This "5 and Dime" interview was conducted via a telephone call with Oh No Fiasco vocalist Lindsey Stamey on May 25, 2011. Lindsey phoned from Knoxville, Tennessee, and it was a lot of fun chatting with her about Oh No Fiasco.
Dave: Thanks for phoning, Lindsey, and thanks for giving me the opportunity to interview you about your band, Oh No Fiasco. It's all good here. How about there?
Lindsey: I'm doing great Dave, but we had a weird kind of day. Our van got stuck on the side of the road. We had the oil changed yesterday, and they must have forgotten to tighten everything. Oil started spewing everywhere. But it's all cool now.
Dave: Tell me how and when Oh No Fiasco got started. While you're at it, introduce your bandmates and talk about their musical influences.
Lindsey: Oh No Fiasco got started a year and a half ago in January 2010. We all met through the Knoxville music scene. The guys had a band together called Thorofare, and I was in a band called Vertigo. We had played a few shows together here and there. My band had broken up in November 2009, and they were losing their singer. I attended their last show with that singer, and I asked if they were auditioning anybody. They had already hired someone, but they still gave me a shot. They ended up calling him and saying, "Sorry, we have somebody else." As far as the Oh No Fiasco lineup goes, I'm Lindsey Stamey and I'm the vocalist. Thomas Boyd is our bass player. Kamryn Cunningham is the keyboard player, and his brother Colin is the drummer. Seth Rowlette is our guitar player, and he likes riff rock and bands like Circa Survive. Thomas and Colin really like Rage Against The Machine and the funky side of things. Kamryn likes pop and country. I'm influenced by bands like Radiohead. Another band that inspires me is Mew. They're from Denmark. All five of us write songs. Lyrically, I'm inspired by writers with soul-searching lyrics like Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie. I don't think casual listeners of Oh No Fiasco will pick up on my influences though. I think possibly they will hear some Bjork.
Dave: What's the music scene like in Knoxville? How does Knoxville influence you and how do you hope Oh No Fiasco will influence Knoxville?
Lindsey: The music scene in Knoxville is great, but you have to work a little bit harder. The people in the clubs like to dance. Knoxville is a big college town and once you get established, the fans are amazing and very loyal. Oh No Fiasco only plays here once every three or four months. We tour a lot, and we don't want to over-saturate one market. I love it here, but I've only been here a year and a half. I'm from Morristown, Tennessee. It's a little town east of Knoxville near Asheville, North Carolina. Morristown was the first town to have overhead sidewalks; that's its claim to fame. There's a lot more to do in Knoxville though. When I joined Oh No Fiasco, I had to give up my old life. I quit my job and lost most of my friends. My real life theme of starting over in Knoxville definitely has an influence on my lyrics. As far as Oh No Fiasco influencing Knoxville, we're a pretty good draw now and I sure hope we get bigger. We're picking up speed, and we're trying our best. Becoming the best band ever out of Knoxville is definitely one of our goals. There are some real good bands here that we'll have to compete with for that title, but Oh No Fiasco is up for the challenge.
Dave: Bands today have MySpace and Facebook pages where music fans can listen to their music. I'll link Oh No Fiasco's pages. But this interview is text only. How do you verbally describe Oh No Fiasco? Since comparison is inevitable, what bands have you heard Oh No Fiasco being compared to?
Lindsey: I like to describe Oh No Fiasco as one fourth Bjork, one fourth Muse, one fourth The Killers, and one fourth of our own stuff. We're a mish mash. Oh No Fiasco gets a lot of comparisons to Paramore, probably because of the tone of my voice and the fact that there are not too many female-fronted bands out there. We also get compared to Flyleaf because of the female vocals. I can see why people make those comparisons, but I don't agree with them. Those are two huge bands, and we take those comparisons as a compliment. We have to break away from comparisons and have people see and hear how Oh No Fiasco is different. It's going to take a lot of soul-searching and hard work. We have to figure out Oh No Fiasco's next step.
Dave: I agree with the statement on the Oh No Fiasco website that says the band has "an eclectic sound of dance rock."
Lindsey: We're influenced by European Dance Rock bands like The Killers so I can agree with that statement also. We wrote more than 20 songs for a seven-song EP, intending to show our range. We didn't want to do the same song seven times. We wanted to be eclectic and at the same time, have everything fit in the same musical genre. We didn't want to stray too far from what we wanted the sound of Oh No Fiasco to be.
Dave: Let's dig into that seven-song self-titled EP. Tell me everything!
