No apologies necessary as Fredward delivers polished, propulsive record
Ham Jenkins is done apologizing.
It’s a good feeling, one that manifests itself in a grin that brightens his features like the red-and-yellow neon “Cocktails” sign does the wall behind him.
It’s a Tuesday evening at Atomic Liquors, and Jenkins and his bandmates in Vegas punk game changers Fredward raise beers as the sun sets.
The mood is lively, even without the aid of said brews, Jennings smiling as he speaks about no longer having to say “sorry” when he hands someone a copy of a CD he played on.
Here’s the thing, when you’re an independent musician like Jenkins, one whose band finances the making of its own records, studio time is a resource akin to helpful soundmen or bosses who eagerly accommodate tour schedules: perpetually in short supply.
And so D.I.Y. bands like Fredward seldom have the opportunity to truly perfect a recording, to get it down exactly the way they want it — hence, all those apologies when it comes time to share it with others.
Jennings knows the drill, he’s had to do it before — and he’s been on the receiving end as well.
“I was at The Bunkhouse over the weekend and someone handed me a demo with an apology,” he says. “I know that sinking feeling. I don’t have to experience that for the first time in my life.”
There’s a good reason he doesn’t: Fredward’s full-length debut, “You’re Only Here Because You Have To Be,” is the best record to come from Vegas this year, maybe longer.
The band will commemorate their new album with a free, all-ages CD release show at Vinyl at the Hard Rock Hotel on Wednesday.
About those CDs?
They’re all gone already.
Sold out.
“I was in bands where we made 1,000 CDs in the late ’90s and 10 years later still had 700 of them,” says bassist Artie Dobson, a gravel-voiced dude in a sweet Torche T-shirt. “This thing just came out, and we sold all the CDs. And people are downloading it just as much. Now we have to make more. This has never happened to me before.”
It’s happening now because the CD in question documents one of those watershed moments in a band’s career where it feels like they’ve fully tapped into who they are, what they want to say, and are able to convey as much with no equivocation.
It’s a confident-sounding record, one that asserts itself forcefully, skillfully, driven by an equally intense and intricate guitar interplay and say-it-like-you-mean-it vocals.
There’s anthem after anthem here, songs like “Runaway” and “Currency,” which are meant to be shouted along to while getting lathered in mosh-pit sweat, while “Giver” is the kind of dense guitar jam that causes feet to go all heavy on gas pedals when played on car stereos, a condition singer/guitarist Beau Dobney acknowledges having experienced upon occasion.
“It’s so easy not to do anything,” he observes on “Out of Touch,” and it’s a telling line, because this album is all about maintaining a sense of urgency, of forward momentum, at all times, at any cost.
“Every lyric was definitely driven from a way I was feeling, something that I wanted to change in my life,” Beau Dobney explains, his words manifesting themselves palpably on “Here.”
Because of all this, perhaps the band that Fredward gets likened to the most often is Fugazi, not because they sound like those D.C. greats — they don’t — but because they too have one foot in the punk scene and one foot outside of it, harnessing the energy of the music but directing it new ways, favoring nuance and attention to detail as much as aplomb and bombast.
“It’s that contrast,” says drummer Mike Fish, sporting a frequent smile and a Cramps shirt as he explains said comparison. “They were a bunch of guys who were just balls to the wall, but actually wanting to explore more. That’s where we fit in the scene. All of us to go to punk rock shows, play punk shows all the time, and we’re always the weird band that gets thrown on, ‘Oh, you guys are like Fugazi.’ ”
Though this is their first record, Fredward have been around since 2010 and everybody in the band is a scene vet, going back as far as 20 years for some of them.
As such, they’ve got a loose, easy rapport with one another. They practically finish one another’s sentences as they talk about how they initially bonded over a mutual love of bands like Helmet, Handsome and Quicksand and share stories about past high jinks at now-shuttered rock dive The Cooler Lounge, where Artie Dobney once showed up for a gig with a cardboard box advertising free kittens, but which he had filled with ground beef instead, precipitating a food fight.
“To the last days of The Cooler Lounge, there were still little bits of ground beef on the ceiling,” he says proudly before sampling a beer that he likens to the scent of a goat.
Fredward established themselves as one of Vegas’ fiercest live acts long ago, but deliberately waited until they felt the time was right to finally track their debut, after recording a demo a few years back.
“We definitely sat down, just like this, and said, ‘Are we going to take the time to make a really good record that we can stand behind, or are we going to keep playing shows with the same songs?’ ” Jenkins says. “And we made the decision, ‘We’re going to go all-in with the record.’ We literally spent over a year recording.”
They did so at Vegas View Recording Studios, where producer Dave Holdredge meticulously sharpened their sound to a fine point (Jenkins sighs when recalling the time Holdredge had him play a single note on a single string for over two hours to get it exactly the way he wanted it sound).
“(In the past), we’ve written our songs and said, ‘OK, that’s a finished product,’ ” Beau Dobney acknowledges. “It feels like I’ve kind of always sold the table with the sawdust still on it instead of sanding it down and really producing it.”
All that’s changed on “Here,” whose sound is equally exacting and explosive.
And so if you should catch the band on Wednesday and grab a copy of the CD — if new ones are available by then — you’ll get to hear these dudes at their best.
What you won’t get is any sheepish excuses from Jenkins when he hands it to you.
Read more from Jason Bracelin at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com and follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.
Preview
What: Fredward CD release party
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Vinyl at the Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road
Admission: Free
