By COURTNEY GUTTENBERG
Staff Writer
With the Artist Management Showcase coming up next month and the frequency with which the Saint Rose music industry program churns out unique bands, profiling alternative rock band BoyGoFast was a must.
Founded in Albany in 2014, the four piece lineup of William Fredette (guitar/vocals), Tom Bystryk (lead guitar), Joe DeTillio (bass) and Nick Cavin (drums) met at Saint Rose and formed when Fredette sent the three other members a Facebook message asking if they would like to form a band to play songs that he wrote.
Since their formation, the band self-released their EP in May of 2014 and will be playing the aforementioned Artist Management Showcase on Nov. 20. I was able to sit down with all four members of the band to talk about their beginnings, their process and what the future holds.
Q: What made you guys want to start a band?
FREDETTE: I had a bunch of songs that I had written and no band to play them.
Q: What made you, as a band, want to play your specific genre?
FREDETTE: Musically, I’m very backwards and learned what pop-punk was when I got to school. All I had was old Beatles records, The Eagles, Genesis… just great old bands. Listening to all that stuff – The Beatles, mainly – and stirring all that stuff together and starting to write songs.
CAVIN: Will comes to us with these lighter, acoustic songs and then…
BYSTRYK: We ruin them. [All laugh].
FREDETTE: They make them awesome! It’s the culmination of all these different styles and that’s what really helps make this band sound really unique and cool, in that there’s just such a diversity here that the songs aren’t built with any one thing in mind, which is nice. It just makes this really accessible music. It’s got a little bit of everything.
Q: What made you guys want to start playing music, in general?
BYSTRYK: Guitar Hero 3. I was in like eighth grade and I got that for Christmas and I was like, “Ah, I can probably do this for real.”
CAVIN: I was playing viola in sixth grade and then I switched to percussion. Also, Guitar Hero 2.
DETILLIO: I started in band in elementary school on trombone, and then I hated it. So instead of just quitting, I switched to bass in the jazz band.
FREDETTE: My grandma made me get piano lessons in third grade. I hated it. I got a bass given to me in fourth grade by my band teacher. I played bass for a band in high school.
Q: What’s your current focus right now? Are you more into doing shows or writing?
DETILLIO: We’re more in a “shows” mode now. We just got done writing a lot.
CAVIN: We were playing the same set all last spring, almost every weekend. We were getting really tired of it, and so were people coming to see us, so we were like, “Alright, we’re not going to play another show until we have pretty much a completely new set.”
Q: Speaking of sets, what’s your favorite song to play live?
CAVIN: “Nothing To Lose.”
BYSTRYK: “China Doll,” or “Sarah, Please.”
DETILLIO: I gotta say “Bent.”
FREDETTE: I would have to say “If I May.”
Q: What’s your favorite song you’ve written, and why?
FREDETTE: I think it would be one of the new ones, and it would be “Stop to Start.” It’s just got the most interesting sound to it. It’s really 50s-dancey, but it’s super uptempo and really bouncy.
Q: What’s the biggest goal you guys hope to accomplish as a band?
FREDETTE: Fly beyond Albany.
CAVIN: Yeah, successfully play shows outside of Albany.
BYSTRYK: And touring. And make money from touring.
FREDETTE: But not for the sake of making money. To get it going to the point where we can afford to tour.
Q: What’s the biggest goal you’ve already accomplished as a band?
FREDETTE: To successfully transition from the old stuff to the new stuff. It changed the sound of the band completely.
BYSTRYK: We evolved.
Q: What is your favorite thing about the Albany scene?
FREDETTE: The line-ups of bands don’t have to seem to be anywhere near the same genre, so you get a chance to play for a lot of different crowds.
BYSTRYK: We have to adapt our sets all the time. Like, “Well, I guess we’ll play this one a little heavier this week, because everyone else is punk.”
CAVIN: Or acoustic duos. Or metalcore bands.
FREDETTE: We’ve had some weird line-ups, but the fact that people seem to respond well, even at the shows that don’t make sense, is nice.
Q: What part of it has helped you the most as a band?
FREDETTE: The same thing. The ability to play with people accepting you no matter what show you’re at.
Q: Since you’re all Saint Rose students, what was the part of Saint Rose that has helped you guys the most as a band?
CAVIN: Meeting each other, and other people to play with.
DETILLIO: And rehearsal space.
Q: Speaking of the Albany scene, what’s your favorite venue you’ve ever played at?
FREDETTE: The Madison Theater. [All agree]
Q: Is that your favorite local venue you’ve played at, too?
FREDETTE: Yes.
Q: If you could sum up your band or band experience in one word, what would it be?
BYSTRYK: Dweebs.
FREDETTE: [laughs] That’s a good one.
Q: If the world was ending and your band had to be remembered for one thing, what would it be?
BYSTRYK: The picture of us with me in my underwear.
Q: That’s it?
BYSTRYK: Yup.
FREDETTE: Yep. That is it.
BYSTRYK: It was the first little photoshoot we were doing for the band and one of the first pictures, they were like, “Alright Tom, you can’t do anything ridiculous,” so I took my pants off. I was like, “Try and stop me.”
FREDETTE: And then we just stood there, pretty serious looking, and Tom didn’t have pants on. There was no emphasis on it.
You can check out the aforementioned picture, as well as all things BoyGoFast related at their Facebook page, facebook.com/BGFAlbany.
They also have a website, boygofastband.com, which contains contact forms for booking requests, studio journals and a schedule of upcoming shows. Their music can be found at soundcloud.com/boy-go-fast. Be sure to also follow them on Twitter at @boygofast and check them out at the Artist Management Showcase on Nov. 20.
Big thanks to Will, Tom, Nick and Joe for sitting down with me!
