When I opened email submission for our blog, I was expecting to receive submissions like this one.
The human FLy is “5-piece making eclectic alt-folk hailing from Philadelphia and New York.“
I have to admit that this is not type of music I would naturally search for, but I am so happy it has landed in our mailbox. I love to widen my horizon a little bit. In past few weeks I have been getting more and more into folk music and this album is exactly something enriching. Powerful, atmospheric, folk songs perfect for long fall evening that will be here anytime soon. I cannot wait to wrap this hot summer and get myself in more mellow, melancholic fall mood. This album will be a perfect soundtrack for it. If you have some free time now, give it a full listen and you will discover gems. The newest album is coming out on cassette via Dead Definition.
I asked Robert from The Human Fly to answer us our 3 questions:
What inspired you to start making music and what keeps you making music?
Initially, it started as a pressure to at least try to make music– my dad always had instruments in the house and each of his siblings play pretty proficiently. I wanted to feel like I belonged, so I tried a few things and the guitar was the one that really stuck. But I don’t think I really started “making music” until I started writing my own songs and realizing I was really passionate about doing that. I started The Human Fly a decade ago after going through an outpatient program as a means of trying to put myself back together and learned that songs were really therapeutic for me. It was and still remains a way that I make sense of my own life and the world around me.
I guess so long as I have opinions or feelings about those things, I’ll keep doing this. I also just genuinely enjoy the craft of songwriting. I try to listen to a really eclectic set of artists to understand all these different ways people interpret their emotions through music. I read books on the subject, I write all the time, constantly. I’m a huge nerd about that sort of thing. Lastly, I’d say it’s the people I make music with– my bandmates Alex, Jack, Jenny, and Pru– that keeps me going. The Human Fly really has grown beyond me as a solo project into a band where each member is indispensable, musically and in my life. We don’t get to play together in a room very often because we’re all such busy people, but when we do it feels so emotionally refreshing and fulfilling.
What was the most challenging thing in your music (artistic) path?
Constantly fighting against time. Music is a huge part of our lives, but it’s not ultimately the thing we subsist off of. As much as we’d love to, we can’t sit in a room for 8-9 hours a day, work on our songs/recordings, tour for 3 months at a time, for a variety of reasons. I’m sure you know this, but a very, very select few are fortunate enough to write songs for a living, for themselves. The majority of us have to squeeze it into our day! Sometimes we’re lucky enough so that all five of us can tour for 10 days in a row, or go to the studio for a week, but these are all things we have to plan way in advance to work towards. So we’re not always out there playing, and in the interim, the rest of our lives begin to take over in beautiful but significant ways. I’m trying to learn to be more patient and content with where we’re at, that this is the right path for us.
What would you dream to do if anything was possible?
Hike the Appalachian Trail or drive fully across the United States. I’m pretty anxious about lost time with my wife/family/friends, plus I could never take the time away to do those sorts of things with my current circumstances. But if I could do either of those things without time passing, with total assurance that everything would remain as it is now, I absolutely would. That or open a show for Weird Al Yankovic.
You can get the album on cassette or support artist.