![The Fray are again with a brand new EP, new sound and extra soul than ever earlier than [Interview] – EARMILK](https://intotunes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Untitled-design-3-800x379.jpg)
The Fray started quietly in 2002, shaped by Isaac Slade and Joe King in Denver’s burgeoning music scene. Their debut EP, Motion, served as an early marker of the band’s potential, drawing modest consideration past their native base. By late 2004, they’d signed with Epic Data and entered the studio to start work on what would grow to be their breakthrough.
The band’s debut album, How one can Save a Life, launched in 2005, swiftly expanded their attain. With singles just like the title monitor and “Over My Head (Cable Automotive),” The Fray moved from regional success to worldwide prominence. “How one can Save a Life” earned quadruple-platinum certification in the USA and reached the Prime 10 in six different English-speaking nations. “Over My Head (Cable Automotive)” adopted with double-platinum standing in 2006, cementing the band’s place within the mainstream pop-rock panorama.
In July 2019, Slade introduced that the Grammy-nominated band could be taking a hiatus after finishing their five-album take care of Epic Data, citing a want to prioritize his psychological well being and discover new inventive paths. In March 2022, Slade confirmed his departure from the band over Instagram.
On July 25, 2024, The Fray returned with “Time Nicely Wasted,” their first single in eight years, forward of a brand new EP titled The Fray Is Again, launched on September 27, 2024. The mission marks a brand new period for the band, that includes guitarist Joe King as full-time lead vocalist for the primary time—after beforehand contributing occasional lead vocals on earlier information.
Whereas the return of The Fray has been met with enthusiasm from longtime followers, it additionally raises questions in regards to the band’s future sound—chief amongst them, how the absence of former frontman Isaac Slade would possibly form the group’s id shifting ahead. To hint the trail towards what guitarist and now lead vocalist Joe King describes as a “rebirth,” I sat down with King, drummer Ben Wysocki, and guitarist Dave Welsh forward of their efficiency at San Diego’s Wonderfront Pageant. What adopted was a candid dialog about inventive renewal, private progress, and the way time away from the highlight helped every of them reconnect with their internal artist.
It’s actually nice to have the ability to converse with you. I wished to know, how has your relationship to fame, your followers, and even one another modified because you’ve entered this new comeback period?
Wysocki: I believe it’s modified so much. We’re a little bit over 20 years into this entire factor and I believe the primary decade or so was such a blur, we by no means actually had an opportunity to catch as much as ourselves. We’re now popping out of a season of loads of time without work, which allowed us to comprehend why we began this within the first place, and at the least for me, reconnect with what it felt like once I was a youngster wishing that I used to be in a band. So, it’s been necessary to have a while to mirror on that and perhaps recalibrate to why this mattered within the first place. It was a form of present.
What do you envision for this comeback after 20 years of constructing music? Is there a brand new place or mindset you’d wish to step into creatively or musically?
King: That’s a very good query. I don’t know. I’ve a behavior of being a bit self-destructive as a author as a result of there have been occasions the place I’ve been, like, so hopeless and in my very own shadow of the previous and feeling like the very best is behind me. It took me some time to get by means of that. Like Ben was saying, we’ve had loads of time away to speak to folks and achieve perspective, which has recalibrated and reframed my mentality – it’s opened up a brand new inventive path that, as an alternative of pondering the very best is behind us, I really imagine that the very best work is now, and what you’re placing your self into is crucial work. And that’s what we’re doing. I believe we’re doing crucial work proper now as a band – in rebirth, find ourselves once more, and the chemistry that the three of us had is not like something we’ve ever had earlier than. There’s a lot extra for us to go. There’s locations we haven’t performed, nations we haven’t been to, there’s followers that need to see us, and that’s an incredible feeling.
I agree. I believe life expertise is so worthwhile as a author and an artist. There’s such a perception within the business that you simply do your greatest work in your twenties, however that’s merely not true. I believe it’s extremely particular when you possibly can develop up alongside your favourite artists. On the subject of change and reframing your mindset, what’s one thing you believed early in your profession that you simply’ve utterly modified your thoughts about?
Welsh: Once you’re youthful, you’re form of oscillating between always evaluating your self to what’s taking place round you and believing your personal hype. As you get a little bit older, you discover that the center floor of that. The method turns into extra necessary than the work itself. Like many younger artists, there was loads of concern at first about what [the songs] are gonna imply, what’s gonna promote, all these items. However, in case you’re fortunate sufficient, that finally fades and you then’re allowed to simply be.
Do you continue to really feel emotionally linked to the songs you wrote 15-20 years in the past, or does it ever really feel such as you’re performing another person’s story? Does it really feel such as you’re reaching out to a previous life or a previous model of your self that you simply won’t acknowledge anymore?
Wysocki: I believe it’s a little bit of each truthfully. Our first album is 20 years previous this yr, and that’s loads of life between when these songs have been born and the place we at the moment are. So, in some methods, it does really feel like we play some previous songs and we’re a Fray cowl band. However, that doesn’t take away from the chance to reconnect with these songs as adults. I’d say the emotional connection is even deeper. The songs are like associates of ours that we’ve been bonding with and residing with for many of our lives. Additionally, the songs tackle a lifetime of their very own they usually did that fairly rapidly. That’s one thing that none of us might’ve anticipated. So, now generally we get to expertise them like everyone else.
I’m presently rewatching Gray’s Anatomy, which I first watched in center college over a decade in the past, and I by no means realized what number of of your songs seem within the present. How does it really feel to know that songs like “How one can Save a Life” have grow to be the soundtrack to so many necessary cultural touchstones in tv—and to among the most weak moments in folks’s actual lives?
King: That’s the factor that’s so stunning about music. Songs can dwell with you and develop with you; they’ll deliver you again to a time or deliver you to a brand new place in life. You may hear issues in another way or decide up on a lyric that perhaps went over your head. Again to your query about what I’ve modified my thoughts on—the business is so constructed on numbers. Spotify is all about numbers; the month-to-month listeners are proper there. I perceive why Spotify needs to do this. Different DSPs don’t try this, and I respect that.
It’s not in regards to the charts, however I used to suppose it was. I’d be so frightened about how a tune was performing, however what you possibly can’t measure is what it means in folks’s lives and what it’s helped them by means of. After we discuss to followers and listen to their tales, it’s only a humbling place to know that your music has helped any individual or been part of their most necessary day. So, yeah, if there’s one factor I’ve modified my thoughts about, it’s the stuff you possibly can’t measure that issues.
