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Photo by Rob Chickering
Cut Throat Finches
Sean Russel
2 of 2
Photo by Rob Chickering
Cut Throat Finches
Sean Russel
Don’t mistake Sean Russell for just a Fort Worth musician. Sure, he regularly sports a fedora, can rock a mean six string, and can belt out an Americana tune as well as Jeff Tweedy, but he’s really a Fort Worth musicians’ advocate. A couple of Old-Fashioneds in — he claims the place where we met, Bird Café, serves the best — and he’s baring this obvious passion. “When people try to book us as a Dallas-Fort Worth band, I’m like, ‘No, we’re not a Dallas-Fort Worth band,’” Russell says. “I play in Dallas three times a year. I play in Oklahoma City more than I play in Dallas.”
He listens to and regularly goes to the shows of Quaker City Night Hawks and Polydogs; if you name a Fort Worth band, Russell is likely a fan. But Russell and the band he fronts, Cut Throat Finches, more than hold their own in the Fort Worth music scene. And, with their third full-length release, the concept album In Event of Moon Disaster, the band remains as unpredictable as ever.
FW: This album’s a bit of a departure from your previous efforts because it’s a concept album. What made you decide to tackle one particular theme?
Russell: I remember seeing documentaries on different bands, and at different phases when they made their most interesting stuff was typically these concept albums. I honestly never thought my brain would be able to stay focused in one area long enough. And that I was honestly interested in any one thing enough to write that much. But confining that mental space to one project and one idea was actually really freeing in a lot of ways. For instance, with our last record, we were looking for continuity in the sound and the way it’s recorded. Well, with this, the continuity is in the theme.
FW: What is the theme?
Russell: “In Event of Moon Disaster” is a speech that was written for Nixon for the Apollo 11 mission specifically. The odds were probably more heavily stacked against success than people realized. So, they brought in a speech writer for this one speech for Nixon. He then titled the speech “In Event of Moon Disaster.”
What’s amazing about the speech was just how much [all involved in the first moon landing] overcame, and it made me kind of look at the accomplishment of that time in our history. I mean, say you have four great musicians and writers, they can barely work together to get an album out. But these guys, you know, hundreds of them, had to work together to mathematically, manually calculate every arc, every turn, every thrust.
FW: So how did you take that one idea and expand into an entire album?
Russell: When we were writing this, at first it was going to be just a song; then it was like we had a couple ideas for songs; then it was like, well, let’s do an EP. And then it was let’s write, not necessarily in perfect sequence, but let’s kind of like stage this out and write songs like on a timeline. So, the album goes from the day before launch through a potential disaster.
FW: How does it differ musically?
Russell: I would definitely say we swerved a lot more on styles on this one. On the second side, the first two songs that come on to me sound very Radiohead, the timing changes, and tunings are strange. It’s very Radiohead to use kind of like British sounding thing. And then the stuff that’s on the side A which is all the earth side, if you will.
FW: So, do you have like earth side and space side?
Russell: That’s not what we called it; I just thought of that, and that would’ve been brilliant. But instead, it’s just side A and side B. On side A, the songs are definitely rooted more in American rock. Whereas side B definitely has more of a British vibe. Everything’s more open and spacey, like a Radiohead or Muse kind of sound.
FW: You have a particular love for Fort Worth and its music scene. Wanna dive into that a bit?
Russell: It’s just Fort Worth has its own identity, and I want to be identified with what’s going on here. Our restaurants out here, our chefs out here, I’ll take them all day. I’ll take our taco at Taco Heads a million times over any taco I’ve ever had in Dallas.
I mean, like, I’m a fierce advocate of Fort Worth. Now it’s again my perspective as a consumer, but Fort Worth is its own thing, and we have to fight to protect it. I want to fight to protect it.
In Event of Moon Disaster’s first single, “Ignition,” is available to stream and download. You can also catch Cut Throat Finches live at Main at South Side for their album release party on Aug. 10.
