Summer is just around the corner and we’re excited to see what the Long Island Music Scene™ has in store for us. With the new season comes the opportunity for us to hear some new music and new bands, but it’s also a chance for bands that seem to be “long forgotten” to return with a spark that’s more intense than ever. Enter A Farewell Fire, a four-piece collective which started in 2005 and after a brief hiatus, returned to the stage May 3rd at Revolution Bar with a bang that could be heard from coast to coast. I had been following their social media for a while after listening to their re-released album “Burden Of The Blame” and was so happy to see that their welcome back show was a roaring success and was so excited to have the opportunity to speak with them!
What I really enjoyed about interviewing these guys is how everyone was able to pitch in and answer all of my questions. There’s an obvious unspoken synergy and bond that every member in this band has and their passion and love for what they do is clear to see in person when they speak about their music and on the stage.
Read on to get to know A Farewell Fire more and be sure to catch them during The Great South Bay Music Festival!
Image from: AFF Facebook
Band: A Farewell Fire
Members:
Bill Moros – Vocals
Eddie Raccioppi – Guitars/Vocals
Stefen Milana – Bass
Ray Rossler – Drums
Where can we find your music:
Describe A Farewell Fire in a few sentences or less
Bill: We are a hardrock band, I would say in that genre, we don’t like to be put in a label or any specific group…and our music reflects that. We just do what we think sounds good, it doesn’t always match with what’s going on, but it’s served us well in the past and we’re gonna keep doing it that way.
So, were you guys on hiatus? What’s the origin story?
Eddie: Basically the band started in 2005, we put out our first album “Thin Line Between”, we recorded that at Vudu Studio the original lineup was myself, Ray, Bill, and our old bassist Mike. We did a little bit of mini touring, played a lot locally, played the Great South Bay Festival, played a lot of places that don’t even exist anymore.
Bill: We had some momentum going, we ended up recording a second album which garnered some attention of a management company which at the time was working with some bigger names – Puddle Of Mudd, In This Moment, Halestorm, etc – but the biggest problem we had with them was that they knew that there was something there, but they weren’t sure what to do with it.That resulted in a lot of sitting around, dead momentum, and a lot of life becoming, y’know, life, as it usually does when your priorities aren’t where they should be and y’know things happen, life happens…At that point everything kind of went in their own direction, [Eddie and Ray] went in their own direction, I kind of dipped out on music for a few years. I ended up doing another project more for my own self and a need for an outlet. Then we did a few reunion shows, 2012 and 2015, which turned out to be pretty cool one off things. Eddie and I for the last five or six years were actually going back and forth, writing emails for song ideas, but nothing really serious or substantial. I don’t know how or why but we somehow ended up at a Miller’s Alehouse…a bunch of tequila shots later we left there with a blueprint for the future: we had a music video idea, we were going to get the band back together, we’re going to start writing new songs. The only problem was that we didn’t have a bassist. At the time we weren’t really sure what was going to happen but all we really knew was that we were going to shoot a music video. We had released our second record, Burden of the Blame, that was right before we signed on with the management company and their idea was to not do much of anything, just release small things here and there that they were in control of. Whereas when we were doing it we were able to do whatever, play whatever shows we wanted and build up momentum of our own.
With the old stuff, are you remaking it?
Eddie: So we took Burden Of The Blame and released the single and music video for “In Motion” and put it back on iTunes, it was not on there. That’s back on there and is technically our first release.
Ray: [Burden Of The Blame] didn’t really get the push it deserved. We never had the opportunity to really push it through.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeZaSUphNgM>
Eddie: …in 2008 we released Burden Of The Blame. And as reunion shows and time went by fast forward to 2019 we were like “okay instead of going into the studio and recording brand new material, we still have this old material that’s sitting there that we really love and we know that people still listen to and enjoy but there’s also a new crop of people that have never heard of us…you know what we’re going to do something that not a lot of bands haven’t done and that is reach into the old material and make something new out of it.” because when we put [Burden of the Blame], out we didn’t have the funding or friends or technology to make something good out of it. So we asked ourselves, okay if we look at this album what would be the single off of it to make a music video for and right away we all said “In Motion” was going to be that. We contacted our friend Benny at Bennymiggsphoto, who had done a couple of music videos for I Ignite and was a great person to work with.
Bill: We had way more people there for this video than we deserved, we had like a director of photography and multiple locations, and people did for like on the arm or a fraction of what they usually charge. The work and effort that went into this video was uncanny like way more than we deserved. We’re eternally grateful. It was two days of shooting and months of editing. We wanted to put something out that, with the sound that we had we felt like we didn’t really fit into a pocket of genre at the time. Anything that we did had elements of things that were going on at the time but also had our own unique flavor which is why I feel like we were able to release this now, have it get a second chance at a first impression without sounding dated..as far as being relevant to the time even though maybe the music isn’t quite so new.
