“When we started this band, we had no idea that we’d be travelling to places we haven’t been to. It’s an awesome thing to travel across countries to play our music. We’ve been getting requests from fans in the Philippines for a long time to come. We’re excited to finally see them and the beautiful country,” drummer Ben Wysocki told Yahoo! Philippines OMG in a phone interview.
Other members of the quartet are Isaac Slade (lead vocals, piano), Joe King (rhythm guitar, backing vocals) and Dave Welsh (lead guitar).
It is also credited with the hit songs “Over My Head,” “Look After You” and “You Found Me.
Ben himself can’t explain why the band’s songs connect with Filipino fans.
“It’s really an amazing thing and very humbling because when we write our songs, we have no idea how it’s gonna be perceived by people or what people gonna think of it. The song is taking a life on its own. It’s an honor for an artist to have the song connect to people in multiple countries,” he states.
‘Scars and Stories’
The band’s third album, “Scars and Stories,” which carries the lead single “Heartbeat,” contains songs that are more “aggressive,” reflective of the band’s growing self-confidence.
“I think we are more confident than we were before because over time we got to know ourselves better as songwriters and as musicians. It took us awhile to get to know ourselves,” Ben adds.
He relates how the band came up with “Scars and Stoires”:
“When we were talking about the title of the album, we all kinda thought about scars being a part of the thing, becoming a map, whether a literal scar on your skin or more of scars on your emotions, it becomes a map of where you have been as a person. It can be from a stupid thing you did, or something brave. Not all scars represent mistakes. It can also be a beautiful marking of where you’ve been.”
Aside from multiple albums worldwide, The Fray’s music has found its way in popular TV series such as “Scrubs,” “What About Brian,” “NCIS,” “One Tree Hill” and “Bones.”
Ben finds hearing and seeing their songs in TV shows a “crazy thing.”
“It’s pretty awesome to watch how they interpret our song and put into a theme, from somebody literally dying to the opposite where somebody’s life was saved. There’s so much drama attached to the music. Sometime it makes me laugh, but it’s pretty awesome. It’s fun to see our songs in those shows they are in.”
Karen Valeza | Yahoo! Southeast Asia Newsroom
