PCM's Kristyn spent some time chatting with Freddy Wexler from the band Freddy and the Dials. Freddy shared insight about how the band got their start to where they are headed in the future. Read on to enter Freddy's world...

KC: So how are finals going?

F: They're going well, ya know. I really tried to get a lot of stuff done early because I've had a lot of writing recently. I've had a lot of writing sessions and it's extremely hard to balance with school so I tried to get a lot of this stuff done awhile ago and now I have only two left. But one, surprisingly is in photography which I took as an easy 'A' and it's definitely the hardest class I've ever taken. You know the thing is, the way I've been able to manage school is I'm an English major and I can write all my papers and stuff from the road, in the studio - it doesn't matter, I just email them in. In photography, you have to be in the dark room and it takes so long.

KC: And they're not doing digital photography with you?

F: nope - film.

KC: oh wow well that's pretty cool though, because most of them have switched over to digital now - we got a choice when I was in school. We could learn the darkroom or go digital.

F: Right. Here if you want to do digital you have to do the basics first

KC: That's good - I think it should be a requirement anyway.

F: Yea. I've actually grown to really like it - it's really fun but it's taxing. But it'll all be over on Friday.

KC: chuckle Well that's good. Are you doing anything to celebrate?

F: Well, it's my best friend's birthday on Saturday, so we'll probably have a little soiree.

KC: Sounds like fun. Okay, let me jump into some questions I have for you . . . Can you tell our readers a little history behind Freddy and the Dials, like how did you get your start and where are you guys from originally?

F: Sure. I'm Freddy and I'm from New York City and basically, I started writing - I've been a musician my whole life. I started writing, really writing, when I was 16-17. When I was a freshman in college, I made a demo and I sent it to this site called PureVolume.com

KC: OK

F: And they featured it and it's actually a really fun story, and I won't go into why they featured it, but anyway - they did. And it became, miraculously, the number one downloaded thing or played band on the site for about a month. It was like Freddy (the Dials came later) and then Fall Out Boy and then Panic At The Disco and it was the craziest thing. So between that and a couple sold out shows based on that I found myself in an amazing situation with all these different labels that wanted to sign me. I ended up going with Virgin and just as I was about to finish my album, Virgin Records and Capitol Record merged, which was really bad for any new artist because they couldn't finish records. Fortunately, Jason Flom who was head of the label, was really good to me and let me leave with my masters for free. So I found myself having this amazing record with everyone from Maroon Five, Good Charlotte to Goldfinger, Buck Cherry to all these producers - everybody played on it. There's a lot of support in the music community for the music and I owned it and I was kinda like, what do I do? So I just went to different music clubs, played different bands and at one, it was Eileen's Grocery I think, which is a venue in New York City, I met the Dials which was just four guys who had really just done the music. We started playing and became a band. We recorded a bunch of stuff and so it's called Freddy and the Dials . . . maybe that'll be one of your questions but that's how we met I was signed and it was sort of in this interim period that was really just a blessing in disguise. That we were able to make this record with amazing producers and amazing people to work with. And I came out owning it, and I met these guys and we all started playing it together. It was really the first time I'd heard it played live, like with a band. I'd been in the studio for like 8 months and . . . I don't know if that answered your question.

KC: No, it did . . . are you on Indie Label now or are you record label shopping now?

F: No I am - I'm not on a label. It's been kind of amazing. What happened was, when I left Virgin, I met these guys and started playing. In the past . . . 2 or 2 ½ months , just having leaked a couple songs like on MySpace, the reaction was amazing. Like on my MySpace page like jumped from I think 350,000 plays to over 1.6 million.

KC: Wow - do you maintain your own MySpace page?

F: Yes - . . . all fan mail. I really do - or we all do, but I kind of make sure it happens cuz it's important, ya know?

KC: Oh definitely. Well it makes people feel better so they know it's not a robot answering their emails.

