Radio doesn't know how to follow
by ROD DREHER
Follow For Now is a red-hot band of young black musicians whose self-titled debut album (Chrysalis) is one of the hardest rocking, most listenable releases to cross my desk in weeks. So why are they ignored by black radio?
"It's conditioned," says guitarist David Ryan Harris. "People like Hendrix were considered freaks because they played guitar."
Black radio programmers, enamored of hip-hopsters and soul balladeers, don't know what to do with a guy raised on traditional blues and classical jazz (which Harris heard at home), Parliament Funkadelic, pre-drum machine Cameo and lots of rap (heard in his neighborhood) and Led Zeppelin and the Sex Pistols (heard at his predominately white Atlanta high school).
"Hip-hop I really like, but I feel they miss something because they don't have a real band," Harris says. "I feel like we're an R&B band. You don't go see R&B bands at the club level. I'm young. I'm 23. I want to rock when I go out. I don't want to listen to a crooner." Follow For Now will rock Murphy's on Nov. 4 in an opening set for Drivin' N' Cryin'. They will return on Dec. 6 to open for 24-7 Spyz at the Varsity Theater.
Follow For Now includes Harris on guitar and vocals, Chris Tinsley on guitar and vocals, Billy Fields on keyboards and vocals, Jamie Turner on bass and Enrique on drums.
The band formed in 1988, wowing audiences on the Southern club scene and drawing praise in Rolling Stone from Living Colour's Vernon Reid. The band belongs to the Black Rock Coalition, a professional organization of African-American rock and rollers.
Follow For Now throws down a gauntlet to musicians who depend on sampling and other studio tricks to produce their sound. In "Milkbone," the band angrily declares "The present stuff bores me but what can I do/If it bores you too, we can come through for you this/Is a real band and we can cure you/... 1991 just might mean an end to the b------t real players on the scene again."
Says Harris: "A lot of younger people don't know what it is to hear a real band. It's sad. It's not sample, it's not tape loops. The band on the poster is the band that plays on the stage."
Though the band's audiences are mostly white, there have been more black faces in the crowd lately. In their songs, Follow For Now addresses problems faced by black Americans, including rising racism, drug abuse and welfare dependency.
"You can't build a nation on food stamps," says the concluding line of "Evil Wheel," a song blasting complacent attitudes.
"The song says don't bitch if you don't vote. Don't bitch about changing things if you don't want to help," Harris says. "We all know there are lots of problems at this point. What you have to do is do something about it."
With their Baton Rouge gig days away, Harris said playing in David Duke country has been on the band's mind. Though he thinks the former Klansman's success is frightening, Harris remains optimistic about the progress of race relations in this country.
"The civil rights movement was only 25 years ago. A lot of these laws were passed in the Sixties and Seventies. Passing laws is one thing; changing attitudes is another," he said. "I think it's coming along."
***Thanks to Furious Rose for submitting this interview.
Saturday, December 28, 1991
Friday, December 27, 1991
DRH in The Baltimore Sun, 1991
Follow for Now: proud of stylistic leaps
by J.D. Considine
If there's one thing Follow for Now guitarist and frontman David Ryan Harris hates about the media's perception of heavy metal is that it's a monochromatic taste. Metalheads, as the folks radio and at MTV seem to see it, are interested in metal,and metal only.
And that, says Harris, is dead wrong.
"If you go through the average person's record collection, it seems like radio and MTV sometimes sell the public short," he says. "None of my friends who really like heavy metal have just heavy metal records in their record collection. They have all different kinds of things. It's not a strange thing to have Sly Stone and Black Sabbath and Cream and Funkadelic in the same record collection.
"That's sort of where we're coming from."
Indeed, on it's self-titled debut album this Atlanta quintet draws from a wide range of influences, from the muscular hard rock riffs of "Holy Moses" to the sweet, soulful chorus of "Mistreatin' Folks." Yet no matter how far afield the music ranges, the band maintains its sense of musical identity.
"I think that's what I'm most proud of," he says, over the phone from a tour stop in Tucson, Ariz. "We can jump really great distances stylistically, but it still sounds like the same band. Other artists that do lots of different styles sometimes come across as a lot of different bands; they sound like a ska band, then they sound like a calypso band, then they sound like a rock band. It's a little hard to take."