Lindsey: May 10, 2011, was the official release date. The Oh No Fiasco website has a link to
i-Tunes to purchase a download. Physical copies are available at our shows. Interested fans can also contact us at our Facebook or at our website. We're working on an online store now. We'll also have our record available on vinyl, and that's really cool. My favorite song to play live is "I Have to Know," which is the third song off the EP. It's one of the later songs that we've written. It's a different song than we're used to. Our drummer stomps his feet at first, and I really have to concentrate on staying on tempo. There's no music going on so I also have to stay on key. But I love the challenge. As a live band, we move around a lot and we're very energetic. I think the guys would pick those type of songs as their favorites. As I gaze out into the crowd, every fan seems to have their own favorite. "Clarity," the fourth track on the Oh No Fiasco EP, is very powerful and emotional. It has a simple melody and chorus. It's a good song to connect to for the fans. The chorus is pretty much me singing one word, run. That word can be interpreted a lot of different ways.
Dave: As a writer, I'm a big fan of lyrical content. My favorite song from your EP is "Cardiac Resistance," with the words "I am the tin man" and "it's camouflaged inside the metal walls."
Lindsey: Thanks for the compliment Dave. That song was a lot of fun to write lyrically. I was looking for a total opposite to "cardiac arrest." That song sends out a powerful image of little tin men doing an army march.
Dave: I lent your EP to my 15-year old daughter, Diana. She hears a bit of Paramore in your sound, and she's been blasting all of her Facebook friends raving about the song "Where You Used To Be."
Lindsey: Paramore is one of the biggest bands out there. 99.9 percent of the time that's a huge compliment. I'm glad Diana likes that song. On the day I auditioned for the band, we all wrote that song together. We wrote it in the first 45 minutes that Oh No Fiasco was together as a band. It was a pretty big moment.
Dave: After releasing a debut record, the next step is building the band. The old school approach is pounding the road, and the new school approach is social networking. What's your preference?
Lindsey: My preference will always be pounding the road. That's what drew me to music. But we'll always do both. In June we'll be out on the road with Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. We'll be out with Framing Hanley after that. We hope to play near you in New Jersey with Framing Hanley. Our publicist is from New Jersey, as are a lot of people we work with. I like New Jersey. My old band Vertigo played in Morristown, New Jersey, a few years ago. The good thing about pounding the road is that there's a lot of wait, wait, wait, go, go, go, wait, wait, wait. We have a lot of free time. Most clubs have wireless Internet. It's easy to keep up our online presence and stay interactive with our fans while you're out on the road because of all the down time. Even if you only get four hours of sleep a night, you have to make time to network online. Another facet of the new school approach is that bands also need a presence on YouTube. Once I discovered the Photo Booth app on my Mac, we did a video of "Cardiac Resistance" with a lot of face shapes. That's on YouTube now. We just did a video for the first track from our EP, "Stand In Lover." That's being edited as we speak. When we're home , we do video blogs to keep our fans up to date. Oh No Fiasco doesn't have a huge following now, but being out on the road this summer we hope to pick up more followers. These days, people want to know what you're like in everyday life.
Dave: Modern technology has taken away all of the mystery.
Lindsey: There's something really romantic about "the way it used to be." I'd like to go back in time to see how bands did it back then. Oh No Fiasco wants to be a band that changes things and adds a little mystery. We change our outfits and face paint every month or each tour. We dress up every show in what's like our war clothes and war paint. We want people who've seen us already coming back out to see what we're going to do or wear the next time. Oh No Fiasco wants to keep it fresh. Adding back some mystery in a world over-saturated online has worked out well so far, especially in our hometown.
Dave: Your website boasts that the Oh No Fiasco stage show "will make every hair on your body stand on end."
Lindsey: That wasn't my quote; I bet it was my drummer's. As far as our stage show, this is my being confident in my band and not being cocky. Oh No Fiasco pulls it off better playing live than on our EP. When you go see a band play live, you don't want to just listen to a record you already have. We change up the songs. Oh No Fiasco plays with tons of energy and tons of emotion. Even if you don't like our music, you'll find us very entertaining. We do give it our all and people respect that.
Dave: Thanks so much for the interview, Lindsey, and best of luck to Oh No Fiasco. The section of my website where I introduce new bands is called "Five and Dime." For my final question, I ask musicians to share a story or a memory about the late, great Dimebag Darrell.
Lindsey: I'm very aware of Dimebag's legacy with Pantera. I remember being shocked when I heard how he was murdered; I never thought that something like that could ever happen. For musical artists, we feel the stage is the safest place we could ever be. It's where we go to express ourselves. It's where you let everything out that you've been bottling up. I can't imagine not feeling safe up on stage. Dimebag's death was a terrible tragedy, not just for his family, but for musicians and music fans everywhere.