INTERVIEW: Catching Up With The Foes Of Fern + Watch “The Bike Song”

Hailing from the Jersey Shore, rockers The Foes Of Fern inject that same level of emotional honesty and urgency as some of their area’s great forebears. Recently, the group led by Matt Fernicola unveiled a new single and video, “The Bike Song,” which is an anthem set to help anybody dealing with a bunch of crap all at once.

To celebrate the release of “The Bike Song,” we sent Fernicola some interview questions. Check it out all below and look for more from The Foes Of Fern here.

Hi, The Foes of Fern! Congrats on your new video. Can you tell us a little more on who you are and how you first got into making music?

Hey, thanks guys! I am a musician from the Asbury Park area. I’ve been performing with a bunch of different groups in Asbury and NYC since graduating college in 2015. I am currently performing mainly with The Burns and Avery & The Mandevilles. I’m also doing some session work for other Asbury artists like Julian Fulton and Natalie Farrell.

I’ve been making music with various different bands / projects since my high school days. I started with my old friend Joe Pomarico, just jamming in each others’ basements and learning how to record. I’m still working with Pom and we’ve been producing various eps and albums with different bands through our indie label Telegraph Hill Records. The Foes of Fern is my project that I’ve been working on with him (and a bunch of other people) for the past three years now. “Bike Song” is our third release for the album. We’re trying to get to 13 songs; we’ll see what actually happens.

What’s your songwriting process like?

My process is a little scattered. I normally keep my phone recording as I sit down and just play guitar for a while. After like twenty minutes I’ll start to come up with different riffs and chord progressions that I like. I then start playing with melodies while singing lyrics about whatever I’ve been up to recently. Eventually I’ll sing something that I actually like, listen back to the recording, and then start writing lyrics down to paper. The brunt of my lyrics normally come to me when I am on the go, though. Sometimes it happens when I’m just driving gig to gig. Sometimes, if I have a difficult section in a song, I’ll go for a jog, clear my mind, and start looking at the song in a new light. I’ve done a lot of lyric writing while running on the beach or through local parks.

What was the inspiration behind “Bike Song”?

“Bike Song” came about during a random jam in Boston back in 2014. My bike was stolen outside of my apartment earlier that day and I had recently been through a break up. So I just starting singing about the bike and made it connect to the ex-girlfriend too. At first the song was just a joke but people seemed to enjoy it. I started playing it out and it became a part of my old band Airacuda’s set list. I always wanted the recording to have that old school motown feel, which is why I arranged it for strings and horns. I think I missed the motown vibe though and ended up with more of an indie rock big band / broadway thing going on. Either way I’m happy with how the song came out.

Who are some of your biggest influences/favorite artists?

Back in college I learned a bunch of Jimi Hendrix songs, listened to a ton of Strokes and also studied George Martin’s arrangements for the later Beatles’ albums. Those three artists are some of my biggest musical influences. Each of my songs kinda hits on one of those elements. “Bike Song” is more of the orchestral arrangement and constant vocal harmonies that you’d get from some Beatles tunes. I went a little more big band than a typical Martin arrangement though.

Other songs on the album work to combine the classic / alternative rock vibes with the orchestral element. My first single “April Came in The Rain” is more of a classic rock jam with an orchestral bridge and a Beatle vocal harmony ending. There are other songs on the record (My next single “Lydia”) that hit more of the alternative rock vibes that I’ve gotten from listening to bands like the Strokes and Young the Giant.

Any new artists/venues/purveyors of the arts you could turn our readers onto?

Definetly not new but any musicians outside of New Jersey should reach out to The Saint when booking their next tour. The Saint is Asbury’s home base. I’ve played some of my greatest sets there.

As for artists there are a bunch of bands in the scene that I’m not affiliated with that I love. The Shady Street Show Band, The Cranston Dean Band, Racheal Ana Dobken, The Double Negatives and The Mercury Brothers just to name a few.

Where can we follow you and where can our readers catch you live next?

Every Thursday I host a Music Night at The Inkwell in Long Branch. You can catch me hanging and playing some of my new material there every week with my co-host Avery Mandeville.
I’ll also be perfoming in NJ a bunch over the next couple months with a few out-of-scene shows.

October 2nd | Foes of Fern | The Saint | Asbury Park NJ
October 8th | The Burns | The Saint | Asbury Park NJ
October 11th | Avery & TMD| Asbury Brewery | Asbury Park NJ
October 13th | Foes of Fern | Glide Surf Co. | Asbury Park
October 13th | Julian Fulton & TZG| Johnny Mac’s | Asbury Park NJ
October 18th | Foes of Fern | The Downtown | Red Bank NJ
October 27th | The Burns | Convention Hall | Asbury N Park NJ
November 10th | The Burns| Absury Hotel | Absury Park NJ
November 17th | The Foes of Fern | Chubby Pickle | Highlands NJ
November 21st | The Burns | Chubby Pickle | Highlands NJ
November 24th | The Burns | The Bitter End | NYC

Any parting thoughts? Open platform!

“Bike Song” was directed and edited by Andrea Morgan. She came to me with a vision and we worked together to make that vision become a reality. The first step was finding a main actress and our first thought was to get Ava Portman to star in the video. Ava has been a good friend of mine for a couple years and when we originally met I promised her she could be in one of my music videos. Two years later, “Bike Song” happened and I was happy to get to fulfill my original promise to her. She did an amazing job and totally took the video to another level. On top of that I want to thank Charlotte Nagy for letting us destroy her house and film there all weekend and my producer Joe Pomarico at Telegraph Hill Records. Pom put a tremendous amount of work into getting “Bike Song” done.