F: No we totally answer. We really appreciate fans and the MySpace crowd, especially a lot of the ones in England, they have been amazing in promoting the band and we totally appreciate that stuff and try to give stuff away. So that happened with MySpace. Whoopi Goldberg heard the story about how Ivy League Kid Turned Rock Star - huge deal with Virgin Records and that falls apart and he decides to still do it on his own and she loves it so she has us on her show. Then after that, SIRIUS radio, actually Hits1, which is their Top40 channel heard about us and they started breaking one of our songs called "Something About that Girl", and that's the latest thing that's been happening. So all of that is rolling along by itself. A lot of people that the support is coming from, also like the GAP is playing one of our songs across the country and so is Old Navy and we're talking to Urban Outfitters about doing something with them, so its like a lot of these people are into the idea of a pop band breaking independently of a label - rock bands to that all the time,but there's really no history of a pop band can truly break on their own other than like Lisa Loeb who goes through a movie and then ultimately signs a deal, so as a really long round about way of answering your question, right now we are unsigned but kind of by choice. Because the support we are getting as an unsigned band is amazing. That being said, the new year is coming up and I think we'll definately explore the interest from within the label community that we've been getting and, if the fit is right then probably do that.

KC: Ya know, you guys don't seem to be doing too bad right now, so . . .

F: Yea so either way. I just really want to get the music out to as many people as possible. I was saying to a friend - another band - All I really want is a chance to let people say if they like this music or not. I genuinely believe the music is universal and uplifting and whatever, but that's what I really want. Whoever can make that happen, no make us sell records that make us money, but just make it so people can hear it. There's only so much we can do ourselves through MySpace or whatever, but I just want people to "oh yea, I've heard that band and they suck" or "yea I've heard that band and they're great". I just want people to hear it.

KC: Right. I noticed a lot of your songs have a like - I almost want to say an 80s pop vibe, kind of - at least that's my opinion.

F: Yea, they are definitely different. I would say its more of a British, like a 60s British thing than 80s, because when I'm thinking 80s, I'm thinking more like Duran Duran and certain bands that I absolutely love, but I have more . . well first of all you have the album. So I'm trying to - these people are going to probably looking at the EP - it's a little confusing. It's a little of a centi groove. But we've released an EP - like a five song kind of sampler on ITunes. Compared to what we were doing which was exclusively digital EP so we didn't have anything - Apex Exposure didn't have anything to send to you except the hard copy. So I told them they could send you the album which is really kind of crazy. You're the only person probably in the world other than me and my band who has the album - not even any labels, so whatever the people who read this are going to hear are just the songs that are on ITunes. That, they are gonna bite on and buy the album. And of those songs, yes I think there is definitely a session called "Perfect Wall" or I should say "Free Rabbit" which was the song that originally got me signed. It was inspired by kind of a Motown Shuffle., like "You Can't Hurry Love" it's kind of like its too far . . . don't quote me on those numbers, I might be wrong and that would be embarrassing. It's a shuffle and it's like Motown. There's another song called "Perfect Wall" that's also like British Invasion. To me it's more the influence - I don't care. I love the 80s. If you hear an 80s influence that's fine. That's what I would say.

KC: No I can agree, I can see that. I think 80s if the first thing that popped in my head. I was kinda, "oh look, I kind of bounce around to this", ya know.

F: Right and ya know that's totally funny. That's exactly what I wanted to do. I love the sound of music and its funny because I write for different artists, I write different stuff for myself and the friends that know that I can do that are like, "come on why aren't you do more stuff like that" and its almost like they think that's cooler. To me it's exactly what I wanted to do with this record - make you bounce around, tap your foot, kind of smile. It's funny, you know, as amazing as it was being 19 years old and getting a pretty crazy record deal, moving to LA, the works . . it was very isolating process because I didn't have a band. It was just me. So as cool as it was to go to the Grammy's and sit next to SteveO, if you're by yourself and there's no one to share it with . . . or even worse, when you're down because your whoever doesn't like that vocal change or whatever - there's no one to share that with sucks. So the actual process of making the record in the beginning was like a little depressing. So I finally decided then and there that I wanted to try to make it really happy and it makes you happy. So that's what happened. To me, when I think of tapping my foot, I think more like Motown/British Invasion, but if its 80s for you then its 80s. There is one song that we recorded, it's called "Too Much" and that's total 80s so you should hear that.


