Feeling Flyleaf All Over: An Interview with Flyleaf

Feeling Flyleaf All Over: Faithful Indie Rock in P-City

by Sarah Speelman 

It was hot, hot, hot at the Hawthorne Theater in Portland, Oregon. Any attempts by the small venue’s air conditioner to cool the room were foiled by the crowd gathering to listen to the night’s headliners. The band is called Flyleaf and their unique guitars a-blazing, bass a-wailing, rock meets chicky punk style has attracted a devoted following that don’t mind the grime.

The crowd was sweating and the eyeliner was running by the time Flyleaf took the stage around 8:30pm as a nearly tangible cloud of body heat rose from the floor where the audience, made up of a mix of tangy teenagers and a sprinkling of older concert addicts had been worked up by the two previous bands (The Dizmas and Dropping Daylight). Despite the wall of heat when Flyleaf took the stage, they had no qualms standing as close to the edge as possible. This, of course, delighted the youngsters in the front of the pit who reached a hand out to lead singer, Lacey Mosley as she sang in her emotional, screamo meets Alannis Morrisette, though prettier, kind of way.

 ”We try to have love for everybody,” said Pat Seals, bass guitarist of Flyleaf, earlier that evening when he and I were standing by boxes of equipment behind the Hawthorne doing an interview amidst the comings and goings of roadies setting up the stage. Pat explained that the band, from Texas, has been playing together for about four years now. One of the biggest reasons the group is out doing what they do is to share the faith they have in an unconventional way.

While many people are put off by bands with messages of faith, Flyleaf hopes that all kinds of people will be able to listen to their music. They have a “come as you are” type of attitude, which is apparent just by looking at them. Each member of the band has their own style. Pat definitely leans towards “goth” with his black attire, matted hair, and black eyeliner. One of the guitarists, Jared Hartmann, wore a button-up plaid cowboy shirt and blue jeans, while the other guitarist, Sameer Bhattacharya, was classic emo in a turquoise screen print T-shit. James Culpepper on the drums wore a laid back T-shirt and jeans combo and Lacy could have walked out of the fall fashion issue of Vogue with her layered long sleeves and lace tank top look. This mix and match of different styles reflects Flyleaf’s mix-and-match sound. Pat told me how each member of the band has a list of music that they like and how they try and incorporate genres and sounds from everyone’s list. The result is a band that has fast-fueled songs, slow-it-down-baby songs, hard-ass songs, and even some soft-edged songs. “Our band was gonna be about our message,” says Pat. That message is a refreshing one. While so many alternative rock bands are still singing about their various states of woe-is-me depression and pretend pain, Flyleaf keeps their message full of hope, love, and accepting people. According to Pat, their audience is important; the band hopes that those who listen to them or see them in concert take away a sense of purpose, and most of all, love. It’s as though harkening back to an earlier time when music was about sharing a person’s passion with the rest of the world instead of making up the most depressing, violent situation you can, i.e. a world fixated on transgression and ultra-violence.

As the band finishes another song, and it’s still frighteningly hot, Pat and Sameer sprinkle the crowd with the remainder of their bottles of water and Lacey begins to introduce the next song. She introduces most of the songs with a little “why we wrote this” speech, usually short, sweet, and sometimes only one sentence. This is probably a good tactic, seeing as with all the rocking that’s going on some listeners may let the message of the song pass right over their heads. So, for a message-oriented band, letting the fans know what’s up is pretty important. She tells a story about a woman she met who tried to commit suicide, a girl who went thru pain and came out stronger, and even the story of the girl Cassie who was shot at Columbine. The message? No situation is hopeless.

Standing behind the Hawthorne with Pat while the beating sun was beginning to fade, I really got a sense of what the band was about better than I had before, and it was eye-opening. Like many, I had let their message wash over my head amidst the genuinely enjoyable, headband worthy music. But know that the band had such a feel-good attitude to go along with it made it just that much more, well, like comfort rock. “Well,” said Pat, “like I said, the main thing we want people to come away with is love.” In the end, some of that rubbed off on me.