Interview with King Falcon: ‘I told James that I’d written a song to record, then had to tell him on the plane to LA that I hadn’t!’

Queens, New York-based duo King Falcon – Mike Rubin and James Terranova – are tackling the state of emergency in the US in their next single, ‘When The Party Is Over’, slated for release later this year or early 2021.

‘When The Party Is Over’ is a much darker track than their song ‘Shake, Shake, Shake’, which came out earlier this year. ‘We recorded ‘When The Party Is Over’ in James’ studio,’ said frontman and guitarist Rubin. ‘Initially, it was about Long Island’s heroin epidemic. One of my music students, just 15 years old, overdosed on heroin in his mom’s basement and that was it. As bad as that heroin epidemic is, our whole country is in a state of emergency. There’s a lot of depression and anger. People have realised that they need to rebuild again. Things in the US have gone from bad to worse and there are a lot of emotions – that’s what the song is about now.’

‘It’s like being at a Grateful Dead concert in the 1970’s!’

‘Shake, Shake, Shake’ is completely different in spirit as it is about a seduction that happens in a bar, although the song actually has a double meaning, namely marijuana being legal in LA but not in New York: ‘So it’s about that, it’s a vibe song, about blending in over in LA. It’s like being at a Grateful Dead concert in the 1970’s! LA is a forward thinking place, I have the feeling it’s ten years ahead of the rest of the US. We only just got paper straws in New York, they’ve had them there for ages.’

The song has an entertaining backstory. At the end of last year, Rubin and Terranova (drums) flew out to LA to work on ‘Shake, Shake, Shake’. They had never been to LA, and only had three days to record the entire song. However, when they boarded the plane to LA, Terranova was under the assumption that Rubin had already written the song. He hadn’t. ‘Yeah, when he asked to see the song on the plane, I had to tell him that there wasn’t one,’ Rubin laughed. ‘I had four and a half hours to write it!’

That was just the beginning of the hurdles they encountered in LA. The night before tracking, the duo found out that the studio didn’t have a snare drum or cymbals, or even an engineer available at the time. And their relief that their hotel was right next to an instrument rental facility was short-lived: ‘Unluckily for us, that facility was closed due to a parade on Hollywood Blvd,’ Rubin said. ‘With a bunch of scrambling and many anxious phone calls, we scrounged up a drum set and James decided to engineer the song himself.’

It worked. The infectious track has an instantly funky, sticky chorus: ‘Shake, shake, shake, shake like a tambourine, please don’t say, don’t say anything, ooooh, ooooh, oooh.’ Think Black Keys with a touch of Tame Impala thrown in for good measure.   

‘James was the only guy who showed up to the audition, so we hired him!’

Rubin and Terranova originally met seven years ago when Rubin’s other band, The Inoculated Canaries, advertised for a new drummer. ‘James was the only guy who showed up to the audition, so we hired him!’ Rubin said. ‘We’ve been frenemies ever since and have developed a chemistry that works.’  The duo have stuck together through various incarnations and two EPs worth of material by The Inoculated Canaries and are now branching out with King Falcon. 

Next week, The Inoculated Canaries will release their single, ‘Hypocrite’ (9 September), which Rubin describes as an ‘anti-establishment song about how we as a society have let things get as bad as they have’:

‘I’ll say the things you wanna hear
I’ll whisper in your ear
Superstition politician
I feed you my lies
Look in my eyes
You can’t deny
That you think they’re true
I’m the kind
Come from behind.’

Terranova is still recovering from the coronavirus, which he caught more than four months ago and is still affected by. ‘He’s lost his ability to smell anything,’ Rubin said. ‘Apparently, if your sense of smell doesn’t come back in the first year, it’s probably not coming back.’

Rubin is a massive Pink Floyd fan, calling them ‘my number one band of all time’. ‘I like classic rock like Led Zeppelin and Steely Dan but also newer rock like Tame Impala. I’d love to play guitar with Kevin (Parker, Tame Impala’s frontman) because I think of myself as a guitarist first and a singer second. It would have been great to collaborate with George Martin. I’d like to collaborate with Pharrell Williams because I think he has a nice voice and seems like a nice guy, maybe to do something more fun and less rock.’

New York is slowly starting to open up again, with many restaurants open for business outside, at least, according to Rubin. ‘I don’t go to bars much but there are still a few shady nightclubs you can get into! About five months ago, New York was so quiet that you could see tumbleweed floating down the streets. It was so eerie.’

(Photo left to right: Mike and James)