Tom Fec, the man at the helm of Black Moth Super Rainbow and solo-project , doesn’t speak up too often. Instead, he’d rather his music and art speak for itself.
He started obfuscating his projects before anonymity was the fast lane to going viral, using masks, stage names and engaging art instead of his face to rally fans. It’s been so effective that BMSR remains somewhat of an enigma a decade after releasing its first record.
Reverb caught up with Vec before went out on tour (the band is playing at the on May 17) to talk about Kickstarter, music label “assholes,” BMSR’s past and its uncertain future:
R: Black Moth Super Rainbow is often given the “enigmatic” label because itap known for wearing masks, using stage names and being slightly mysterious. Is that critique fair? Is it intentional?
չ:I think that word is a little bit of an exaggeration. I do like to take the personalities out of what we do because thatap not what itap about. Itap about having a world of sound and visuals and everything belongs in its own world, whatever that is. When people and personalities get involved I think it doesn’t really mesh. I’m not trying to be enigmatic, but I am trying to create something that exists as its own thing and place.
R: The off-kilter art associated with Black Moth is some of the most interesting music-art out there. Who conceives BMSR’s artwork, and where does the inspiration come from?
TF:For the most part thatap my stuff, and I just want the pictures to look like the sounds, and I want the sounds to sound like the pictures. So it all kind of goes together for the most part.
There have been a few missteps here and there. Like a lot of the stuff we did around “Eating Us” was not really what I wanted, not really what it should have been. I think we’re back on track now.
I think at that time I knew that I had kind of fucked up on “Eating Us.” I didn’t really write it the way I should have. I kind of knew that it was going to come to an end soon anyway, and I stopped caring. I started putting more of my chips into what would become “Maniac Meat.”
R: Do you think there’s ever a gap between the way you want your music and art to be perceived and the way that fans actually react to it?
TF:I learned this really early on when “Dandelion Gum” came out.
When the “Sun Lips” video came out, everyone wanted what you would expect. I’m not going to name names, but there were a lot of bigger bands out there that were waving the psych music flag. Which is fine, whatever. If you’re going to do it, do it, but thatap not really what I’m into. They do the trippy visuals, the people in fields and the ’60s colors and whatever.
Thatap what people wanted out of Black Moth for the first video we did. I’ve never seen this project like that. I’ve always seen it as a lot of other things. There are expectations for every single thing I do, and every time I do something I think a lot of people are turned off. I’m thinking the fans that are still there, maybe they’ve come to realize they aren’t going to get what they expect.
Maybe itap all making more sense to people now — you’re not going to get people in a fucking field every time. You’re not going to get happy-prancing-flowers kind of music.
R: “Cobra Juicy” was the first BMSR record to be self-released, and funding for it was raised through a Kickstarter campaign. Why go the crowd funding route? And did it work out?
TF:People looked at it like, ‘Why would they need $45,000 to make a record?’ I don’t need $45,000 to make a record. I can make a record for free. We needed that money to do all the crazy shit that came along with it. I think another thing about crowd funding that people don’t understand is that people are like, ‘Why do we need to pay you so that you can make stuff?’ Thatap how you buy things. You pay people money and they make you something.
I wanted to make sure people wanted it, and if they wanted it, they’d pay for it. Maybe people who do it the wrong way are out there begging, but if you look at it the right way itap a safety net. Because if nobody had wanted it, then I would have already been balls-deep with $20,000 worth of masks. That would have sucked.
R: So will you do the crowd funding thing again?
TF:No, I’ll never do another one of those. Not because itap bad. Kickstarter is a good thing, but itap something I couldn’t handle. It was just way too much — too much work, too much everything.
R: BMSR’s roots are very much DIY, and that still runs through BMSR today. What are your thoughts on the current landscape of the DIY music scene? How has it changed since you began?
TF:Thatap a huge question. It just depends on what your definition of DIY is. Back when I started the Black Moth project 10 years ago I think the word indie made sense for what I was doing. It was underground and that actually had meaning.
Instead of having the mainstream and the underground, now you have the mainstream, the underground and all the misfits. We feel like we’re one of those bands that are just misfits that can’t get into underground clubs, which is fine. The way that those people operated 10 years ago is just a lot different now.
R:What challenges have presented themselves as the band has aged?
TF:I’m pretty much a gypsy, but having people in the band that have jobs that need to get time off of work has always been the biggest challenge. But we work through it.
The only other thing I can think of was that I was pretty annoyed and frustrated that I wasn’t able to get any record label to sign “Cobra Juicy.” That was definitely a challenging time. I wasn’t really prepared for it. I thought it would be easy, but I was way wrong.
R: Do you feel vindicated now that the record has been out for a while and was well-received?
TF:I guess a little bit. At the end of the day I don’t think these label assholes feel any differently. I think they still feel that somehow we’re too weird, or whatever it is. As long as labels exist they will always want to bank on the band that sounds like every other band. I guess our history doesn’t even matter.
In that way I don’t feel vindicated, because I’m sure no one minded the change. Not that they would, but I haven’t heard from anyone who are like ‘Oh man, we were wrong.’ Because I don’t think they feel wrong. I think they probably feel right about their decision.
I’ve always felt like we weren’t part of the music industry, whatever that industry is. I don’t really care about helping the music industry. I don’t care about keeping it all moving and keeping it all going.
I think maybe this whole Kickstarter experience almost solidified that. It drew the line in the sand. Like, ‘Are you sure nobody wants to work with us? Alright, we know where we stand, and thatap good.’
R: Are there plans for another BMSR record?
TF:I don’t have any plans to do another Black Moth record, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. My next couple years are pretty much planned out with Demon Queen and the next Tobacco album. I don’t really know if Black Moth needs another record. I think people still want to hear what they know. The idea of a record might be disappearing, so there’s no real plan. After this tour I think we’re going to take another break. We’ll see how everyone’s feeling in a while.
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Nic Turiciano is a writer and photographer in Fort Collins who is also an intern at the Denver Post. You can follow him on Twitter at @nic_turishawno or email him at nturiciano@gmail.com.
