Interview: How Brian Fallon Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Songs
With a new solo album out and an anniversary tour with The Gaslight Anthem in the works, the Jersey troubadour is spying a fun 2018.
Photo: Drew Gurian
“Hell,” the poet and public performer Robert Frost once observed, “is a half-filled auditorium.” Brian Fallon—frontman for New Jersey proto-punk outfit The Gaslight Anthem and newly minted solo artist—can relate. But as concert nightmares go, there can be worse things than a sparse crowd. Much, much worse.
A couple of years ago, just after the venue-packing Gaslight Anthem had gone on head-clearing hiatus, Fallon was playing San Francisco’s swank Great American Music Hall, backing his first solo effort, the eclectic, folk/soul/country/heartland-rock mashup Painkillers. It was a dramatic step forward for the raspy-throated composer, into the stylistic big leagues of one of his home-state heroes and longtime supporters, Bruce Springsteen. Backed by a sonically adept group that included guitarist Ian Perkins, his partner in the 2011 spinoff combo The Horrible Crowes, Fallon was there to prove himself with diverse new material. But Bay Area Gaslight fans apparently had not recognized his name on the nightclub marquee; although diehard followers were there in force, the place wasn’t sold out and was instead littered with the insensitive type of ticket-buyer that would give the unflappable Frost himself pause. This is what happened inside.
“I changed a lot. I changed big stuff, like my attitude and my entire outlook on things, and I had the time to do it.”
Perkins had jut emerged from the tour bus parked out front when two drunk tech dudes from Silicon Valley demanded to know who the night’s star was at the box office, and then, shrugging, threw down the money for admittance. The guitarist sighed and shrugged, too. The knuckleheaded duo would repeatedly heckle Fallon, who would drift onto reflective raconteur-ish tangents to “Shut up! Shut up and play the hits!” Even though they had no idea what said hits were. A cellphone-brandishing couple at the back kept framing and filming two songs at a time before returning to the bar to review their latest footage. Other self-congratulatory millennials, talking in hyena packs along the floor fringes, took selfies featuring the band in the background.
Read Paste’s review of Brian Fallon’s Sleepwalkers here.
The bad vibes finally reached the typically rollicking Fallon when he was discussing a drive that afternoon through Oakland. “Silicon Valley is where the money is!” the inebriated techies barked, high-fiving each other. Fallon explained that he was from New Jersey, prompting a man near the stage to spit back a sneering, “New Jersey sucks!” And that was it. Enough. The gig squealed to a halt, and Fallon had a spotlight beamed onto the interloper, whom he addressed in a prickly before pulling out his wallet and offering the man a cash refund. Shamed, the fellow wisely demurred—peanut-gallery commentary was not free, he learned. And who wants to get thrown out of a concert by the headliner? That’s something you’ll never live down on YouTube.
Such were the indignities Fallon faced in his quest to go solo. But looking back, he says he was ultimately unfazed by what happened that night. “I think if you took one person from any band, like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin, there’s no way he’s selling out the same places that Zeppelin did. It’s a smaller thing, so there’s bound to be a reduction,” he rationalizes, cheerily. “In the end, you’ve got to just play for the people who are there to receive the music and enjoy it with you. You’ve got to find and section off the people who are there for the love of it and play for them.” He pauses, chuckling, then adds, “But at the same time, I’m not above engaging someone in a funny way. If someone yells, ‘F you!’ I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah? Okay!’ And if you’re not having a good time, then you should get your money back.”
Decades ago, when Springsteen’s audience grew exponentially with Born in the U.S.A., discussion arose over just how much the artist was responsible for a sudden influx of lowbrow listeners who mistook a grim, Vietnam-vet-inspired dirge for a triple-kegging, YOLO party anthem. Fallon doesn’t buy into that. Frat rockers can appreciate his material the same as the Great American Music Hall fans who crowded the stage that night, singing along to every new Painkillers track. “And that was awesome, and the thing that you have to look at and take away from that whole experience, because anytime a band plays new songs, that can go down really bad,” he admits. “And even if you’re losing some people, you’re not losing everybody.”
Read: The 50 Best Post-Punk Albums
On Friday, Fallon released his sophomore solo album, Sleepwalkers, and he’s ready to retake San Francisco. “Most people are actually receiving what you’re trying to put out there, and here’s your proof: We’re a few months out from the Sleepwalkers solo tour, and the show in San Francisco is already sold out,” he says. “So something went right with those people that night, because they liked it enough to tell their friends.”