Harris credits some of that to the fact that the band is able to blend the individual tastes of its members into a cohesive whole. Take, for instance, Follow for Now's version of the Public Enemy rap "She Watch Channel Zero" -- a performance that captures much of the original track's intensity, but completely rethinks its sound.
"Actually, it came about sort of as a joke," he says. "The other guitar player is really into Slayer and Metallica, so the guitar riff is from a Slayer song. But the drum beat is a classic James Brown 'Funky Drummer' thing, which our drummer's really into. So we just kind of stuck it together in rehearsal as a joke, and it was like -- 'Wow, this is kind of cool, let's see how it would work.' "
Considering that Follow for Now takes its name from a line in Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise," that rock/rap connection shouldn't be too surprising. But so far, Harris doesn't know whether P.E. is as excited about his band as Follow for Now is about them.
"I understand that Flavor Flav bought a copy," he says. "Flavor Flav saw our poster in a record store, recognized [the band name] from 'Bring the Noise,' and picked the record up. But I haven't really heard anything from them."
***Thanks to Furious Rose for submitting this interview.
by J.D. Considine
If there's one thing Follow for Now guitarist and frontman David Ryan Harris hates about the media's perception of heavy metal is that it's a monochromatic taste. Metalheads, as the folks radio and at MTV seem to see it, are interested in metal,and metal only.
And that, says Harris, is dead wrong.
"If you go through the average person's record collection, it seems like radio and MTV sometimes sell the public short," he says. "None of my friends who really like heavy metal have just heavy metal records in their record collection. They have all different kinds of things. It's not a strange thing to have Sly Stone and Black Sabbath and Cream and Funkadelic in the same record collection.
"That's sort of where we're coming from."
Indeed, on it's self-titled debut album this Atlanta quintet draws from a wide range of influences, from the muscular hard rock riffs of "Holy Moses" to the sweet, soulful chorus of "Mistreatin' Folks." Yet no matter how far afield the music ranges, the band maintains its sense of musical identity.
"I think that's what I'm most proud of," he says, over the phone from a tour stop in Tucson, Ariz. "We can jump really great distances stylistically, but it still sounds like the same band. Other artists that do lots of different styles sometimes come across as a lot of different bands; they sound like a ska band, then they sound like a calypso band, then they sound like a rock band. It's a little hard to take."
Harris credits some of that to the fact that the band is able to blend the individual tastes of its members into a cohesive whole. Take, for instance, Follow for Now's version of the Public Enemy rap "She Watch Channel Zero" -- a performance that captures much of the original track's intensity, but completely rethinks its sound.
"Actually, it came about sort of as a joke," he says. "The other guitar player is really into Slayer and Metallica, so the guitar riff is from a Slayer song. But the drum beat is a classic James Brown 'Funky Drummer' thing, which our drummer's really into. So we just kind of stuck it together in rehearsal as a joke, and it was like -- 'Wow, this is kind of cool, let's see how it would work.' "
Considering that Follow for Now takes its name from a line in Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise," that rock/rap connection shouldn't be too surprising. But so far, Harris doesn't know whether P.E. is as excited about his band as Follow for Now is about them.
"I understand that Flavor Flav bought a copy," he says. "Flavor Flav saw our poster in a record store, recognized [the band name] from 'Bring the Noise,' and picked the record up. But I haven't really heard anything from them."
***Thanks to Furious Rose for submitting this interview.
Sunday, December 30, 1990
DRH in The Commercial Appeal, 1990
BLACK GROUP CROSSES HARD ROCK'S RACIAL LINE
by Ron Wynn
Despite the high profile of such bands as Living Colour and the Bad Brains, black rock groups still are strangers in pop music.
But members of the Atlanta-based Follow for Now not only don't consider themselves a novelty, they don't want to spend time discussing racial issues.
''I didn't grow up thinking about color and music,'' said lead singer David Ryan Harris from Atlanta.
''My father liked jazz and my mother loved swamp blues; the first concert I ever went to see was Gino Vanelli. The music that we play is straight-ahead, burning rock; that's what we like and we didn't make any kind of attempt to make a statement by playing it.''
