F. Way, four rockers from the South part of Switzerland drawn together by a shared passion for Bruce Springsteen
Interview conducted July 08, 2019
by Dan Locke
Fabiano, Andrea, Eveline and Marco are F. Way, four rockers from the South part of Switzerland drawn together by a shared passion for Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones. Founded in 2015, in 2017 they released their first EP, “Taking all my fears away”, with the label profimedia: under the influence of US rock, they wrote their songs in English, the universal language of Millennials and international code to the poetic meter of rock. Their songs are short stories in the style of Raymond Carver: just like the great American writer, the songs, composed by Fabiano and Andrea, catch the poetry of small things and show the depth hidden in our everyday life. But it’s in their live shows that they are truly themselves: they’ve played their contemporary rock all over Europe last year, reaching even Ukraine and Russia, where they performed in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Today they are still on tour around Europe. Recalling a famous quote by Confucius, F. Way believe that happiness is simple, all you have to do is make sure you don’t complicate it.
Band Members
Fabiano Wildi ( Voice & Guitar ) –
Andrea Rusconi ( Guitar ) –
Eveline Lucchini ( Bass ) –
Marco Cuzzovaglia ( Drums )
Dan Locke: Why is English the universal language of Millennials and international code to the poetic meter of rock?
Fabiano Wildi: Not really sure that I’m able to answer this first question since I haven’t done any literary or language studies, but in my opinion, the reason why English is such a constant factor in music, more in particular in the Rock genre, is due firstly to its roots since we all know Rock music thanks to artists from the late 60’s such as Bob Dylan or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young for the Folk Musicor thanks to artists such as Ray Charles, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry or Elvis for the Rock and Roll scene. Needless to say, all those artists were singing in English.
On the other hand, a phonetic matter mixed with a widely spoken language were certainly two other factors that influenced the growth of the English language in music.
Spanish Rock Bands such as El Canto del Loco or Ska-P are certainly good bands that I’m also listening to, but the simple fact of singing in Spanish has for sure a whole other impact on the listeners.
How did you guys get together?
Fabiano Wildi: Our project started back in 2015 when me and our guitar player Andrea met thanks to our sound engineer with whom we are still working nowadays.
Andrea was writing a lot of songs at that period and he was looking for a voice to sing his songs, I was also writing a good amount of songs so basically, we just met for the first time and from that moment on, our project started.
Eveline joined the band 1 year later together with our drummer Mr. Marco Cuzzovaglia.
What type of music did you grow up with?
We all grew up with different types of music, mainly related to the different period that we were born. Our eldest brother which is our guitar player Andrea was a teenager in the early ’90s and he was influenced a lot by Oasis, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chain & co.
Personally, I grew up with the punk-rock boom of early 2000 with American Idiot as probably the only album of my summer of 2005. Foo Fighters, Rolling Stones, Papa Roach, Nickelback, Linkin Park, John Mayer, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan were always there.
Marco and out bass player Eveline, the two real musicians in the Band, were more into Chick Corea Elekric Band, Dave Weclk Band, Police, Toto, Jeremy Camp or, not least, Dave Matthews Band.
So you bands as a shared passion for Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones. Have you seen either live before?
Yes, we all saw them both minimum once in our lives, hoping, of course, to see them again in the future. We all share this common passion for Bruce and the Stones probably because they are like the opposite side of the same coin.
On one side, the incredible storytelling of Mr. Bruce Springsteen with his “introspective” attitude and on the other hand, the exuberant and eclectic show of the Rolling Stones, in our opinion, nothing less than the perfect combination of both worlds.
Why do people confuse Sweden and Switzerland?
That’s always funny to hear and honestly, I don’t know the answer. Probably one of the reasons is because of they kind of sound the same and for American standards, the two nations could be also considered as close to each other with a distance of “only” 1’600 km (around 1’000 miles crow flies).
Economically speaking, the countries are both considered as rich countries of Europe, Sweden with a super-advanced health care system whereas Switzerland in more known for its banks, watches, and chocolate.
How was it to perform in Moscow and St. Petersburg?
Our experience in Russia was astonishing. St. Petersburg is probably one of the most fascinating cities I’ve ever been to. We had to chance to meet with a friend of mine that brought us for a city tour in the evening, because as she said “we had to see the city by night”, and the beauty of all its building with the evening shadows is something that I will keep in my mind forever. Moscow with its red square is also a super cool place to see, but for what I like, I just prefer the smaller cities instead of the big ones, such as Kyoto instead of Tokyo.
Tell me how it is to tour behind the iron curtain and how does one plan a tour like that?
Probably due to years of closure policies, together with the consciousness of Russian people to be seen from foreign countries as a little bit traditional or not really at the forefront, creates this untouchable feeling of joy and proudness when someone comes to visit their country. Translated into the reality of our concerts, if you think that Russian people are cold in the approach due to a high context culture society, they are not.
They are super warm, festive and loving.
In terms of planning, I have to admit that it wasn’t really easy, starting with the Visa permits and the funny problems related to the language and Cyrillic traffic signs.
How is the music on the radio in Russia?
We rented a Van and therefore we had a lot of time to hear what’s going on in the Russian Radios. We were kind of shocked, mainly for the differentiation of the music genre.
