Interview with FOUST: ‘We have a classic rock sound but not a classic rock approach to the business’

Nashville-based rock band FOUST, kings of the crunchy guitar, have started tracking an acoustic version of their debut EP, Revival, which is due out before the end of the year.

‘The songs will have a different feel to them,’ said frontman Chris Foust. ‘So ‘The Fountain’ has a 3/4 meter feel, I’ll sing it more as a jazz tune. We’ve also written 12 tracks for a full-length album, which we started tracking last week. The question is whether we release a full-length album or a track every 3-4 weeks. Hip hop artists often release a track every 2 weeks, it keeps people engaged.’

FOUST was formed last year out of the ashes of Blackwater James and comprises lead singer, guitarist and primary songwriter, Foust, his longtime confidant and drummer, Todd Schlosser (Blackwater James, Majestjc Swayzee) and bassist/producer Chris Utley. The surname Foust, which has Germanic roots, is similar to the German word ‘Faust’, or ‘fist’, which he has taken for the band’s logo: ‘It plays perfectly to the rock ‘n’ roll attitude, the fist in the air, make some noise,’ he laughed.

‘I write music in the moment, based on how I feel’

In September, they released their debut EP, Revival, which comprises five tracks, including ‘The Ocean’ and ‘The Fountain’. Foust said he starts all songs with a clean slate, without a preconceived idea as to how they should sound. ‘I step back from that sort of mindset,’ he said. ‘I write music in the moment, based on how I feel. We recorded those tracks live and I recorded the vocals in my car on this headset.’

‘The Ocean’ is essentially a love song, he said: ‘You have a relationship with someone and it can swallow you like the ocean. For everyone, that can have a positive or a negative vibe. It’s about being engulfed by someone. I’ve been married for more than a decade, we were high school sweethearts!’

As the song goes: ‘We’ve got this mutual state of satisfaction, it covers every bit of outside interaction. I breathe in, you breathe out, we fall in then fall out. We breathe in and breathe out and the waves come crashing down.’

He and Schlosser have been best friends since 1999 and he laughingly described them as having a Lennon and McCartney relationship: ‘There are interesting personal background stories that connect us and we have no problem telling the other that their ideas are horrible!’

‘The Fountain’ was inspired by people telling Foust he was too old for the business, even though he is only in his early-thirties: ‘Rock music has waned in the last 10 years. The song’s about being told that you’re too old or too young or, not even young, just productive. It’s saying the fountain of youth is rock music.’

As the lyrics attest to: ‘These demons on the inside, well they’ve been hanging around. They’re not the type to wander, they stick to the lost and found.’

Their defining crunchy guitar sound is something of a happy accident: ‘In 2006, I found a unique Matchless Lightning 15 amplifier, 15 watts run through a guitar pedal. That’s my sound, influenced by guys like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.’

‘In that kind of environment, you learn a lot and you learn quick!’

Both of Foust’s parents are musicians, his father was a jazz horn player and his mother was a country singer, so he grew up as a ‘tour bus baby’, he said. ‘My dad could play almost anything, they played together on occasion. In that kind of environment, you learn a lot and you learn quick! I got to travel a lot and see a lot at a young age, maybe not of it suitable for kids! When I was 14, one school night, my dad told me to pack my guitar and we went to a local jam session. I got to play on onstage for 3-4 hours with a local blues band.’

Foust is a massive Foo Fighters fan, saying that one of the best gigs he ever went to was one they played with Motorhead. ‘Dave Grohl just walks out on stage and asks them to turn on the lights so he can see the audience and says that he hopes they have no plans for the rest of the evening because they’re going to be there a while. They played for more than three hours and not one dip! Their acoustic version of ‘Best of You’ was amazing!’

He is extremely methodical when it comes to tracking where they get played the most, in part due to his work in marketing: ‘I’m a spreadsheet junkie,’ he laughed. ‘The three markets where we get played the most are the UK, Australia and Japan.’ He is very conscious of the importance of evolving as the way we listen to music changes. ‘It’s also up to the bands to re-evaluate how they engage and to be innovative. Sure, I could talk all day about how Spotify should pay artists more but they get people listening. We have a classic rock sound but not a classic rock approach to the business.’

His parents’ musical heritage paved the way for an incredibly eclectic music collection: ‘I consider myself lucky to have parents with such eclectic taste,’ he said. ‘I got a lot of country from grandparents in the south, so all the way from Willie Nelson to Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. I grew up listening to Queen, The Faces, Otis Reading and Motown. The Jackson 5 were my kid bop! I never connected as much with jazz but my dad loved jazz and blues, so I grew up listening to Albert Collins and Stevie Ray Vaughan – my dad gave me a VHS tape of him playing and I watched it over and over and learned how to play guitar from him.’

Locally, he loves ‘super shredder’ Tyler Bryant, calling him ‘a super nice guy’. ‘I love Larkin Poe, his wife (Rebecca Lovell) is one of the sisters. I really love Shooter Jennings (the son of country music singers Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter), he makes some of the best rock music I’ve ever heard.’

One of the huge advantages of living in a place like Nashville is the incredible array of gigs on offer, prior to the pandemic, at least. ‘I saw Buckcherry (a Californian rock band) at a small venue in Nashville, maybe 100 people, my friend owned the club. Todd and I are Buckcherry freaks, we’ve seen them like 12 times! One of the best gigs I ever went to was Guns ‘N’ Roses with Chris Stapleton (a country singer) at our big football area, there must have been 60,000 to 70,000 people. At first, you think it’s not an obvious pairing but they crushed it. Chris and his wife sang their version of “You Are My Sunshine’ and there were all these 50 year old biker dudes crying!’