Austin Indie-Rock Band Flight by Nothing Celebrate New Album at Empire Control Room – Review and Interview

Local indie-rock band Flight By Nothing released their brand new album “Back for More” on August 11th, 2023. To celebrate the release, the band performed at Empire Control Room on September 1st to celebrate this new chapter of the band’s discography. I got a chance to sit down with band members Paco Salinas, Porfii Rubio, Conner Redden, Sam Morales, and Huey Houston before their show to ask about their journey as a band and in making their new record.

---

ORB: I know that you guys are from Dallas, but when I was looking back at y’all’s Spotify I realized your first release  goes back to like 2018. When did you guys start the band? How was that formation? 

Conner: It was December 8th 2016. It was Sam’s 18th birthday. We were all at his house and we were all like, playing different instruments, just kind of making stuff and we were just like, why don’t we just start a band? Our first name was The Silver Streams, and our first show was at the door two weeks after we started the band. We played with the White Rhinos, which was my cousin Marcus’s band [currently the frontman of Psychic Love Child], two weeks after we started and then Porfii met Paco playing in the church band.

Paco: Yeah, Porfii just hit me up again, said “Hey, I’m in a band with some friends and we’re looking for a guitar player”. I knew how good Porvy was, so I was like, oh ****. Yeah, let’s do this, man. 

ORB: What did you guys play at that first show?

Sam: We wrote like 5 songs in two weeks.

Huey: We did covers too, I think like some disco covers. 

Conner: It was like a 30 or 40 minute set but it was that’s still really bad. We were terrible. 

Conner: The way it happened was that we were jamming at my house and my cousin Marcus walked past us, leaned into the door and says “Sounds hot, you guys wanna play a show?”. So he booked us on his next bill and said “you guys better ******* be ready”. We asked “Can we do covers?”  and he said “No, you gotta write your own music”. So we were ‘ like alright, here we go’.

ORB: The first release that you guys put out was what looks like an EP back in 2018. Was that the accumulation of the songs you written in that time? What was the recording process like for that?

Sam: Yeah, those are the songs we wrote. We recorded at this guys’s apartment and I don’t think he really knew what he was doing; he didn’t really have any reference points for the kind of music that we were drawing from because he was more of a metal head, so it was a long, drawn out process. At the end we just kind of like we just wanted to be done with it, and that was that was kind of our first experience. We were just like “We got to put something out,  we started this, we have to finish it”.

ORB: You guys were playing a  bunch of shows in between that time I imagine, right?

Conner: We played  a few,  mostly at The Door and The Profit Bar at that time. That was the only places we could get in because we were still all underage besides Paco, but he wasn’t with us until like I think a year later

Huey: No it was, like, six months 

Paco: It was like April 2017 when I saw y’all. And then  May 2016 is when I started practicing with them.  

ORB: How did you guys meet?

Conner: We lived in Anna, which is 10 minutes north of McKinney. We knew each other growing up.

Huey: Yeah, me and Porfii were in the 1st grade together, and I met Conner around that same time because we played baseball together. Then we met Sam like, 3 years later.

Sam: Yeah, we all grew up together. 

Porfii: Me and sam were actually in a band first.

Sam: Yeah, fun fact; me and Porfii were in a band in, like, 7th grade, then we hopped over to make the same band [with them]. When me and Porfii started doing music we were like, what, 12 or 13? It was middle school at that point

Huey: Yeah, you guys played at our 8th grade graduation.

Porfii: Yeah, so around 13 or 14.

Sam: We were all 18 when we started Silver Streams, because and I had just turned 18 that day.

ORB: Going back to y’all’s first release in 2018, then putting out your biggest release to date this year, how do you guys think that like you’ve grown as a band?

Huey: We’ve grown a lot. 

Paco: since I’m a little bit older than them, when I joined them I got to really see them mature in their songwriting [to] get better and better, so I think this EP is miles ahead and sounds way better than their first EP did.

Conner: I think we we learned a lot, because after we did that first EP with that metal guy we made 6 or 7 singles on our own. Sam kind of took over the producing and mixing, we were just kind of figuring out how to do it.  Then August of last year, we had just gotten back from our first tour, which was like a shoestring kind of last minute tour, but we did it and it was it was a lot of fun and a great learning experience for all of us. When we got back  I think we all decided “OK, it’s  time to do something”, so we started calling some studios around in Austin. I saw the first one that popped up said East Side studios, thought it looked cool, called the number. This really nice guy answered, we talked and then we had a meeting and then we got the studio in December. We wrapped it up basically like in May, April and it was awesome. We practiced the songs to a tee so that when we went into the studio at Good Danny’s in Lockhart like we were ready to go, like it was tight and it was basically just him capturing the performance that we did, which was a lot of fun. 

