"Success most looks like maximizing fun" - Fortuna 500 on DIY, Friendship, Gear & 'Two For Flinching'
Fortuna 500 talk 'Two For Flinching', DIY community, friendship, gear, creative chaos, and why success might simply mean maximizing fun.
Photo credit: Lena Warnke
Fortuna 500 seem to be building a whole little universe around their record. One held together by childhood friendships, basement shows, home-burned CDs, strange noises, cheap acoustic guitars, beers with friends, and the stubborn belief that rock and roll should still feel like fun.
The Somerville, Massachusetts five-piece - Cole Triedman (banjo, rhythm guitar, lead vocals, harmonica), Ryan DiLello (lead guitar), Julian Snyder (drums), "Farmer" Dave Levine (bass), and Harley Spring (lead/slide guitar) - call what they do "garage country," but 'Two For Flinching' refuses to stay politely inside any one genre. Country, garage rock, post-punk, noise and sweetness collide across the sprawling 12-song debut, recorded with the band’s "fast and loose" ethos firmly intact.
We talked to Fortuna 500 about the beautiful moment when a song nearly falls apart, the gear and strange recording choices behind Two For Flinching, the importance of their Boston DIY community, the creative freedom of a 22-year friendship, the realities of time and money, home-burning their own CDs, dreaming of bigger stages, and why, above everything else, they want to maximize fun.
Chris Roditis, Musicngear: You describe Fortuna 500 's ethos as "fast and loose" and Two For Flinching certainly seems to embrace that philosophy. It can jump from sweetness to noise, country to garage rock to post-punk, sometimes seemingly within the same breath. When you were making the album, did you ever have a moment where you thought, "This is completely getting away from us" and decided that was exactly what you wanted?
Definitely. There's a moment in the Master Key jam where we literally almost lost the sauce. Listening back on that live recording in the studio, hearing those drums travel to the brink of disintegration, we paused for a second and sorta looked at each other. Are we okay with a record that tows the line of chaos like that? The song itself has like four genres in it. Then we laughed and were like, duh.
Musicngear: There's a fascinating tension on Two For Flinching between chaos and tenderness. Songs can be loud, strange, funny, or unruly, but there's also a lot of genuine affection, nostalgia, friendship and sincerity throughout the record. How important is it for Fortuna 500 that the ridiculous and the sincere coexist within the same record?
That's kind of the point. Our friendships, at their best, feed off chaos and laughs. If things are getting too serious is a pretty good gauge of when things are off, musically, interpersonally, whatever.
This is a band started by two childhood friends who grew into the same love of music and the same humor - how lucky are we?
Photo credit: Lizzy McEleney
Musicngear: What gear became essential to the making of Two For Flinching? Tell us about the guitars, banjo, amps, pedals, drums, recording setup, or even some weird little piece of equipment that unexpectedly became part of the album's identity. Were there any particular choices in your recording process that helped capture the album's loose, on-the-edge character?
Cole: We've got gear guys in the band for sure, but we're not really a gear band. Ryan and I generally use one pedal; Dave doesn't use any. Harley is our pedal lord and contributed their knowledge a lot to the psychyer songs.
For the most part, we just plugged into analog amps they had at Big Nice studio in Rhode Island and played as we do live. Our producer and homie Chaimes Parker contributed his evil genius to curating gear and mixing, making sure things didn't sound too clean and adding distorted yelps and hollers here and there. Gotta shout out my second-hand homemade Wildwood banjo and the vintage alien megaphone we used on The Lemon Man.
Ryan: In principle, we're a pedal-less band, just not in practice. I ran a 1973 Les Paul Deluxe through a dimmed Fender Champ set up under a staircase, Harry Potter style.
Harley: I used my trusty Fender Telecaster into an all Bob Judge and Death by Audio pedal board and into a Music Man 1/12 RD. My brilliant jockeying of pedals gave the record swag but may have got me fired.
Musicngear: Fortuna 500 seems inseparable from the Boston/Somerville DIY community: between the five of you, you're involved in numerous bands, book venues, run a free DIY festival, work in event lighting, repair guitars and more. What does building a music scene mean to you beyond simply playing shows, and what have you learned from contributing to a community rather than just trying to advance your own band?
Community is the glue that holds the whole thing together! We've been so supported on our come-up. We've gotten positive feedback that's driven us to play more, write more, nurture our original energy while playing the songs tighter.
Our first gig was just a friend (Jon of Jonny Tex) offering his in to a DIY basement venue. He wanted to give Ryan and me a shot at assembling a band. It's good to feel like we're all part of something, to put Somerville and Allston/Brighton on the map, to be friends with a whole community of talented strange creatives, to give back what we put in.
Musicngear: You formed the band around a childhood friendship, and Ryan describes Fortuna 500 as a way of carrying that "elementary-schooling spirit" of imagination into adulthood. How does that long history of friendship shape the way you create music together, and is there a kind of creative freedom or trust that comes from knowing someone for so long?
Absolutely. As the primary songwriter, I spent the last year running ideas by my downstairs roommate and friend of 22 years before bringing them to the larger group. Ryan and I have been like domestic partners. We talk about bits for shows while we sit in the climbing gym sauna. Having each other through the hard life stuff makes the loose energy of the band all the more sacred.
