FREDDY HERRERA
The Exies bassist
www.theexies.com

Live Exies pics

(Winter 2005) by George Dionne

After touring relentlessly in support of their 2003 release Inertia, The Exies hit the studio once again. This time around the band set out to capture their live sound, they wanted to create music with more intensity and impact. The result was 2004’s Head for the Door (read CD review). Now they’re back out on the road, touring with Breaking Benjamin and Theory of Deadman. This summer you can catch them opening for Motley Crue.

RIL: How has your tour with Breaking Benjamin been going so far?
FH: We couldn’t ask for anything better, those guys are great to us. They’re crew has been great, and the guys from Theory of a Deadman have been great too. The Exies have been getting some amazing reactions from the fans.

RIL: Have you had a chance to hang out with Breaking Benjamin?
FH: We hang out on their bus. It’s funny; Aaron their guitar player came over to our bus just to welcome us to the tour. He brought a bottle of Jack Daniels to be cool or whatever. A couple of nights later they invited us over to their bus. We didn’t have anything to drink, so it was my idea to bring over a bottle of salsa and a cup of noodles. It was really funny, and they totally got a kick out of it.

RIL: The Exies are going to be opening for Motley Crue this summer…
FH: I know. How amazing is that?

RIL: Is that like your dream gig?
FH: It’s up there. It’s going to be so much fun, those guys are legends.

RIL: Were you a fan of Motley growing up?
FH: I listened to them and stuff, but it was a little later on. I thought they were super fun and cool. There was nobody bigger than them, that’s for sure. Scott was the one that was a huge Motley Crue fan. I like them, but he was a much bigger fan than I was.

RIL: Did Scott tease his hair up with Aqua Net just like the Crue?
FH: (Laughs) I don’t know. I don’t think he ever dressed like them.

RIL: How far of a departure is Head For the Door from your last album Inertia?
FH: I don’t think that it’s so much of a departure; I think it’s just us turning up the amps and letting it rip, plus not having too many loops and stuff on it. It’s basically the same songs, just a lot heavier. After being on the road for Inertia everyone was like ‘you guys are so great, but we would love it more if it was heavier’. We kept that in mind when we were writing this record.

RIL: Are you finding that a lot of people are relating to your first current single “Ugly”?
FH: Oh yeah. There have been quite a few shows that, if something had happened and Scott’s microphone had cut out, you would have been able to tell because people were singing so loud. We’ve actually had some fans come up to us and say how much that song means to them. I think that it’s a universal feeling, especially when you’re a kid. There’s a point where everyone looks at themselves and thinks that they’re ugly in some way, whether it’s physically or mentally.

RIL: Looks mean a lot in today’s media driven society.
FH: I feel bad for kids today, it’s really tough. I’ve seen a lot of things on the street in L.A. There’s little girls no older than eleven or twelve all dressed up with designer clothing and all, it seems a little unnecessary. They don’t get a chance to be a kid.

RIL: Could you describe the meaning behind “Baptize Me”?
FH: That song was the turning point when we started to write this record. We had written other songs, but we knew that we weren’t where we wanted to be yet. Scott brought “Baptize Me” to the band and we really felt it. He said he wrote it the way he was feeling at the time, just really low, couldn’t get it going, and not really feeling anything exciting. The song came from being so low to becoming a cleansing of sorts. Scott just used it as a metaphor for a big change in your life. It’s not religious per se.

RIL: The Exies are singed to Virgin Records so I wanted to know if in order to finalize your record deal, did Virgin President Richard Branson make you guys jump off a cliff or walk a tight rope or something?
FH: (Laughs) No. Actually, he doesn’t own the record company part anymore. He just runs his airline and all of his money I suppose.

RIL: Where did The Exies band name come from?
FH: Scott found it in a John Lennon autobiography that I had given him. When he was reading it he came across this part where Lennon was talking about being in Hamburg, Germany before The Beatles were really anything. He was hanging in dive bars and stuff at the time. There were these three groups that used to come see him; the mods, the rockers, and these art students that called themselves the exies. When Scott read that, he thought it was great and ran it by me. At first I was like, what does that mean? The longer the name was around us, the more it made sense. It wasn’t a word that you saw too often, so we went with it. It seems to be working pretty good.

RIL: How would fans find a copy of your debut indie release?
FH: By looking really hard. I don’t even have a copy to tell you the truth. The last I heard you could go on half.com and find it there. I think you can get it on Amazon too.

RIL: Are you guys considering re-packaging that album and putting it back out later down the road?
FH: Kind of. When we initially signed with Virgin, we were thinking of re-releasing that before we had written Inertia. It had taken us so long to get out of that record contract that we ended up recording Inertia. We made get around to it. If the band gets really happening enough, and if there’s enough of a call for it, I’m sure we’d do something like that.

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