Font ResizeThey're bored. They want to impress women. They want to be the next Beatles.
Record deals, Rolling Stone covers and Grammys are the goals.
But plans and dreams change.
***
Ryan Frost, lead guitarist for The Fervour, pulled up to Lancaster's Chameleon Club in his '96 Buick Sentry. Instruments, amps and chords crowded the back seat. The Stewartstown teenager and his band mates -- Steve Schmidt and Josh and Andrew Kirwin -- grabbed whatever equipment they could carry and lugged it inside.
Big acts ride in sleek, air-conditioned vans. They have roadies to do their grunt work. They can easily sell 10,000
At least The Fervour wasn't playing first. Since the band sold 100 tickets, show organizers pushed them back one spot in the lineup.
Nothing else mattered to them that July 2008 afternoon.
Backstage, The Fervour scurried between other groups. The band members tuned their guitars as the first act played. They fumbled with strings. Their giddy voices squeaked.
Then, the band played with everything its name suggested. The band members walked off the stage sweaty and smiling.
"It was pure," Frost said. "That's what I love about it."
Frost and Josh Kirwin had dreamed about that feeling in March 2008, as they sat shoulder-to-shoulder in a West Manchester Township diner booth.
Frost, 17, a lanky, thoughtful Kennard-Dale High School senior, former cello player and NPR listener, planned to join a Buddhist monastery if all else failed.
Josh Kirwin, nine months older than Frost, a boisterous, Hunter S. Thompson-reading Donegal High School senior with shaggy brown hair, is the son of a former Nashville booking agent.
Frost's mom married Josh Kirwin's father dad three years earlier. The boys didn't get along at first. But one day, they bonded during a 20-minute jam
"(Frost's) been such an great influence," Josh Kirwin said between sips of coffee.
Frost sliced through a stack of pancakes.
"I would be much more introverted if it wasn't for Josh," he said.
They weren't interested parties and sports like their peers. Sitting behind guitars or among the stacks of vinyl at Tom's Music Trade in Red Lion, the teens lost themselves in The Verve, shoegaze and The Velvet Underground.
"Music is cheaper than a shrink," Kirwin said.
Their part-time gigs -- Josh Kirwin at Subway and Frost at Giant -- supported their addiction. Frost saved for months to buy a VOX amp. Kirwin splurged for an MTD bass guitar.
They dabbled in a few bands, but were done goofing off.
They formed an
***
"It's terrifying to put your music in other people's hands," Frost said. "I don't know if I even trust myself."
But The Fervour needed help to record an album.
Frost asked Schmidt, 19, a friend from Kennard-Dale, to drum. Josh Kirwin coerced Andrew to play guitar.
Frost and Josh Kirwin had already recorded the songs "Absinthe" and "Methadone Girl" for a graduation project. Eight songs were still only scribbled on paper.
Frost said he heard that Radiohead didn't plan to make its Grammy-winning album "Kid A" -- it just happened.
But money and time were tight for The Fervour. They paid
"We don't want to start taking loans from people," Josh Kirwin said, "because then you're screwed."
Frost and Josh Kirwin weren't focused when they cut a previous EP and it cost them. This time, they had a list of carefully planned chords and notes.
"The priority is the product," Josh Kirwin said.
Session one: April 5, 2008
The band arrived at Mr. Studio in downtown Lancaster the previous afternoon. They spent the night setting up equipment. Schmidt worked on drum tracks , but the bulk of the work was ahead of them.
Inside the studio that day, Frost attacked guitar parts.
He alternated between two Fender guitars. Even
"I feel inhuman," Frost joked, removing his headphones for a short break. But he was willing to suffer for precision if the album landed The Fervour on stage.
Jeremy Bentley, the music engineer, poked his head out from the semi-enclosed sound booth as Kirwin worked his guitar parts. His style resembled Dave Navarro's of Jane's Addiction, Bentley said.
Kirwin looked concerned.
"Me saying that to you is a compliment because I really like (Navarro's) guitar style," Bentley said with a laugh.