ORB: You mentioned at “shoe-string” tour, was that y’alls first tour? What was the experience like?

Conner: That was our first tour.

Huey:It was kind of southeast; we started in New Orleans and we went like through Florida and the Carolinas and Nashville, and then we did like 3 shows in Georgia. It was like 12 or 13 shows and then we ended it back here or something like that, in August of last year.

Sam: We played a music festival, Hangout Fest, last year in May and then we came home and then that’s when our the agent was like “You know, like we’re going to put in all these holds for all these venues, in all these states”. And then like, 2 weeks later, we’re like alright, we got to go on tour. It was all super fast, it could have been planned better but it was so fun.

ORB: How did you guys get to play at Hangout Fest?

Sam: So we were the band for this artist named Gabriel Black, who’s a friend of ours. I met him like two years ago and then he hit us up like “Hey, I’m doing Hangout Fest and I need a band”, and then we did it.

Conner: It was pretty surreal because we got to meet so many artists, like we met Patrick Stump, the lead singer for Fall Out Boy, which is like a super crazy moment for us. Fall Out Boy was one of my first favorite bands, and Patrick Stump was the singer that I looked up to, and then we got to talk to him for like 5 minutes before their show . It was pretty surreal. 

Sam: We we got to go backstage, all access, free food, we got spoiled.

So during your first recording experience you mentioned that your first recording process helped y’all to solidify the sound you wanted. Do you feel like you’ve refined that sound since? How has it evolved over time?

Huey: I really think like like us moving in together changed our sound a whole lot because we’re all writing it in the same space and it was like this like all of our sounds kind of just melted together for this project, For the first project we were recording it in the closet, just a hot room in an apartment, and it was everyone learning as they were going. With this one we were more relaxed and letting the music happen.

Paco: On the first EP, it felt like some of the song people were finishing them as we were recording them, and  we never really had enough time to practice together. Then this time around, since we’re all live together, we’re playing at like midnight to one in the morning, just whenever we want it. These songs came together faster and more polished, everything melded together. 

ORB: How do all five of you live together? What house could you guys possibly live in?

Sam: Its like a musical dormitory.  

Conner: We spent months, maybe 8 or 9 months, looking and looking for a place for us. Every place we found was like too expensive, didn’t approve us, not enough rooms, too far away, too this, too that.  One day I get a notification from Trulia (shout out Trulia) for a 5 bed, 3 bathroom house in San Marcos, and it was cheap. I was like, yeah, this is perfect for us, let’s ******* go. We applied, we’re approved the next day, we were like “Oh my god, we’re moving!”. It had been this whole thing building up to it, because we didn’t know if it was gonna happen. I had dropped out of school for it all. And the longer it took to see it all come to fruitionI was like “oh, ****”. But that notification came and we got the house. We have 5 beds, we have 3 bathrooms, we have like a giant living room that doubles as our studio. We each have our own rooms, have a big front porch. We throw giant house shows, it’s like a dream come true. 

Sam: Its the best view in San Marcos.

ORB: You guys are in San Marcos now, which has a vibe all of its own with a local DIY scene. What’s that environment like? 

Sam: It’s been a lot of fun; I think we’ve got the best venue in San Marcos  It’s easy for us to throw our own shows because we also have all the equipment to run sound. When we throw shows our house literally turns into a stage and a dance floor; we move out all of our couches and everything, and I think we make pretty good hosts. The last show we had like 130 people in our house, and that was in April. 

The yard and the streets were just full of cars, it was crazy.

Conner: And we’re out of city limits, so we don’t really get noise complaints either. It’s like the house was made for us. 

Sam: There’s also a great local scene in San Marcos, it’s super communal and everybody kind of knows each other, it’s very supportive. Since we’ve been here we’ve made a lot of friends, made a lot of connections, it’s been great. 

Conner: When we started trying to get booked in Austin iit was kind of. It was kind of tough to break in being the new guys on the block, but once we got in it’s been a super supportive community.

ORB: How would you guys describe “Back For More” to new listeners?  Are there any overlying themes that like might carry out throughout the album?

Huey: Sonically, I would say like each of the songs kind of live in their own world; I feel like Back For More was very Young the Giant inspired. Track Two has kind of like a Hippo Campus vibe to me. Cocaine is OK has a little bit of a Cage the Elephant sound, they’re all just super different. I guess the overall theme was that we kind of wrote it about us; we got off tour and like it felt like everything was  going so fast, and then it just all stopped. There’s a lot of talking about time in it, like what are we going to do? What’s the future? It’s funny to me to that it kind of sounds like a love interest, but it’s like music is kind of that love interest.

ORB: I have to ask, what’s the story for “Cocaine is OK”?

