To me unaccessibility was the
common thread that made
artists such huge successes in
the past.
MIKE: I dont know if you noticed but a lot of the
guitar companies are having a lot of trouble and
they’re not selling instruments anymore because
there’s no guitar gods anymore to rip a solo, no-
body cares. No kid cares. It’s easier for them to
buy a little scratch board and do some stuff on the
computer and make rap music than it is to go and
learn an instrument that takes 10 years to master
and make music with other people.
The people that grew up listening to those bands,
their parents weren’t listening and it was kind of
taboo to listen to rock. Even throughout the 80’s
the whole parental advisory thing.. The kids were
listening to it because they weren’t aloud to. It was
cool to listen to that. If you didn’t listen to rock you
were a nerd or a loser. It’s now cool to listen to G
easy and Rap. Its genuinely a cultural shift in what
is taboo to listen to and what is cool. But now the
odds are your parents probably listen to rock mu-
sic so you’re going to do the opposite and listen to
the stuff that isn’t that.
Alot of genres are experienc-
ing a downturn, even country
and rap, but the classics are
still selling to this point.
MIKE: If you dont feel cool when you listen to
certain music or it doesn’t make you feel some-
thing, you’re going to gravitate toward something
else that does that. It just seems like now for the
younger generation that just seems to be rap and
hip hop. As a musician I listen to everything be-
cause that’s what I do, and it helps me to keep my
brain palette clean. I’ll see posts all the time on
Facebook, guys will be talking about rap and hip
hop. “I dont like these lyrics”, “ these lyrics were
written by a 5 year old”, but the funny thing is all
the rap community and hip hop community say the
same thing about rock music. They have the same
exact opinions about each other. so it’s pretty in-
teresting to watch. I call it brainwashing. I think
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everyone should be open minded. I think that that’s
part of why rock is really stale right now. You’re
not allowed to go outside the lanes without your
fan base giving you bidding finger and telling you
“we don’t like you anymore”.
Lets take a moment and catch
up with what Letters From The
Fire is doing right now.
MIKE: We got a new singer, so the higher ups on
our end were like, listen you have all this momen-
tum going, we need you to go through a record in
month and then you have 3 weeks to do it. Basically
Nina came. She was signed to Warner, she had all
this music that was written by pretty much every
big writer that i would ever want to write with and
that kind of got us started. There was alot more of
the 90’s vibe in some of these songs. It was leaning
alternative but at the end of the day it is still a rock
record, It just wasn’t like an active rock record, so
definitely different than worth the pain which was
really down the plate rock, hard rock. I would say
we just wanted to try something different. It doesn’t
mean that we aren’t gonna go and be heavy again.
We don’t really know where we are at, we are still
trying to figure out who we are with Nina. We just
did this tour with Palisades and Non Point. Ninas
a Rock Star. All the all the fans that know the band
and saw her live were just like oh Man!, this is a
whole different level, It’s just different. We are ex-
cited to explore the vibe and see where it goes.
“I remember 10 years ago it
was cool to be in a band, it was
like “Whoa, thats pretty bad ass.
You’re in a band?, thats crazy!”,
and now it’s like “You’re in a
band? Wow, OK, later!”
Was there a point where it got
scary for you?
LFTF FB
LFTF Twitter
LFTF Site
Buy LFTF Music
MIKE: Oh yeah! You know our history of Letters
From The fire. Its hard to find 5 people that are
going in the right direction. When the whole thing
happened with Alexa I wasn’t sure that I wanted to
do music anymore to be honest. I was feeling pretty
burnt. It’was tough because we had just come off
the Seether tour and then I got my first big paycheck
off a tour. I’m very fortunate that we found someone
like Nina, and even Seth on drums now who are just
incredibly positive people.
Mike Keller the guitarist/songwriter for the band
Letters From The Fire.
Inset Photos:
top right
Mike Keller Facebook
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