Relieved, Kirwin turned back to the tune "Abigail," which, like the rest of the album, he co-wrote with Frost.
Session two: June 7, 2008
A few days after Kirwin and Frost graduated from high school, they were back at Mr. Studio.
Equipment was strewn on the hardwood floor along with a empty Chinese food containers. Amps and effects pedals formed shaky towers. Chords coiled at their feet.
Andrew Kirwin, a quiet Donegal junior with a curly 'fro, picked the guitar Josh taught him to play five years earlier. After a game of rock-paper-scissors for the last slice of cold pizza, Schmidt and Andrew and Josh Kirwin ran to the corner convenience store for snacks.
With his back to Frost, Bentley inspected color coded bars -- the digitized blueprint of a song -- as they crept across his Pro Tools window. He spliced and deleted tracks as directed by the band.
"It's like he's there for us," Kirwin said about Bentley. "He's like our producer and music director."
Josh Kirwin played one guitar part three different ways. He worked with Bentley to mix them together for the right sound. It was close enough, Josh Kirwin said. There wasn't time to get it perfect. There were still three tracks left to finish.
Session three: August 8, 2008
Batteries ran low. A keyboard key was missing. Connections came loose.
Schmidt, a psychology major at Penn State York, sat behind the drum kit with earphones on.
His parents gave him his first drum set when he was 6. He emulated '90s bands Nirvana and Weezer.
Kirwin and Frost liked the flourishes Schmidt and Andrew added. Experimentation was crucial to The Fervour's sound.
"Ryan always has 47 thoughts running through his head," Andrew said.
That night, he wanted less "Arctic Monkey's pop" and more My Bloody Valentine fuzz.
Frost shut himself in an adjoining room with an amp to create reverb. The others yelled prompts through the wall.
"To untrained ears, it would sound like disjointed noise," Frost said.
About half the items on Frost and Josh Kirwin's list were changed or crossed out. Two mixing sessions at Workingman's Productions to compress the tracks into master files took a greater toll.
"You feel like the soul of the music goes away," Frost said.
When the song order was finalized, Frost and Josh Kirwin agreed that their time an effort were well spent.
But before they had a chance to plan their next move, it was time to head to college -- Josh Kirwin to Kutztown University and Frost at LaSalle University.
"I need to think of all the records I need to borrow before I go away," Josh Kirwin told Frost.
***
During the first few weeks of college, Josh Kirwin and Frost stayed up late on the phone discussing the cover. They decided to use an image of the members wandering through a blurry forest that their friend designed.
A bumpy flight to Costa Rica months before the band started came to Frost for the CD title -- "Turbulence."
"It fit," he said. "We were getting everything together and figuring out the direction we were headed at the end of high school."
They sent the prototype ELS Productions in Utah. They called at least four times to make changes.
The cardboard box arrived on Frost's porch in late November 2008.
Andrew, who joined full-time earlier that fall, picked it up and brought it into his house where the band waited.
They tore into it like kids opening their first present Christmas morning.
After eight months and about $2,000, Josh Kirwin held a thin, environmentally friendly packet in his hand.
"We kind of just slapped all of our thoughts together," he said. "It really describes big chunk two years of our life."
"Turbulence" led to new gigs. The Fervour defined itself as shoegaze/post punk/folk rock on MySpace. The band memebers created a band Facebook page. They set up accounts to sell the CD on iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody and Napster.
Schmidt briefly joined the band in the summer, but after the CD arrived, he decided he couldn't make the time commitment anymore. His split from the group was friendly, but it made Josh Kirwin and Frost pause.
They still wanted to work as artists. They wanted to set up a tour but couldn't decide if they preferred playing big clubs or intimate venues.
"It's important for us to realize what we do best, not to mimic anything else," Frost said.
***
Setup was frantic during The Fervour's Dec. 6, 2008 CD release party at Señorita Burrita in Lancaster.
A guitar crashed to the ground. Cables fell out of sockets. Microphones failed.
But the set was jubilant. New songs saturated the room. Amps fed back static and shouting.
