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| A musical duo hailing from Denton, Texas, Fergus & Geronimo are Andrew Savage (Fergus) and Jason Kelly (Geronimo). Taking their names from the rival child gang leaders in the movie War of the Buttons, they make music that are heavily influenced by 60s pop and psychedelia. They first came to attention via a flurry of singles in 2009 before finally releasing their debut album that came out on Hardly Art. Now, with a number of concerts being planned, including a possible showcase spot on this year’s SXSW, W_Music decided to catch up with the dynamic duo.
W: Describe your sound to our readers who may not be familiar with you. JK: I’m really terrible with this question. Readers, go listen to it. AS: It sounds like a Jakarta traffic jam. W: Love the album. I think one of the reason why I like it so much is how spontaneous it feels. How was the writing and recording? Was it as spontaneous as it sounds? AS: Yeah I suppose you could say that, I mean the entire album was improvised on the spot in one take. Definitely, I guess that is sort of the definition of spontaneous. JK: Yes it was very spontaneous. Andrew and I write our songs separately from each other. For the most part I would have my songs completely finished and have a demo recorded before bringing them to the table. With Andrew a lot of the times I’d play drums along with him and he’d kind of work it out from there. It worked out pretty well. We intentionally went for a limitless sound and we had a ton of fun making the album because of that. W: I especially like the way you interpreted doo-wop in that garage-y way. Doo-wop isn’t a genre you hear particulary often these days. What brought you to the idea? AS: I guess that is kind of a Zappa hand me down. I like the idea of doo-wop being confrontational. Also I fully believe that doo-wop was the punk music of its day JK: You know we listen to vast amounts of music but we both absolutely love doo-wop and soul. We both come from a punk background so I guess naturally the way that we interpret things might have a slightly different flavor from the more traditional doo-wop and soul sounds. We’re just having fun. W: I’m pretty sure you’re both Zappa fans. Are there any other particular artists that influenced the album specifically? JK: I’m a HUGE Kinks fan. Wire, Devo, Troggs, Television Personalities, Alice Cooper, Bad Finger, Stiv Bators, Protex, the list never ends. AS: He really did have the idea on how to make records that were not boring. He experimented with about every style of music, but gave each one his own mark. But that’s all admiration, we are trying to do our own thing here. W: I think I once read one of you describing Fergus & Geronimo as two people’s solo project. How did you choose which song to put in the album then? AS: That is true, Fergus & Geronimo is not a band. It is a recording project of two people that spend a lot of time together. We are two artist that work completely independently of the other, that way if there is ever the opportunity we can go our separate ways and do our own thing. That being said we had to call the project something, so I came up with Fergus & Geronimo. It’s kind of weird that it has got to this point. The project started one night when me and Jason were just fucking around in his kitchen with drums and a keyboard and recording just for fun. We did a couple of my songs and a couple of his. Next thing we knew we had a few records out. So there was never really an intention to start a band or treat the project like a band with any real goals. As of now we are just a couple of guys that write songs. JK: We just show each our songs and if we both like em then we go with it!
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W:As someone who hails from the biggest muslim country in the world, i just have to ask this: why blind muslim girl? (editor’s note: “Blind Muslim Girl” is a song from their album. An earlier version was also released as a single in 2009)
JK: I would rather Andrew answer this since he wrote that one but I’ll give it a go. Basically he was really captivated by a blind muslim girl he had seen at the college campus one day. He wrote the melody in his head on the way home and then finished out the song once he got to a guitar. He showed me the song, we practiced it once and then immediately recorded it. AS: I wrote a lot of the early Fergus & Geronimo songs while working as a courier for a library at my University. I would pass the time by writing songs. That particular song comes from seeing a real life blind girl (cane, glasses, the works) in a full burka. I thought that was pretty psychedelic. What if she was a total fox underneath? What if I could woo her with my western charm and she couldn’t see what a doofus I look like? I guess I’ll never know. Where are you blind muslim girl? W: What’s the plan for 2011? AS: I would like to do some travelling, quit my job. I already quit Facebook which as the first goal of 2011. Since then I’ve been a lot more productive as a person. I’d like to put out a record of this new project I’ve been working on, but we’ll see. JK: We’ll be touring a bunch this year! I got a hip-hop album I’m working on. Andrew wants to retire from writing music before the year is over. I just want to have fun and enjoy being alive! W: Any plans to tour outside America? AS: As of now, no concrete plans. I think that Europe is the goal. I’d actually like to tour southeast asia, but I’m not sure if we have fans there. South America too. W: Any message to our indonesian readers? AS: Send me mixtapes of the best Indonesian bands! c/o Hardly Art. JK: Hey guys! I hope you’re doing great! Finding lot’s of sweet music to jam and people to kiss on the mouth! We love you all! - Myspace interview by: jan k
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