Complete trust that we'll push each other and that it's all love is special. I think the energy of Ryan and my relationship spilled over to the net of friendship between all of us and has created a really positive foundation for this band.
Photo credit: Lena Warnke
Musicngear: Independent artists face all kinds of obstacles, from creative doubt and limited resources to lack of opportunities, time, or simply trying to make a band sustainable. What has been the biggest obstacle Fortuna 500 has had to overcome so far, and what would you tell another independent artist who is currently facing a similar challenge?
Time, time, time, time, time! We are all in other projects – and they're fucking good! Spirit Ghost, Otis Shanty, Jonny Tex, Mozz, The Leftovers. So many amazing groups pulling us in this direction and that. We'd probably have three albums of material by now if we had managed to rehearse every Thursday since we got together.
Money too – no one can really get paid off this shit. Fortuna 500 says down with the oligarchy, up with anything that says ART HAS VALUE (shoutout to Ireland's Basic Income for The Arts program).
Musicngear: The album is being released independently and, rather than being pressed on vinyl, is being distributed through venues and DIY spaces on home-burned CD-ROMs. Was that simply a practical decision, or does the physical object itself reflect something about the way you think music should circulate? And what would your dream physical edition of Two For Flinching look like if money and practicality suddenly stopped mattering?
While we're still small, I think people are more willing to invest in a band that invests in them back – I hope that in a CD you can see that I burned that shit myself, sitting at my desk, and said, hmmm what should I sharpie on this one.
Maybe we'll deal with the whole looking for a label rigamarole next LP, but that can be practically a full-time job and we're busy guys. We prioritized people hearing our album the year we recorded it!
Ultimately we love vinyl and our community is very artistic, so decking out a Tuna record with sleeve art and the works will be a joy when we can finance it.
Musicngear: What does success actually look like for Fortuna 500 over the next year? Are you chasing a certain number of listeners, more shows, particular festivals or venues, press coverage, opening slots, a bigger regional audience, or is there something much less measurable that would make you feel the album had found its people?
We're making it up as we go! As cliché as it is, success most looks like maximizing fun. Our 20s ain't gonna last forever, carpe diem blah blah blah.
Beyond that, it feels important to put together kickass songs and feel like we're progressing in our songwriting and performance. And yeah, bigger gigs, bigger press, bigger audience would all be nice. I think we'd all like to book a serious tour.
Ultimately, we aim to feel very strongly about our work and have that reflected back by audiences that care about us (and are down for the bit).
Photo credit: Lena Warnke
Musicngear: If you could teleport Fortuna 500 into one completely unexpected collaboration, any musician or band from any era, living or dead, who would you choose, and what would you make together? And if you could drop the band onto the lineup of any festival or into any venue in the world tomorrow, where are you playing?
Having sourced opinions from some of the band on collaboration, apparently we'd love to do something with Marilyn Manson, Waka Flocka Flame, or JD Vance. I think we'd all have some fun making a borderline unlistenable noise album with 2009 Ty Segall as well.
As far as dream bills - Unattainable: Opening for Warren Zevon - Attainable: I (Cole) had such a banging time at Nelsonville Music Festival, flopping around in the red mud and huffing that lush Appalachian air. Nelsonville is so Tuna-coded; let us in!!!
Musicngear: Let's end somewhere slightly stranger: imagine Two For Flinching is not an album but a physical place. You walk through the front door and every song has become a different room. What does the room belonging to "The Lemon Man" look like? What about “Sara Lee”? And when you finally reach the last room, what do you hope the listener finds waiting there?
The Elephant 6 Recording Co (out of which came Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, etc.) depicted a room at one of the Athens, GA communal artist houses whose walls were lined with aluminum foil. Some kind of bad trip spaceship room. That is more or less The Lemon Man room, ceiling lights off, blue and yellow light pulsing from the floor, ceiling and walls seemingly closing in on you.
When you backtrack to Sarah Lee's room, you realize that the carpeting is in fact thick June grass, the coffee table is a thick stump, the room is not a room at all, but an easy meadow. You squish a mosquito on your forearm and wonder where your house went.
You keep walking through darkness and brightness, tightening and loosening, mapless through a dark, formless wood until you hear familiar voices. Drawing towards growls and yelps, and then a glow, you find a small group of faces you knew from a long time ago. Beers are strewn, and these old familiar faces are cooking glizzies on sticks, but they keep falling off. There is some game being played, but it's hard to know what.
Are you greeted emphatically? The sound of a B chord drawn out on a cheap acoustic guitar rings through the trees.
Connect with Fortuna 500
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About Chris Roditis
Chris Roditis has been an active musician since 1995 in various bands and projects across a variety of genres ranging from acoustic, electronic to nu metal, british rock and trip hop. He has extensive experience as a mixing engineer and producer and has built recording studios for most of the projects he has been involved with. His passion for music steered his entrepreneurial skills into founding MusicNGear in 2012.
Contact Chris Roditis at chrisroditis@musicngear.com
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