But in today's fragmented society, there's no way Follow for Now wouldn't be viewed as a curiosity. The group, which plays tonight at Six 1 Six, recently signed with Chrysalis Records, and have a debut album coming out next year.
They attracted national attention last year when they opened for Living Colour's Atlanta concert.
Guitarist Vernon Reid was so impressed that he became an unofficial spokesman for the band and has championed them in many national publications.
The band members are all in their early 20s. Besides Harris, other members are vocalist and guitarist Chris Tinsley, keyboardist Billy Fields, bassist Jamie Adams and drummer Enrique.
They've been playing together since 1988 and have profited by being part of the steadily growing Atlanta music scene.
Harris describes the band's sound as ''Sly Stone meets Black Sabbath,'' and a listen to their demo supports that description.
There are funk underpinnings and references, but overall what they play is high-voltage, boisterous rock with themes and messages that alternate between careful examinations of social problems and standard youth rebellion and teen angst.
While he says the group's primary audience at the moment is white males, Harris feels the band has gained a lot of converts in the black community.
''The reactions to our music are interesting from both black and white audiences. A lot of whites who first see us think we're going to do Kool and the Gang. Then, after they hear us, they're really impressed.
''We get asked a lot by blacks why we're doing music that has no connections to the black community. But if they listen carefully, they'll hear grooves and rhythms, they're just not the kind of things that black groups are supposed to play.
''I think that we're starting to break down some of the barriers that people put up because of race, and that's something we're happy about because we've never believed you had to be a certain color to like a certain kind of music.''
Just how much progress they've made reaching across the color line won't be clear until next year, when their LP comes out.
But Follow for Now deserves praise for making the attempt and refusing to accept the industry's definition of what they should record and how they should sound.
***Thanks to Furious Rose for submitting this interview.
by Ron Wynn
Despite the high profile of such bands as Living Colour and the Bad Brains, black rock groups still are strangers in pop music.
But members of the Atlanta-based Follow for Now not only don't consider themselves a novelty, they don't want to spend time discussing racial issues.
''I didn't grow up thinking about color and music,'' said lead singer David Ryan Harris from Atlanta.
''My father liked jazz and my mother loved swamp blues; the first concert I ever went to see was Gino Vanelli. The music that we play is straight-ahead, burning rock; that's what we like and we didn't make any kind of attempt to make a statement by playing it.''
But in today's fragmented society, there's no way Follow for Now wouldn't be viewed as a curiosity. The group, which plays tonight at Six 1 Six, recently signed with Chrysalis Records, and have a debut album coming out next year.
They attracted national attention last year when they opened for Living Colour's Atlanta concert.
Guitarist Vernon Reid was so impressed that he became an unofficial spokesman for the band and has championed them in many national publications.
The band members are all in their early 20s. Besides Harris, other members are vocalist and guitarist Chris Tinsley, keyboardist Billy Fields, bassist Jamie Adams and drummer Enrique.
They've been playing together since 1988 and have profited by being part of the steadily growing Atlanta music scene.
Harris describes the band's sound as ''Sly Stone meets Black Sabbath,'' and a listen to their demo supports that description.
There are funk underpinnings and references, but overall what they play is high-voltage, boisterous rock with themes and messages that alternate between careful examinations of social problems and standard youth rebellion and teen angst.
While he says the group's primary audience at the moment is white males, Harris feels the band has gained a lot of converts in the black community.
''The reactions to our music are interesting from both black and white audiences. A lot of whites who first see us think we're going to do Kool and the Gang. Then, after they hear us, they're really impressed.
''We get asked a lot by blacks why we're doing music that has no connections to the black community. But if they listen carefully, they'll hear grooves and rhythms, they're just not the kind of things that black groups are supposed to play.
''I think that we're starting to break down some of the barriers that people put up because of race, and that's something we're happy about because we've never believed you had to be a certain color to like a certain kind of music.''
Just how much progress they've made reaching across the color line won't be clear until next year, when their LP comes out.
But Follow for Now deserves praise for making the attempt and refusing to accept the industry's definition of what they should record and how they should sound.
***Thanks to Furious Rose for submitting this interview.
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