KC: okay - let's hear a little bit of the story behind your official site.

F: The thing with the site was, I was an intern before I started trying to become a rock star and I was an intern for Sony Music. I interned there. My job there was in A&R, particularly the online A&R. I noticed a lot of the other scouts would spend time on the same sites every day and I remember one day asking this girl, Liz,' that band must be really great, you're always checking them out'. She said 'no, it's just a fun website'. So I realized if I ever had made it, I better have a cool website. So when I finally quit my job and wanted to do it myself, I found this guy named Dante, who's this Italian creative wizard that one of my engineers recommended and I told him that I had an idea for . . (aside: I'm sorry I can not help you) my roommate just lost his midterm. . . . anyway so I told him I wanted to do something cool so we were just brainstorming and New York, oh it's not NY City, anyway it was first about NY City because NY is about really who I am and what I'm about. So we go the idea of a virtual or video game walking around where you can control me. and after we looked at the album and there's so much weird stuff that was really perfect, sometimes I hear little noises, sometimes I see things when there is nothing there. And of course as I close my eyes and see a silver screen and moving picture of me, I close my ears of hear a symphony and I think they're playing for me. it's all about the inner workings of my mind and so we decided to make a site where it's like you're walking around in my mind, where there's flying fish and aliens and bathtubs and windmills and balloons and I don't know, various stuff. And so that's kind of how the site started.

KC: So how did the videos tie in - you click the billboards and the videos come up.

F: Are you saying when were those videos made or how they fit or?

KC: yea like how do they tie in to everything?

F: I guess they do in the fact that they don't. How much of a bullsh*t answer is that? (chuckling) The video, actually is a really funny story, we were gonna make a really low budget Indie music video, and it was really ambitious. We were trying to shoot in 22 locations in 2 days. Obviously we weren't people who had made a video. It didn't work. And we were left with a bunch of great footage, but no story. So we sat around for weeks, trying to edit stuff together to see what could we do, and we ended up deciding to make an ETK or a string ETK that was kind of a day in the life of Freddy making this EP. So that's what the video really is. It's a true story that happened but it sort of tied together with music video minettes. So the things are like transitional parts of music videos are five to seven seconds segments of what a music video could look like for that song, but it's really just a trippy take on a day in the life of Freddy making this EP. It is based on a true story when this one time I broke a keyboard, my keyboard broke down in the studio, and I had not idea who . . I needed to get the same exact keyboard and it was so heavy and I couldn't fit it in a cab and I'm thinking who's car can I borrow. Nobody I knew was home, everyone was at college; my parents weren't home. So I called my dad's heart doctor, his cardiologist and asked, hey, do you think I can borrow your car? And he's like, oh 'who is this?' And I'm like, 'this if Freddy, you know, Freddy Wexler'. And he's like, 'how are you?' 'Everything's good, I was just, umm have a little bit of a problem. I have this keyboard and . . . ' anyway, he let me borrow his car. It's a brand new car and I'm driving, and I know it sounds so nervy, but like I was in a desperate situation. So I'm driving the car and I swear I did not get into an accident, this is really what happened! I'm in the meat packing district and there's like a wind tunnel on 13th or 14th and 9th - I don't remember, and I open the door and a gust of wind, must have been 40 miles and hour, just takes the door off! Not l off but bent the door back, you could tell it was broken. I'm like 'Holy Shit!' and it was just crazy. Incidentally, I'm with Dante who did the website, and did the video and we were doing a photo shoot and he's like, 'come on, let's go inside' and I just looked at him frozen and I was like - 'get back in the car - we need to find a Jeep dealership' or a Mercedes dealership or whatever kind of car it was, I don't remember. But, I don't know - so that's what it was based on. I ended up fixing the car so no one knew, but I did tell him. (KC: well they do now!) yea he was like, dude you could have told me.

