What inspired the name of the band? What are your influences and are they the same as when you started out?
Our original bass player, Michael Doyle, came up with the name after ruminating for weeks about what we should call ourselves. Fool Saint is from the second book in the popular SciFi series, Dune, called Messiah. According to the internet, Fool Saint is defined as “A role model, or a figure in someone’s life who is admired. A person who lives an eccentric life and creates saint-like miracles, but those miracles amount to nothing.” So a Fool Saint is a false prophet, an influential leader with many subordinates; however, leaders are still humans who make mistakes, but those mistakes are over-exposed and amplified because of the massive quantity of followers captivated by the leader’s charisma. The bubble pops. Pride, overconfidence, and narcissism will end up leading to your tragic fall. We think it fits our sound.
How do you approach songwriting?
There are many visual influences for us collectively- misty nights, neon skies and lights, colorful pastels, the vast cosmos, and mother nature are a few that come to mind. Of course, we are also influenced by other forms of art, media, documentaries, film, books, etc
As far as musical influences are concerned… well, all five of us are living on different musical planets (aka the list goes on and on.) Our influences range from Jefferson Airplane and Pink Floy all the way to Stephen Sonheim and more contemporary artists like Wolf Alice, St.Vincent, and Explosions in the Sky. Oh, and we all grew up listening to either punk, pop-punk, hardcore, and metal. So there is that influence floating around.
In terms of writing, it’s highly collaborative and usually starts with a guitar or vocal idea. From there, we all work together to develop the idea into a song. Sometimes this process is quick, but most of the time we try to explore things we havent tried, yet. We’ve begun experimenting with demoing our music, which has been a major help in zooming out.
Why do you write the sort of music that you do?
The actual music is a collective sound that comes from our individual interests/ tastes. We make this music because we want to use this artform as a vehicle for social change. Growing up, music played one of the most important roles in shaping our world views. Music is an incredible tool for spreading messages and bringing people from all walks of life together.
How do you decide what songs to perform live?
We are still tinkering with the best set order for our live shows, but deciding on what to play is very easy.. we play everything we have! I think we are getting to the point where our set is starting to become cohesive and represents us. We discuss doing covers every now and then, but it’s rare that we can decide on something that excites us. Our set will go through some changes now that we have begun writing new/ more music!
What plans do you have for the future?
The future seems to come faster and faster every single day. Fool Saint has major ambitions- both collectively and as individual people. I think we all can agree that the most important aspect is to keep music and our friendship at the heart of the group. For now, we will continue to create and perform for whomever is interested in listening.