How Fiver Killed Monotony & Got the Best Jobs in the World

This quintet initially began for lack of something better to do, but are starting to come into their own.

Fiver hails from Modesto, California. Not exactly the kind of place one thinks of when the phrase "hotbed of musical activity" comes up. But this quintet, as well as bands like Pavement and Grandaddy all call the rich-soiled valley home. Maybe there’s something in the water.

Having had well over five years to develop, the music of Fiver has been likened to that of the band’s Central Valley brethren, and that influence can be heard on the group’s debut full-length, Eventually Something Cool Will Happen (Devil In The Woods), though the band’s latest effort, Strings For Satellites (DIW), sees the band adding more soft melodies and vocal intricacies, and it’s obvious that the sound is developing as the quartet grows as a group and as songwriters.

Fiver albums get great reviews, but it’s the band’s live shows that really set people on their ears. This indie outfit has a built quite a following in the Bay Area, and their last two dates a the ultra-hip NoisePop festival were sellouts. With a growing following and an upcoming Chico show, The Synthesis caught up with Fiver frontman and elected speaker Dave Woody at the band’s home in Modesto and talked about the new record, how the band got started, and what’s so cool about playing rock ‘n’ roll.

It’s the second one we’ve recorded for Devil In The Woods. We had a demo tape a couple of years ago, then we recorded our first album with DIW. Stings For Satellites is our official second record.

We started out about ‘92, ’93. It was just a three-piece, right after an original band I used to be in had broken up. I got together with the bass player we have playing now and asked him if he wanted to record a couple of songs. It’s just kind of turned into this. We’ve gone through one other drummer and a guitarist, and we’ve been this set-up for about two years now and it’s working out really well. This is probably the final grouping. It’s definitely the best.

I think it’s the songwriting, and how well we get along as friends and musically. We seem to feed of each other, and it works out really well. That’s how the songwriting process goes. Someone comes in with a chord structure and we’ll play around with it for a couple of days until we get something. We’ll record a demo version and I’ll sit down and come up with the lyrics for it, and then we got a little song.

We listen to a pretty wide variety of things, from Motley Crue and Quiet Riot to Nick Drake, and everything in between. A lot of Built to Spill is consumed here, as well as Modest Mouse, My Bloody Valentine, and a lot of Radiohead. I’ve been getting into Neutral Milk Hotel and Stereolab quite a bit, and I think that’s where the melodic stuff came off on this album. When we started to write and record the songs, I started to get into more melodic music like the last Neutral Milk Hotel album, and the new Flaming Lips.

We all live in Modesto.

Apparently [laughing]. It’s pretty cool how we’re a part of this invasion of indie bands, but we’ve never met any of these other bands. We know Granddaddy, and we’re sort of friends with them, but it’s not like we hang out every day.

I think it’s probably 95 percent the press’ doing, and about five percent of it’s the fact there are really cool people living here and there’s not really anything else to do other than either get a job, go to school or get into a band. I’ve just kind of noticed that when you get into our age group — early- to mid-20s — there’re slim pickings as far as people that age in this town because pretty much everybody goes off to college. Then they either come back, get jobs and get married, or they stay gone and never come back. We’re pretty much the offshoots of that. We stuck around because we didn’t have anywhere else to go, so we decided to start a band, make the best of the bad situation.

It’s probably piqued some people’s interest, people who wouldn’t have otherwise been interested or known about us before hand. So it’s been nice. It’s better than nothing.

Actually, yeah. We aren’t really a big draw in our hometown — which is fine ‘cause people make me nervous — but the show we played at the NoisePop festival in San Francisco was sold out. That was rad, and last year’s NoisePop was packed out too. When we play in the city, it seems like we have a bigger audience there. But we actually just played our first show in Modesto in quite some time two Saturdays ago, and it was the craziest crow we’ve played to in our entire lives — in Modesto. We were playing with Granddaddy, and you couldn’t even move. There were people standing on tables. It was crazy.

It seems like it. I mean we haven’t played a show here in a really long time, so it seems like it just started all of a sudden. Like, no one knew who Granddaddy was, and now everyone in town knows who they are, and so there’s this big indie explosion all of a sudden, and it’s really strange. I don’t understand where it came from.

Actually, myself and the drummer are going to college, and just spending a lot of time in school, and practicing a lot and writing songs, but last summer we were gone for about a month touring the U.S. We went all around the country with Death Dab For Cutie and got to become really good friends with them, so that was really cool. It’s funny, we noticed that in the first six months of last year, we’d played more shows than in the entire existence of our band. Last summer was probably the most fun summer I’ve had in my entire life.

That’s so nice because just being able to put out records is all I’ve ever wanted to do anyway, and to have people actually recognize and say that we’re doing a good job is just icing on the cake. I mean, if we put out CDs and just got to give them to our friends, I’d be happy. But since all this other stuff is happening, it’s kinda’ nice too.

I wouldn’t mind getting a paycheck to do this, ‘cause it’s fun… It’s pretty much the greatest job in the world.

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