We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Felix Tandem. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Felix below.

Felix, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Last summer, after two years of being a DIY-EVERYTHING band, we hired a producer for the first time ever. I had three new songs I was particularly proud of and figured, “I live in Nashville, why not use it?” After years of recording guitar parts in my bedroom and mixing things on my 10-year-old headphones, I decided to spend my actual hard-earned money on my art. What?! Insane. I know.
But I came to the realization that my art is good enough to be worked on by professionals. And the results speak for themselves. Not only do the songs sound better, but the writing is stronger as a result of having professional ears guide us through the music making progress. Our performances were also much more dynamic and interesting because we could focus on playing and being creative, leaving someone else to handle the technical. It let us get more experimental, try new things, and take the music in directions we wouldn’t have otherwise.
The songs are all coming out as an EP in mid-May, and some of the singles are out now! You can find ’em wherever you like to listen to music. Check out “Oh, Julien!” That’s my favorite.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

If you’ve ever thought grunge needs more synths and fewer mopey dudes, Felix Tandem might be the band for you. If you’re looking for gigs where the band just stands around, we might not be. The Nashville pop grunge trio, consisting of Max Sternlicht (guitar, vocals), Cole Villena (bass) and Joel Murray (drums) combines the big guitar sounds of ’90s rockers with earnest, wacky songwriting. We just finished our Buyin’ American tour, promoting the upcoming EP of the same name.

There’s a throwback vibe to debut EP Okey Dokey, not just in the FM radio-inspired production but also in the guitar-driven sound that takes cues from acts like Presidents of the United States of America or They Might Be Giants. The songs examine boredom, the attention economy and how we project ourselves to the world — how do you hold someone’s attention, and how do you decide what’s worth paying attention to yourself?

Of course, one way to hold attention is to crank up an electric guitar and rock out. Lead single “Shoplifter” shows off our big, hooky riffs and its refusal to take itself too seriously. (The song may or not be inspired by Max’s sibling, who may or may not have shoplifted clothes on a family vacation.) On the standalone single “Prom Night,” we takes a vulnerable dive into masculinity, asexuality and high school awkwardness. Then we cap it off with a big fat guitar solo.

The first Felix Tandem tracks were recorded in New York 2020 — the very week before most recording studios shut down for the coronavirus pandemic — and released in 2022, by which time Max had relocated to Nashville. The tracks earned play at iconic Music City station Lightning 100, and the band finally played its first show on August 23, 2021. Quirky live shows quickly became a hallmark for us, pulling out everything from scissor kicks to blistering solos to prerecorded song intros with occasional “commercial breaks.”

We took their show on the road for the first time in 2023 with a Northeast tour. Bassist Cole quipped the tour was a rough approximation of the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock career mode: we began with a house show at a college and played gradually larger venues in cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston before capping it off with a set at Manhattan’s legendary Bitter End rock club.

On the forthcoming Buyin’ American EP, our goal was to “thoughtfully yeet the sonics of grunge into the 2020s.” We teamed up with producer Tim Craven and doubled down on heavy guitars but also embraced swirly synths and dramatic, outside-the-box production. Lead single “Oh Julien” earnestly rocks through the lingering trauma of a childhood bully, while “Buyin’ American” riffs on classic rock sounds to skewer American exceptionalism. “Rumors,” meanwhile, explores paranoia, self-doubt and anxiety.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

DON’T LET THE ALGORITHMS WIN.
Especially for music listening habits, the algorithms are dangerous. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve discovered some excellent music through streaming service recommendations, but they become an echo chamber really quickly. The more people rely on streamers and charts to find music, the more musicians make music that sounds like whatever’s popular to get discovered, which means the algorithm keeps recommending the same stuff until we reach a singularity of bland pop mush. And no one wants that.
If you consider yourself a fan of music, which I imagine most people do, I’d encourage you to spend a little time actively looking for new music. Research local bands, look up touring names you’ve never heard of, go through the related artists of someone you’re a fan of, read a blog or something. Support the music ecosystem rather than just exist near it.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Well first off, I think everyone is creative, people just have different outlets for their creativity. But speaking specifically to the musician/non-musician dichotomy, I think people who don’t play music underestimate the time, money, energy, and care that goes into the music making progress.
When a song is only 3-minutes long, it’s easy to think it didn’t take much longer than that to make. But aside from the writing process, arranging, rehearsing, recording, producing, mixing, mastering, distributing, promoting, and performing a song are all a LOT of work, and require a TON of equipment.
The advent of streaming feels like it’s cheapened our relationship to a lot of the music we love – when something’s on call all of the time, it can be very easy to take it for granted. So I guess what I’m encouraging people to do is take a more active perspective when you’re listening to music you love. Try to hear all the care that goes into making a song feel like a SONG.
And if you have the means to enable an artist to do their art, support them when you can! One t-shirt sale for our band is the monetary equivalent of about 8,000 streams. So please either buy a shirt or get listening ;)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://felixtandem.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/felixtandemmusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FelixTandemMusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@felixtandem
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/24Argolj974wHF22NZknx2?si=vQrjDbB7Qeyf03TAcfoFuw
  https://www.tiktok.com/@felixtandem?lang=en

Image Credits

Ollie Reinert
Max Sternlicht