They had a lot of Russian Pop – Rock songs, a little bit of traditional songs, and then a lot of English songs starting with classic Rihanna or Khalid until Latin American Reggaetón.
Since you are from Switzerland, I am going to ask you about some bands or people from Switzerland. All I would like you to is say something about each if you can.
Tina Turner – Love her! The Queen of Rhythm and Blues. She lives near Zurich which is the biggest city and the economic capital of Switzerland.
Robert Palmer – everyone knows him in the Italian part of Switzerland because he is interred in Lugano, which is very close from where we all come from as a Band.
Melissa Auf der Maur – I think she’s Canadian – Could be the big and famous sister of our bass player Eveline 😉
Albert Einstein – He was German naturalized as Swiss. Best Quote:
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Fabiano, you studied at EF San Francisco. What did you take?
Yes, I’ve been to San Francisco back in 2011 when I was 19 years old, not the perfect age to have a party in the US but I enjoyed myself with other stuff.
That was my second time in the US and the first time as a short period living there.
Even though SF isn’t the typical American city (small streets, small cars, small city area), the thing that I enjoyed the most is for sure the approach with the attitude that Americans have. It could be hard to imagine for Americans, but for many foreigners there is this kind of special chemistry that every American has which could be called as a mix of positive attitude, passion for life and pleasure of sharing which is something that I love and that I will always keep inside of me, a certain kind of X-Factor.
Eveline, how is to be the backbone of the band with your bass? What make and model bass do you play?
Eveline: To me, being the backbone of F. Way simply means to create a strong ensemble with the drums in order to build a solid foundation for later supporting the different melodies as well as all the vocal parts. Our job as the rhythm section is to sustain in a certain way the song, to have a constant groove that keeps on rolling, whatever may happen.
Inspirations for me are Guy Berryman for the modern approach that he has by entering Coldplay’s songs, Dino D’Autorio for the groove and the incredible sound identity and Pino Palladino, that doesn’t need any further explanation.
Speaking about basses, I usually use a Fender Jaguar Bass with a Precision set up for the neck pick-up which gives me more depth in my sound. For the bridge, I use a Jazz pick-up that I usually use when I need a more defined sound, brilliant and a clean attack.
Marco, what do you study at ISSM Franco Vittadini? And did you know Sofia Ferri, who also went there? I think about the same time you were there?
Macro: I study a music genre that I’ve never been able to deepen enough, the Jazz.
I do believe that I’ll never stop studying and further exploring drums as a whole, together with music in general. Sofia Ferri, unfortunately, I don’t know her, but now I’m just curious to know her.
On your video, you are playing inside a boxing ring. Have your band ever played inside anything like a boxing ring, or rolling derby ring as the activity was actually going on?
Exactly. We did this amazing experience with two girls as fighters in our latest video clip called, of course, Fighter. Unfortunately, we haven’t played any live show inside a boxing ring while the activity was actually going on, but I hope that we will have the chance to do it in the following years. For the moment: only a very funny but still playback singing only for our video clip.
On your Sweet and Sour video who are the two kids in the beginning? I like the video, who wrote the storyline for the video?
Compared to the Fighter Videoclip, this video is way more classic in the approach and in the story telling too. We wanted to express the lyrics by finding a way to show how a couple of balance themselves in their relationship such as the sweet compensate the sour in the Sweet & Sour sauce. The idea actually came from the band, and together with our video maker, we decided to use as the main example, the life of a couple that lives their entire life together. For this video, as well as for the other videos of our new album, we decided to use as main characters people from the band or people that we all already knew from before.
The little boy in the first scenes is the little brother of our bass player Eveline, the main character in the middle of the video is actually our drummer with his wife, and the old couple, is just probably the most lovely couple we’ve ever met in one of our public concerts in Switzerland and since they liked our music, we just asked them if they wanted to join us for a video clip and lucky enough for us, they just said yes.
Andrea, did you draw the coverArtwork of your new album.
Andrea: I haven’t done the Artwork of our new Album but I came up with the main idea behind the Artwork. Following the title of our new LP which is called Anything But New, what we wanted to create was simply to express this idea that the music that we do, is basically anything but new, meaning that the music that we do, wasn’t invented by us.
This image, we knew that we needed to have a strong image with a strong significance and therefore, we decided to cover our heads with vinyl records.
Any plans to tour this year?
We are going back to Ukraine next month for a small series of concerts at the beginning of August. This is another very cool country that we had the chance to visit and we are super happy to come back to Ukraine, in Eastern Europe once again.
How do you see the band in 5 years?
I hope that in 5 years we will be able to release at least another entire album, by working and keeping on improving our songs. Other than this we also hope that we will be able to do more and more gigs, know more and more people and discover new places that we’ve never been by playing our music.
Simple things in a certain way but as we say in our biography, we believe that happiness is simple, all you have to do is make sure you don’t complicate it – Confucius -.
Anything in closing for your fans?
First of all, we would like to thanks very much all of you who read our interview until this point. If you want to know more about us, have a look at our website fwaymusic.com where you’ll find all the information and of course, thank you very much to Unrated Magazine for having us.
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