After Brief Hiatus, FIDLAR Returns to the Road with Renewed Energy

Growing up in San Diego provided FIDLAR bassist Brandon Schwartzel with a steady diet of the kinds of things that would eventually inform his band’s music.

“It’s a beach town, so it’s got a classic SoCal energy,” he says via phone from his Los Angeles home when asked about his background. FIDLAR performs at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 14, at the Roxy at Mahall’s in Lakewood. “I skateboarded a lot. I ate a lot of burritos. I listened to a lot of punk music. You had local bands like Drive Like Jehu and Rocket from the Crypt and Blink 182. When I was 18 and playing in bands, I thought I’d move up to the big city because there was more going on.”

Schwartzel and singer-guitarist Zac Carper, who became friends prior to starting the band, launched FIDLAR in response to what was popular in L.A. in the mid-2000s.

“All super Pitchfork-y bands were what everyone wanted to sound like,” says Schwartzel. “I was playing in a band like that at the time because that was what was going on. I like most of those bands, but it’s typical hipster stuff. It’s like dictionary definition. There were very cool, serious songwriters around. When Zac and I were hanging out a lot, we thought it was bullshit. It got to the point where we wanted to make fun music that would disrupt the seriousness. That was the intention in the early FIDLAR days. We just wanted to crash the parties where everyone is acting so cool and we just wanted to walk in with our 40-ouncers of High Life.”

In fact, once the band started playing house parties, it realized the infamous L.A. punk scene was still alive and well, and it cultivated an underground fanbase before dropping its self-titled debut in 2013.

“I didn’t even know those types of punk bands were around because I was in the indie cloud,” laughs Schwartzel.

The band steadily toured and recorded until 2020. At the beginning of 2020, it decided to take a break to “reset and get grounded and think about what’s next,” as Schwartzel  puts it.

The pandemic turned that two-month break into a two-year break.

“We would still get together during the pandemic to write tunes and come up with ideas,” says Schwartzel, adding that when guitarist Elvis Kuehn left the band in 2022, the group had to figure out how to proceed without him. In the process of writing new material, it befriended producer Dave Sardy (Oasis, the Who, Modest Mouse), who expressed an interest in producing what would become the band’s latest release, the EP That’s Life.

“As far as a producer goes, his resume speaks for itself,” says Schwartzel of Sardy. “His ears are crazy and his sonic awareness is kind of bizarre. It’s like if a guitar is out of tune by a fraction, he can hear it.”

Since Sardy had done some work with Rick Rubin, he was able to book the band’s at Rubin’s Shangri-La studio in Malibu.

“I think Bob Dylan and the Band recorded there, and it’s one of those legendary studios,” says Schwartzel. “It’s an insane palace. It feels like a religious temple. We got to stay the night. We’re just a punk band; we’re not like Katy Perry. It’s this amazing recording studio, but they don’t have much gear in there as far as amps and guitars. You kind of have to bring your own stuff. The bass cabinet we used on the recording was the first one I ever bought when I was 13. It was beat-to-shit and looks like something you’d find in the trash. They mic-ed it up with some $12,000 microphone. It was a sick experience.”

The band has remained prolific and recently released two new singles, "Nudge" and "Move On." The Nirvana-meets-Blur "Nudge" features snotty vocals and pummeling drums. It's call-and-response vocals will translate perfectly in a live setting.

"We produced and recorded those songs on our own," says Schwartzel.  "We’ve been doing the newer stuff that way. We don’t want to hang onto it for too long or make it too special. We just want to get it out."

Schwartzel says more new material is on the way, and the band has been writing new tracks with how they’ll translate live in mind.

“We’re just starved for the live feeling, and we lost it during the pandemic,” says Schwartzel. “We got pretty low thinking if we would ever get to play another show. Now, when we’re writing, we want to make something that just goes off live. We’ll rehearse it like we’re playing live. 'Nudge' has been nuts. It was crazy. We did this Florida tour in September, and the song came out the day before, and we played it for the first time in a place we hadn’t played before. Everyone knew all the words. Our fans rule. They’re the most insane and energetic people. They’re literally life-giving.”

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