Q&A: Fake Problems

Fake Problems are (left to right): guitarist Casey Lee, drummer Sean Stevenson, singer/guitarist Chris Farren and bassist Derek Perry (Credit: Bryan Sheffield)

Chris Farren is the first to admit that his band, Fake Problems, has a sound that’s hard to pin down. But he’s still amused by the lengths some critics go to in attempting to describe the band’s unique, punk/folk/indie/classic-rock style.

On one review of their second album, “we were compared to some wild things that I never even imagined,” says the singer-songwriter. “I think Meat Loaf was the one that surprised me the most.”

Part of the problem might be that Farren and his bandmates—who hail from the small city of Naples on Florida’s Gulf Coast—insist on the rather old-fashioned notion of “making records that feel like records.” So their first album, “How Far Our Bodies Go,” was filled with touches of country and folk music—a little fiddle here, a little acoustic guitar there. Their second album, “It’s Great to Be Alive,” featured lots of horns. Now comes their third record, “Real Ghosts Caught on Tape,” on which Farren says the band “scaled things back”—although he’s quick to point out the extra doses of hand percussion (claves, shakers, tambourines) that form this latest record’s sonic fingerprint.

Between tour stops in California, Farren talked about the inspiration behind the odd title of Fake Problems’ latest album—and why a band that takes pride in being hard to pin down has finally settled on calling their sound “beach punk.”

What’s Naples like? Is it a beach town, a college town, a retirement community?
Everything except for college. There’s a community college and there’s FGCU [Florida Gulf Coast University], which is up in Fort Myers. But it doesn’t really feel like a college-y town. It definitely is dominated more by the older crowd.

So starting a band there, was it tough to get gigs early on?
When we first started, there was a pretty good music scene. It was very local—very rarely would a band from out of town come to Naples. So in that respect, we knew that we had to get our band on the road if we ever wanted to really do anything. It gave us our touring ethic, I guess.

How many shows a year do you play on average?
I’m sure more than 200. It’s a lot.

Who’s that doing the cannonball into a swimming pool on the cover of your new album?
That’s actually me. It was never meant to be like, “I’m the lead singer, I’m on the cover.” It was more like we had all these pictures and we were just like, “Which one of these should be the record cover?” And that one everyone agreed just stood out the most.

I haven’t seen the cover in person, only low-res versions online—but it looks like you’re cannonballing naked.
I’m not naked. I have a fleshtone bathing suit on. It’s not fleshtone, it’s like, yellow—but the way the sun hits the rest of my very pale body, I guess it all looks the same.

I don’t know if you intended this, but when you Google the title of your album, you get all sorts of ridiculous Photoshopped images of bedrooms with balls of light floating in them.
Yeah, I know. That’s where I came up with the idea, ‘cause I was—I don’t know why, but one day I just got on this kick of looking up videos called “real ghosts caught on tape.” And it was just so disappointing. [Laughs] I mean, I don’t know what I expected. Obviously I’m not gonna stumble across a real video of a ghost and be like, “Guys, did you know about this?” So we just took the phrase…with the record having this theme of disappointment and getting your hopes up, I thought it kind of fit.

On your most recent tour video, there are a lot of Katy Perry references. I couldn’t figure out if you guys are fans, or if it’s just that anytime you’re driving around the country in a van listening to the radio, you can’t help but get exposed to a lot of Katy Perry.
I think it’s a guilty Fake Problems pleasure. Well for Derek, our bass player, I don’t even really think it’s a guilty pleasure—he just straight up loves it. And doesn’t care who knows it. Him and Casey are making a cover of “Firework.”

Oh, so that scene of him practicing the “Firework” vocal…
Yeah, he was recording. [Laughs]

There’s a flyer on your website that describes you guys as “beach punk.” Is that something you guys came up with, or did other people start using it and you were like, “That’s cool”?
A good friend of ours, we sent him the record right when we finished it, and he was like, “Man, I love it! It’s beach punk.” I had never even heard anybody say “beach punk” before that moment. I know now that there are other bands that consider themselves beach punk, but I don’t know—I thought it was awesome. ‘Cause we’ve always kind of avoided being called a punk band. We always just thought it doesn’t sit well with us. But for some reason, when you put “beach” in front of it, it sounds awesome.