Photo by: Viscuso Media
Stefan, how did you end up joining the band?
Stefan: when A Farewell Fire first came out, I didn’t play music I wasn’t really into being in bands or anything like that and being a fan on the other side, seeing them on stage really pushed me to join and want to join a band and going to shows and supporting them I became more than a fan i became a friend to them, I became friends with all of them. At another time, Eddie came up to me with an idea sometime after because we had all these songs that weren’t getting used so we started I Ignite. And one day Eddie came up to me and said that A Farewell Fire is coming back, they’re doing a music video and I asked them if they needed a bassist. I actually never played bass before, I played guitar for I Ignite so I’m quite literally the new bassist. It definitely helped that I literally know every word to every song so I knew what it was supposed to sound like so the learning curve wasn’t as bad.
Ray: There’s was also like a trust aspect, he was a friend before he was a band member.
When can we expect to hear new music from you guys?
Bill: We’re hoping from at least the summer time we’ll have something out. I want to have an album written and recorded by the end of the year. But of course I’d rather have seven quality songs than ten songs with three fillers but…we don’t want to be sitting on something for too long and there are a group of people who do know who we are that have already heard this stuff it’s great for the new people, but the nostalgia will wear off quickly. We have to come out with some new stuff soon and it’s gotta be great otherwise we’ll lose momentum. My idea is end of the year I’ve always been a push kind of person it doesn’t always work but when it does it does.
Ray: It’s also tough to coordinate all of us in the same room.
Eddie: We actually have a crazy situation going on, technically the three of us live here but [Ray] lives in Woodstock
Ray: I took a break from music for a while to ground myself. Wanted it to be fun again, be passionate about it. Now I’m finally realizing what I enjoy about this and finally getting to do it and it’s something I can stand behind and be proud of. And yeah these guys are a bunch of clowns. When I make the commitment, I follow through…It’s enjoyable again. It’s definitely different now than it was practicing five days a week. It’s exciting and something to look forward to. When we talk about stuff, now it happens.
Who does the music writing, what is the inspiration?
Bill: I take influence from music. I usually can’t just go idea-to-paper, I’ll need to hear something first. I’ll create a melody from something inspiring I hear, and then off that melody that’s when the inspiration for the lyric will come, then I’ll go back to [Eddie] to write the chorus and verse. Once we know that this is something we want to do we’ll just go from there.
Photo by: Viscuso Media
Eddie and Stefan, how is splitting your time between A Farewell Fire and I Ignite?
Eddie: Exhausting!…Coming from the bands I was in where I was just playing guitar and then moving to actually being the singer of I Ignite, the first time I stepped on a stage the most awkward moment of the entire thing was during sound check where I grabbed the mic and looked out at the empty floor and thinking “there’s nothing between me and this crowd!” I’m so used to having a guitar and looking down at the pedal board, I remember grabbing the mic and feeling so insecure, like “this is the weirdest thing in the world, what do I do I’m not sure how this is supposed to work, I feel vulnerable!” But now I’m over that and I think it’s awesome.
What are some of your most memorable moments on stage?
Bill: Coolest moment for me was the Burden Of The Blame record release show. So much had gone into that time and up to the last minute we didn’t know if we were going to pull it off…we ended up having seven hundred people come the album got done and it was just this epic night. After that moment I felt like a real band and can basically do whatever we put our mind to. Against all odds we did it from the writing to setting up the show to putting the set together to actually playing it. For me that was the pinnacle, this is something that I always felt would live on and now ten years later we can still put it out stand behind it and play it and it feels fresh.
Image from: AFF Myspace
Eddie: One of my favorite moments was the first real CD release show at The Downtown. It was a great night and show, I missed that venue. I’m going to make us seem extremely old, the best memories you can find of A Farewell Fire are actually still up on our Myspace page…there’s an infinite number of amazing past shows and memories hanging out with band members.
Bill: I have another good memory: the Brett Michaels show! When Rock Of Love was Rock Of Love we played with them at Mulcahy’s it was insane! There were so many middle-aged women at that show.
Bill: My mother almost died that show, she almost got trampled!
Eddie: Especially at that time I would have considered us a heavy band I think at the time I don’t think we’ve disappointed so many middle-aged women…it was one of those shows where that we didn’t belong on but we still had a great time.
If you missed their show last week, be sure to get tickets for their next show where they will be opening up for Taking Back Sunday and Glassjaw at The Great South Bay Music Festival!