KC: So the whole ihatefreddy.com - is that a part of the true story, too?

F: Not really, a lot of my humor is self deprecating, tongue in cheek, whatever, and I know that I love pop music. I love music that makes you smile, makes you laugh, whatever. And a lot of people kind of put that music down. Although when you listen to this album it's definitely, I think it has a depth to it and not really just associated with pop music. But third, I like the idea of embracing people who are gonna hate me and the band and pop music. I built the site for them - they can just tell me how they feel. And they can - cuz I think it's really funny. I think it's funny when people spend their time doing that. People who like it can go to one of 10 freddy sites and people who don't can go to ihatefreddy or f**kfreddy, there's a bunch of ones that I made that are really funny that actually fans go to and just make up story because they think its funny, too.

KC: It is. It's hysterical! It's great especially for press and getting your name out there. I was really intrigued by everything - I just kept clicking on this and that, going 'oh wow, look at all this stuff!'

F: Totally, and you know it's so ridiculous how many sites we've made and just had fun with. Like I was just telling you about the doctor just now and in the video the doctor's name is Doctor Pettigrul, Leon Pettigrul and I think it's about toilet plungers if you unscramble the word, so we have a site called plungerart.com, we have a site called leonpettigrul.com which is in fact devoted to the doctor in the video. We have the dailyfreddy.com which is the daily news; we have freddyspace.com which is like a MySpace; we have freddyteddy.com which is just a joke about illegally transporting drugs through Teddy Bears - we don't say "drugs" we say "contraband". We have all these sites. The crazy thing is if you watch the video, if you go to, ideally you go to freddyandthedials.com and look on the billboard, but if you want to top that you go to ashowcalledfreddy.com - if you go to that it brings you to the video right away. And as you watch, you can click on things and it ends up bringing you to those micro sites I just described.

KC: I found the whole Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles . . .

F: all sorts of crazy things.

KC: So do you have any tour plans coming up or anything?

F: Ya know, we just got finished doing a bunch of shows, we did a big show on CMJ on Saturday night, CMJ in New York which was great. We are in the process of putting some dates together now, it's just a bunch of promotion stuff that we're doing, first, it's kind of dead this month. Just everything, you know. People, most of the fan base we have is either going on break or having finals. But it's a good time we have to strategize for the new year. We're putting dates together and they should be posted on our site in the next month or so. We're also putting together a radio campaign of different places we're going to go and do radio shows starting early 2008.

KC: Definitely if you're in the Philly area we want to come check you out.

F: That'd be great.

KC: So back to what we were saying about saving lives with plungers, heroic actions with the doctor . . . just for fun, who is your favorite super hero?

F: My favorite super hero? Oh, man. Let me think for a minute . . . Does it have to be a super hero or can it be a fictional character?

KC: A fictional character will work.

F: Because I'm thinking cartoons and stuff - I'm not like a fan . . I wouldn't say Batman, I would say either Robin Hood or I like some Tom and Jerry, which one's the mouse, Tom?

KC: No, Jerry.

F: Jerry's the mouse? Oh sh*t, definitely Jerry - Robin Hood and Jerry.

KC: Why?

F: Jerry I just like because I've always loved that cartoon, it always makes me happy no matter what. He's like a very clever dude - he's very clever, he's always outsmarting people, or cats. Robin Hood I like, obviously, he's the guy for the common man.

KC: Steal from the rich and give to the poor.

