For a young five-piece dance rock group from California, Funeral Party is off to a good start. They’ve gone from backyard shows to touring with Julian Casablancas, a member of a headlining act for this year’s Lollapalooza.
PopWreckoning caught up with singer Chad Elliott, while the band was touring with Casablancas. We found out how the young band got started with fun, but often violent yard shows, how they were discovered by Mars Volta‘s producer, the appeal of “Lord of the Flies,” and we discussed just what’s coming up in their future. Check the full interview out below:
Bethany, PopWreckoning: How are you? Have you been able to explore this area [Westport]?
Chad Elliott, Funeral Party: Well, we just got into town and were hanging out at a motel earlier, so we haven’t really explored much. I’m going to walk around more after.
BS: Yeah. This is a fun area with some good restaurants.
FP: I saw my first thrift store that I’ve seen on the whole tour here, so I’m going to go in there.
BS: How has this tour been going so far?
FP: It has been pretty good. It’s been really fun and different than our other tours. I feel that collectively as a band, we’ve finally reached the right amount of members, the right amount of people, so that’s working for us.
BS: I was kind of confused looking online, but how many members do you have now?
FP: Five. Percussionist, guitarist, bassist, drummer & me. Five, including me.
BS: Who are they? I only found four online.
FP: The guitarist is James Torres, bassist is Kimo Kauhola, drummer is Neil Gonzales, he’s a new one, and the percussionist is Tim Madrid.
BS: Neil is the one I didn’t have on my list. How long has he been with you?
FP: Five months.
BS: So you have a percussionist and a drummer. How do you divide the duties between that?
FP: The percussionist is also a slash keyboardist. He used to be our drummer, but he wanted to explore different things with more writing. So, he became the percussionist/keyboardist. He basically does everything that I wish I could do, but on stage, it doesn’t allow me to do it. On stage, it would just be too cluttered. 
BS: How did you guys all meet and decide to form Funeral Party?
FP: Well, before Funeral Party, I was in a band with the percussionist and the bassist. It was kind of the same kind of idea as Funeral Party: a little avant-garde with post-punk. That band disbanded because the bassist moved. I got invited to be in a band with the guitarist as a keyboardist and he had no members. So I invited the bassist and the percussionist into the band and that’s how it all started.
BS: I read that you guys were in a lot of backyard shows, but a lot of them got broken up by the cops. What is kind of the craziest thing that’s ever happened while you were doing one of those shows?
FP: There were gang fights. There was a stabbing at one of our shows that was pretty gnarly.
BS: As a band, what do you do when something like that happens while you’re up on stage?
FP: At that particular one, we were playing. I had climbed up, well we were playing at a warehouse outside, and I had climbed up a building. So I saw it happening and I was like, “Oh, shit,” but I still kept singing. Then the mother of the kid who threw the event came up screaming in Spanish, “Please stop. Please stop.” So we had to stop, but the band was totally oblivious at the time because there were just so many people that they couldn’t see. It was pretty wild.
BS: Wow. Ok, so speaking of Spanish, you had a Spanish song on the “Jackass 2.5” soundtrack.
FP: Yeah. How’d you find that out? Oh God. How did that leak out?
BS: Haha. You guys didn’t have too much information online, but I read everything I could find.
FP: The publicist isn’t even sending that one out.
BS: Is it not ok to ask about it?
FP: No, it’s cool. It’s just a dirty little secret, I guess.
BS: You don’t want to be affiliated with those movies or that song or…?
FP: I didn’t grow up in Spanish-speaking family, so that particular song I had to learn Spanish. So, I don’t really back it up because then people are going to start asking me to speak in Spanish and I don’t want to for fear of embarrassing myself.
BS: It’s still cool that you learned Spanish for this one song. You have the Bootleg EP out, which is a 3-song EP, you have the Spanish song that I know about, but what are kind of your plans album-wise?
FP: We’re putting out an album, our first LP, this summer…well, August. That’s pretty much our plan. We’re playing a lot of songs from the album now.
BS: Do you have a title?
FP: Yeah, it’s called The Golden Age of Nowhere.
BS: Where does that title come from?
FP: The idea for the album is comprised from dreams that I was having during the time that we were writing the songs and I kind of wanted it to be like a book title. I was really inspired by “Lord of the Flies,” and the whole imagery of just somebody creating a whole society of just kids and building from the ground up. That’s where the idea came from: going somewhere else like a new beginning.
BS: So do the songs on the album follow a similar story or inspiration?
FP: We’re redoing some songs off the Bootleg, so the concept gets a little thin because it is mixed in with that, but the newer songs, yeah, that’s the concept.
BS: I know you got involved with Mars Volta’s engineer for the Bootleg EP. Are you working with him again?
FP: Yeah, we worked with him recording this one.
BS: What is it like to work with such a prestigious engineer? He kind of found you guys, didn’t he?
FP: He wasn’t “prestigious” when we met him, so it wasn’t such a big thing until after that. He found us, we played at a backyard, and we had just come to this backyard where there were all these bands playing and we just asked if they could squeeze us in. We had like a 15 minute set. He just liked the energy and he came up to me after the set and was like, “I have a recording studio. I really want to capture the way the band sounds right now. Would you mind going?” And we were like, “We don’t have any money.” So he was like, “We can do it as low budget as you want.” So, we actually recorded in the same studio. We recorded in the storage facility, so the room that we recorded in was actually a backroom. So it was really, really low budget, but it was cool.
BS: That’s cool he came up and offered that. So coming off these backyard shows, you’re now finding yourself on tour with one of Lollapalooza’s headliners to a certain extent. What’s changed for you guys by getting involved with all these big name people that have faith in your music?
FP: It’s helped us become more professional and grow as people. We’re no longer doing it just for shits and giggles. We’re doing it as a career now. That’s the biggest change it has made on us.
BS: For a wrap up question, you’ve done some amazing tours. You’re with Julian [Casablancas] right now. You’ve gone out with …And You Will Know us By the Trail of Dead. Who would you go out with if you could pick anyone?
FP: It is hard to say. People I look up to, we don’t necessarily mix well with touring-wise. I mean, I would love to tour with David Bowie or something. That would be awesome, but I don’t think it would work out. But I’d also love to tour with the Strokes if they’d like to get back together.
BS: Yeah. Well, Lolla and they’re working on a new album. You don’t know, but you’re on tour with Julian?
FP: It is like a dirty word to bring up.
BS: Such a polite tour mate. I would’ve asked.
FP: It would be one of the first ones. I didn’t ask. The guitarist asked and he kind of joking around and he was like, “Oh yeah, so when will you be done with this shit?” So he [Julian] was like, “Are you not into it or what?” And he was like, “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I was just joking and wondering.” So he was like, “Yeah, I don’t know when it’d be coming out or anything.” He [Julian] kind of just blew that off.
BS: Ah. So anything final you’d like to say that we didn’t cover or just want to get out there?
FP: The record is coming out in August. So that’s awesome.
BS: Sounds good.
