interview!
Franjo: Thank you!
Mihael: We’d also like to give a shout-out to Dejan Radičević, who mixed our record. All the thanks go to him.
Franjo: Yessss!!!
Sandi: Thanks, guys!
Franjo: And thanks to all of you too! (laughs) Danke schön!
photo: Jani Lah
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