Conner: OK, that one started when I was trying to go to sleep, when I was still living in Anna, and right as I was going to sleep this melody just, like, entered my brain. And I was like, wait, let me get that down. It took like a year to do the whole thing. As far as what it’s about, I feel like it’s about different things. The first verse is kind of me being fucking fed up and frustrated.. And then the first pre course is like trying to get over, you know, a lady. It’s like “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m moving on”, you know? And then the chorus is pretty like self-explanatory. Like, I’m scared of intimacy, but I like hanging out. The second verse happened when I showed it to the guys and they liked it, so I went to my room and just made-up the second verse. I finished and was like “shit, that sounds like a verse to me”. And then “cocaine is OK, but I prefer my weed”  just sounded good. It’s also just true.

ORB: What artists would you say inspire Flight by Nothing’s sound, or each of you individually?

Paco: Well, at least from my point of view I like to throw in a lot of melodic guitar solos because I’m very inspired by 80’smusic and 80’s rock bands. To me, guitar players in the 80s just knew like how to take a song to another level with a guitar solo or guitar melody. I’m inspired by Van Halen, Slash, those guys. I like to throw that in there to give [our music] a little old school taste, because our music does have a new sound, but I think when you throw something in like what I’m throwing in, I think it’s something that could appeal to an older audience too. It’ll kind of bring them in, like “oh, these guys aren’t just like any other indie band”. I mean, so far I think it’s worked; with me and Porfii a bunch of older guys will come up to us after [a show] and be like “you guys got it, man”.

Sam: The old heads love girls come up to them. 

Paco: Yeah, dude, I ain’t mad. It’s working out. 

Huey: I for this project I was listening to a lot of Young the Giant,  a band called Parcels that I really love keys-wise, and then like Cage the Elephant and Arctic Monkeys. I was kind of listening to stuff I grew up listening to.Keys-wise, Spining Out was definitely inspired by Arctic Monkeys newer stuff. It’s a lot more slow and dramatic.

Porfii: Well, I guess couple of bands off the top of my head are Hippocampus and Bad Suns, and Radiohead recently. I’ve been really getting into them because they just have a lot of weird cool changes going on, but I think the band that really inspires me, the most is red Hot Chili Peppers. The bass player Flea has these crazy lines and I try to emulate as much as I can from the way he plays. He’s one of my biggest inspirations, I guess they all are. I realized that I really, really, really like disco and funk from the 70s, and I try to bring as much of that as I can into the group to get people moving.

Conner: Well, a lot of these dudes are also saying Young the Giant, so them obviously, but I think City and Color is a big one here too. I hear some of City and Color in World on fire, and II kind of draw parallels in there. Then cocaine is OK with like a bunch of different songs that we like. There’s like DJO, which is Joe Keery, The Ramones, very Blitzkrieg Bop. I think its a similar kind of progression as theirs,  just in minor chords. And then my cousin Marcos was, like, my first inspiration as a kid, so I channeled him a little bit through this too. I draw inspiration from all over the place. 

Sam: I kind of grew up listening to everything. I feel like this stuff inspires me for what I play in Flight By Nothing comes from all over the place. There’s a band called My Morning Jacket I really like, but from me being a drummer I grew up listening to a lot of pop punk, like Fall Out Boy, Blink 182, Sum 41, stuff like that.  Travis Barker is one of my favorite drummers of all time .I’d say My Morning Jacket is one of the biggest band in the past two years that I’ve taken inspiration from, then anything from like Sum 41 or bands from that era, that’s my shit. I also listen to a lot of rap too, Anderson, Pak is like another person that I really look up to. I just really love the beats in rap music; when I go to a rap show and I don’t see a drummer on stage I just know it’s not going to be as good of a show as it could have been with live drums. But yeah, I’m kind of all over.

ORB: What’s next for y’all? What can fans expect coming up from Flight By Nothing in the near future?

Conner: So we have 7 music videos in the works, one for each song on back for more.We alreadly basically filmed all of it, now we just need to edit them, which, Sam is doing all the editing so it’s kind of at his pace of when we’ll put them out. We just dropped some new merch today too, and we have some shows coming up in September. We’re playing Martian Arts festival in San Marcos, and then we’ll be in Gonzales, Texas on September 28th for a show for Hispanic Heritage Month. That one’s kind of cool because four of us are Hispanic, but we’ve never really gotten that recognition before, so that’s cool. I’ve also never been A&M. Other than that shows are about to start slowing down so we can get into album mode and start working on our next releases. So yeah, fun things on the horizon.

You can check out Flight by Nothing’s new album “Back for More” now on all streaming platforms. Follow Flight by Nothing (@flightbynothing) on Instagram to keep up with the latest from the band, you can also check out their website flightbynothing.com