F: Yes. And besides that and it's a cheesy reason for choosing him. He's always, in every portrayal of Robin Hood, Robin Hood is always like an A-Typical hero. He's very charming and he always has the prettiest, like in the cartoon he always had the prettiest fox, not slang for a woman but an actual fox. I always liked it. And there's a snake in the cartoon of Robin Hood.

KC: In the Disney one . . .

F: I think the one you see on TV, it probably is the Disney one. The snake looks exactly like a friend of mine, it's so weird! Seriously, when I see this friend it's like, 'oh my god, it's the snake from Robin Hood'.

KC: I can't even remember the name of that character. I do know what you're talking about though.

F: Yea, it's a very distinct look.

KC: So can you tell our readers any interesting tidbits about Freddy and the Dials that we may not already know?

F: Interesting tidbits? Well, there's the Kiyanu who is our lead guitarist. He toured with, he was Gwen Stefani's main touring guitarist for awhile. Kind of cool.

KC: Definitely.

F: He's really, really amazing. Random things . . . I don't know - help me.

KC: Let's see - has there been any crazy fan experiences or anything like that? Anybody have any weird habits?

F. What's the age group of this magazine?

KC: We run anywhere from the teenage all the way up to adults, so it's everything in the spectrum.

F: You tell me if this is inappropriate or not - I'll just tell you a funny story.

KC: Okay - I'll make a determination when I'm transcribing.

F: if you go to MySpace page, there is a photo which has been banned. In front is a table with a fish on it, a dead fish. Instead of a fish, I've used three half naked webgirls. So we decided to do a photo shoot at a place in the city, in New York City - a place called Big Daddy's Diner. It's a really cool hip place, the place is colorful and lot's of famous black and white 8x10's on wall. The photographer at the time the true New Yorker or New Jerseyer or what ever the noun part of that is, he looked over at the waitresses and it was just us there and he was like, 'hey you guys want to be in the photo?' and they said 'sure'. And the was like, ' how do you feel about taking off your clothes?' and we immediately, the band none of us like them-they're sleazy, I don't want to say sleazy because if the guy reads this, it'll make him feel like I thought it was sleazy, but anyway. We're like, 'no, no we were just kidding!' and before we can say that they were basically naked!

KC: Oh My God!

F: So this is New York City at like a diner that everybody goes to! They were just like, so do we get the CD playing? And these were the . . .

KC: Waitresses, right?

F: Waitresses, just random waitresses at the place.

KC: Sounds like they had a little freaky side, don't they?

F: Absolutely! It was incredible. So we have that photo and whoever reads this will appreciate that and whoever doesn't will just not understand why we have that photo.

KC: Very True. So my final question is what can we expect in the future from you guys?

F: Well, besides us taking over the world, you can hopefully expect an album out in 2008 - we'll definitely have an album out in 2008 and just hopefully some great, uplifting songs, cool songs. You can't expect another band that sounds unlike anything you've ever heard in your entire life.

KC: I'll be sure to quote you on that one. Is there any final message or comment you'd like to make?

F: Let me say I'm absolutely positively responsible on MySpace, I guess the message we do - we love our fans and we hope people will check us out and think we offer a lot of really cool content to keep interested and more than just songs. We hope people will take the time to look at it.

KC: I definitely did and I hope a lot of people will follow along with that. I'll definitely add some links to the interview coverage.

F; That would be great. I say British Invasion/60's Pop.

KC: Okay

F: okay - where are you from originally?

KC: Delaware

F: Awesome

KC: I'll send you a message when this goes live, bear with me we're really backed up these days so I'll get it up as soon as possible

F: I really appreciate it, I 'm sorry I was kind of all over the place.

KC: It was great. Thank you so much for talking to us.

F: okay, take it easy - thanks Kristyn.

KC: you're welcome, bye bye.

For more information about this truly unique band check out the following websites:
Myspace - - FreddyandtheDials.com - - Ashowcalledfreddy.com - - leonpettigrul.com
plungerart.com - - ihatefreddy.com - - freddyteddy.com