Pete Mathias '09, Teddy Mathias '09, Johnny Mathias '11 and Casey Gibson have bouncy, swooning voices when singing in their wildly-popular-among-college-kids rock band, Filligar. Their voices lost their edgy charm, however, as the guys drove through the middle of nowhere on their "Stray Dogs Tour." As we shouted at each other through a shoddy cell connection, we discussed the merits of having Facebook fans in Turkey and compared Twitter to an Everlasting Gobstopper.
All right, so pretend you're talking to the one person on campus who hasn't heard of you guys. Even better, pretend you're talking to a '13. What do you tell them about Filligar?Pete: If we saw a freshman, the first thing we'd say is, "Come check us out on Saturday night, we're playing at SAE!"Johnny: Well, they'd probably ask what type of music we play, and then I'd probably stumble around trying to describe it, just because that's a notoriously difficult question for bands to answer. I usually like to leave it up to them to make any sort of decisions about the band. But I'd probably say we're awesome. Or that we're the coolest band alive or the greatest thing ever. [Laughs]. But, you know, that's only because I'm in the band.
How long have you been playing and recording together?J: I was in fifth grade, the guys were in seventh grade. I think our first show was at a school assembly and it was at 8:00 in the morning. It was a pretty interesting experience. That's a very tough time for people to be crowd surfing, you know?
How long after that did it take you to start using Myspace, Facebook and Twitter as a band?J: I think that was probably in high school. We were among the first couple of thousands of bands who were doing it. So once we decided we were a band, we thought the next step was to get a MySpace page. That legitimized us. [Laughs].Casey: And Facebook hasn't always been a music thing, but recently they opened it up to musicians to start pages, and people can become fans and all that. And Twitter is kind of a recent phenomenon, but we jumped on that bandwagon too, because, I guess, why not open yourself up to the latest thing? We want to give everyone a forum to follow what we're up to.
Okay, so what are you up to? Where are you guys?C: We're on tour until the end of October. This is kind of our first big tour. We're going to Cornell, Middlebury, Dartmouth, Providence, Philly, Delaware, then back into the Midwest. But, it's all on our MySpace. [Laughs].J: We're just right now leaving Chicago and heading out east to Ithaca, New York. We're probably going to have to stop in Cleveland for the night, just because it's kind of late.
You're driving?J: Yeah, we're in a van right now.Teddy: We need some toll money, guys.J: Oh, we need some toll money. Hold on a second, Emma.T: Okay, got it.C: Okay, this is kind of interesting, maybe we'll tweet this we're currently driving through Michael Jackson's hometown, Gary, Indiana. We'll tweet it right now, we'll get Pete on that. Okay, we're taking a photo of me putting my thumb up right now and Pete's going to upload it.
Let me know when it's on Twitter. Okay, so has social networking on these sites impacted the band in any way? Have you noticed your fan base change because of them?J: I think it's funny that on Facebook, for some reason, we have a lot of fans in Istanbul. And England. That's another thing about social networking for the first time in history, you're able to expand your horizons beyond the places that you have been. We couldn't hand out flyers in Istanbul, but we have fans there.So, are you guys thankful for Facebook and Twitter, or do you still enjoy printing up flyers and promoting yourself in old-school ways?J: Well, the Internet is way easier. You don't have to fork over hours of your time, all you have to do is click a button. But at the same time, it just feels kind of cheap. It's much more fruitful, and you kind of get a warm, fuzzy feeling in your stomach, after sweating through an hour and a half of handing out flyers in Boston or New York.C: We kind of feel and we've spoken to other people in the business who feel the same way that really the most important way of networking is doing what we're doing now, which is just going around and playing as many shows as possible, getting out there and meeting people. So while Facebook's been a great tool for us to reach out to people in Istanbul and increase our fan base on a level that wouldn't have been possible without it, this right now is what's worth doing.
But don't you guys get any sense of accomplishment from the number of fans you have online?J: We measure our success not so much in how many people are on our pages, but how many people end up coming to our shows, or how many end up contacting us. At the end of the day, it's kind of just a number. That's sort of the issue with a lot of these social networking sites it's sort of a faceless enterprise, even though it is called Facebook. C: We kind of keep track of what's going on because it is our livelihood right now. But we're not monitoring it every single day. We try not micromanage our friends too much. [Laughs].
Well I'm looking at your Facebook page, and you guys have 4,289 fans.C: That's one more than yesterday! [Laughs]. Kidding.
Do all four of you tweet and post, or is it just one person's job?J: We try to keep it egalitarian in this band with tweeting and Facebook and stuff. [Laughs].C: It hasn't become a burden yet. If something happens and it's like, "Oh, this is funny, I think other people will appreciate this," we'll tweet about it. It's not an obligation. We try to use it to give updates and just try to stay on people's palates, you know? We want to linger J: It's kind of an Everlasting Gobstopper.C: [Laughing] Yeah, exactly, we want to let it simmer.
Do you guys personally use Twitter?C: I mean, I always enjoy reading what Shaq is up to.P: [Something unintelligible].C: Pete wants to let you know that he just tweeted the photo of me. It's online.J: We're very rapid.C: [Laughs] Yes, we're on the fingertips of efficiency. Or something.
