The Funeral Portrait Interview with vocalist Lee Jennings.
The Funeral Portrait Interview
– What’s new in the world of The Funeral Portrait?
Well we are getting ready to hit the road in February with our friends in Vanity Strikes for a few weeks. Then right when we get home from that tour we have studio time booked to record our full length record with Matt McClellan at Glow In The Dark Studios here in Atlanta.
– How was it recording for the various artists It’s All Acoustic album the song Casanova (C’est La Vie)?
It was awesome! We actually got to record it ourselves at my studio. This way we were able to spend as long as we wanted on getting exactly what we wanted.
– The promo video you did last year for Casanova (C’est La Vie) was very well done. How much time and effort was put in to get this done?
Ah well thank you! We actually had a different video that we shot a few months before this one but it just didn’t turn out the way we wanted. We were then told by Shawn Milke, our label owner, that he had a great idea for a video along with Justin Reich, the director of the video, what their plan was! We actually played a show the night before we shot the video in Georgia and then had to drive to North Carolina through the night to then wake up at 8 am and be ready to shoot all day long. They also waited until the last shot of the day to have me slam my head into a bowl and make me cut my nose open, it was actually pretty brutal that I lost real blood at the video shoot!
– How many shows do you play per year on average, and how crazy does the schedule get?
I think last year we played a little over 150. This year we are looking at doing 200 if we can! We like to be that band always on the road working hard and trying to turn new people onto our music and live show!
– When writing a song, is there such a thing as investing too much time? What’s the shortest time you ever took to write one? What was your strangest inspiration?
You can definitely over think the writing process! The way we write is a little different than some bands, Steve, our drummer, will come over to my studio and we will demo out a song with him writing on the guitar and then he will midi out drum parts as well. Then Juergie, our guitar player / other vocalist, will come in with lyrics and other ideas and we will all sit there for hours on end getting the songs to be what they need to be! I do remember in our old band, Cosmoscope, we wrote a song in about a few hours. We had booked studio time and were not happy with the song that we were going to be recording. So we decided to just sit in my studio and wright out a full song in about three hours.
– Could you describe some of your earliest influences in life and in music?
Personally I grew up being in musicals and in a bunch of different choirs around town. Then 7th grade came and that’s when I got into Evanescence. I loved that it was like “theater / classical rock”! The way that Amy Lee sang was so passionately and heartfelt. I then remember Purevolume playing a huge roll on my discovery on more music. I would sit on their for days and days on end looking up bands like My Chemical Romance, The Used, Taking Back Sunday, Brand New and a bunch of local bands. Purevolume was one of the best tools at the time a band could have. Most bands even gave away all of their songs for free on their page!
– Without social media could bands today manage to survive?
Absolutely! It may take some extra hard work to promote yourself at shows and talk to kids at the shows you are playing but that’s how you make real fans for life! The more you can relate to people and get them off their phones the more of a lasting impression you will make on them!
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