Afterward, the band thanked fans for braving the sleet outside and announced that CDs were on sale for $5. At the end of the night, the cardboard box was a dozen or so copies lighter.
By late January, two more high school friends -- Dylan Madar and Asher Johnson -- were added to the lineup.
"Everything has changed so much," Frost said.
The first box of CDs sold quickly at live shows and another box arrived a few months later. The Fervour booked shows in Lemoyne, Reading and Lancaster, earning about $300 for each show. But juggling the band and college was difficult.
"We know our limits," Josh Kirwin said. "We're not businessmen. We're all a pack of wild animals."
Josh Kirwin said in the spring, he got anxious if they didn't book a show they wanted to play.
Both Frost and Josh Kirwin missed Schmidt's guidance and optimism. Andrew Kirwin, Madar and Johnson were still in high school and weren't as invested in the band.
The five-member lineup wasn't functioning as a unit. Long rehearsals produced tension. Shows started to look and sound and monotonous. Josh Kirwin and Frost felt stifled. "We're so intensely committed to our music because we wrote it," Josh Kirwin said.
But the passion The Fervour once brought to the stage was now negative energy. The band memebrs almost got into an argument onstage early last month at the Chameleon Club. It was the last time they played together.
Afterward, Frost and Josh Kirwin wandered Lancaster's darkened streets trying to figure out what went wrong.
"Tears were shed," Frost said.
Looking back, Frost said they should have clarified the roles in the band. Johnson, Madar and Andrew made better friends than band mates.
Being a duo again would streamline the creative process, Frost said. After all, he and Josh Kirwin recorded and mixed two "Turbulence" songs in two days.
***
"I miss writing music with Ryan," Josh Kirwin said.
Frost, home for fall break, met his stepbrother Oct. 17 at Señorita Burrita. About 10 months ago, they had played their CD release party a few feet away from where they sat.
"I've aged a decade since," Frost joked.
They had survived lineup changes, creative differences, money issues and insecurities.
It was good to be driven, Frost said. But he didn't know why he and Josh Kirwin were so hard on themselves -- overthinking everything from missed notes to broken strings.
Now, they wanted to focus less on songwriting, lists and achieving the perfect sound.
"It was both a blessing and a curse when we started to realize . . . that there is no right answer," Josh Kirwin said.
Distance still caused stress.
Josh Kirwin dropped out of Kutztown and was living in Lancaster again. He planned to move to Philadelphia, where Frost lived. It would make recording a second album easier.
Their sound was still evolving. They wanted to build more musical textures with keyboards and violins. They were searching for musicians who would complement their vision.
But they are going to wait until it feels natural, like the way they feel when they walk onstage.
"Things make sense for a half hour," Frost said.
If they can extend a half-hour set to an hour, they'll be happy.
"I don't mind being a slow-burner as long as we burn," Josh Kirwin said.
For details about the band, visit www.myspace.com/thefervourmusic.
"Turbulence"
1. Abigail
2. Spiderveins
3. Celebrity suicide
4. Could this be right?
5. Applause
6. Methadone girl
7. Everyone you know (is impossible)
8. Ides of March
9. Absinthe
10. Amen
The Fervour in all its forms:
March 2008: Josh Kirwin of Lancaster and Ryan Frost of Stewartstown form The Fervour, a duo with a rotating roster of musicians.
April 2008: Frost and Josh Kirwin recruit Kirwin's brother Andrew and Frost recruits his high school friend Steve Schmidt, of East Hopewell Township, to help make an album.
July 2008: Schmidt joins the band's lineup while helping make The Fervour's first album, "Turbulence."
Fall 2008: Andrew Kirwin joins the band's lineup. Schmidt bows out due to time constraints.
January 2009: High school friends of Josh Kirwin and Frost, Dylan Madar of Maytown and Asher Johnson of Marietta, join The Fervour. The band is now a quintet.
September 2009: Andrew Kirwin, Madar and Johnson quit the band.
October 2009: Josh Kirwin and Frost continue to move forward The Fervour. The duo plans a new album and is seeking musicians to help them in the studio.
