Flashbulb Fires, with R.C.I.
Where: South Park Tavern, 1301 Wayne Ave., Dayton
When: 9 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 19
Cost: Free
More info: (937) 586-9526 or www.southparktavern.com
Artist info: www.flashbulbfires.com
“Our goal from the start was to make an album,” said Michael James of Denver-based pop-rock outfit Flashbulb Fires. “We’re influenced by bands that have done full albums like ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ or ‘Dark Side of the Moon.’ It’s so rare to find that in this day and age because most people are doing the digital iTunes single.
“There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily,” he continued. “It’s just we come from such a place of loving those true albums you can listen to from start to finish, and that’s something we strived to put out ourselves.”
James (guitar, vocals) and his musical co-conspirators Patrick McGuire (vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboards), Brett Schreiber (bass) and Chris Sturniolo (drums, vocals) certainly achieved that feat on their impressive full-length debut, “Glory.” The material — engineered and produced by the band — is heavily orchestrated and arranged, with ambient guitar tones sitting perfectly alongside over-dubbed horns, strings and other instruments.
“We’re still very proud of ‘Glory’ and everything we did on it,” James said. “Something that works to our advantage is we’ve always been perfectionists as a band. We don’t ever want to feel like we’re settling or repeating what we’ve done in the past. We’re actually in the middle of writing and recording the follow-up to ‘Glory’ right now and we’re really focused on trying to constantly get better.”
When Flashbulb Fires perform at South Park Tavern on Tuesday, Oct. 19, expect a mix of new songs and modified versions of album cuts like “Sleep Money Dawn” and “Pyramid Scheme.”
“We’ve gotten pretty good at molding stuff in the live show so it translates and it’s cool, but it’s not the same,” James said. “We aren’t touring with the horns, the strings, the harp, the pipe organ and other instrumentation we use on the album. We just can’t at our level, but we’ve figured out interesting ways to make it happen and translate it to the stage.”
The members of the band have been playing together since 2005, but Flashbulb Fires didn’t really coalesce into the adventurous and determined act it is today until 2008.
“The first few years we were just kind of feeling things out,” James said. “At the beginning of ‘Glory,’ we had started to really figure out what kind of band we wanted to be, and what we wanted our identity to be. We’ve honed in on that even more now, so I hope it will get to the point where people hear Flashbulb Fires and they know it’s our band.”
Contact contributing arts and music writer Don Thrasher at donaldthrasher8@aol.com.
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