Robert McFall of Axofire

I would have to say that classic music actually had a bigger influence then just about anything else. I mean I do love metal and hard rock and I am into some of the old school bands like Iron Maiden and Queensryche to name a few, but my roots started in classical music.
I started playing music at the age of 7 while living in England. My teacher, Mr. Johnson; bought the whole class plastic recorders and he started teaching us how to read and play. The basic songs like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Green sleeves” are rockers when your 7.
There was a long evolution to the guitar. When I saw the movie “Fiddler on the roof” I started begging my parents for a violin. We moved from Woodbridge England to South Carolina in 1977 and the school offered violin as a subject so I signed up for the class knowing that my folks would then get me a violin. I kept telling my mom that the first song I was going to play was the theme to “Fiddler on the roof” So that afternoon after school my mom and dad took me to a local music store and bought me a violin and when I got home I opened up the case and played the first 30 seconds or so of the song. My mom and dad were floored, but it felt very natural to me. That’s when I realized I could play by ear.
I use to read music for the violin. When we moved to Tucson Arizona I joined the orchestra at Tucson high school and worked my way up to second string second chair. Actually that made be the 4th best player and it was at that time I was invited to play with the Tucson Philharmonic. But when I moved to Panama City Florida in 1984 the classical music scene was really non-existence so I had to find other means to play music. I was not into bluegrass at the time but had a fascination with the banjo so I got one and started to learn how to play it. Violin is the only instrument I ever sight read with, all the others are by ear.
The Banjo is a tuff instrument to get down. I had a problem “rolling” the right hand. So I decided to try my luck at the bass guitar for a while. But as in most musicians’ lives cash becomes an issue really fast so I decided to get a job at a music store. It was actually pretty cool because the store was right across the street from my high school. The guy let me come in after school and do all kinds of stuff from tuning guitars to delivering pianos but instead of cash he paid me in equipment. That’s how I got my first bass and bass amp. I think it was a vintage fender 12. When I look back I think the 12 stood for watts because the amp would distort on 2.
At the time I had started to listen to more American rock bands like kiss and Van Halen. And then I discovered Ac/Dc and I was hooked! I would play chords on my bass and they would distort, sounding like a regular guitar I had been playing some country and was even in a country band for all of 6 months but that about killed me. I went over to a friend’s house and he had a Bentley series 10 guitar and a small gorilla amp. I asked him if I could try it and that’s all it took. I went to work the next day and got a Westone and a crate amp and worked the summer to pay them off.
I guess the rest is history....
The genre that AxoFire lays in is very small on the local level but internationally we do very well with selling our music. We have sold some of it to gaming companies as well as individuals. We have even done commercials for online sites like phoenix radio to name a few. We even have won some contest that we have entered online. We did a song call “Katrina” that placed first in “the little engine that could contest”. It was a children’s song written for my little girl. We have a ton of little side projects that we do that cover just about every style you can think of. We have the ability to branch out and experiment with all kinds of different music, but my true love is the hard rock instrumentals that we do.
Right now we are working on our live show format. Writing all original stuff and getting it polished takes a lot longer to do then cover tunes, but the rewards are nicer. I think it’s really cool to have someone come up to us and tell us they really enjoy our material. I personally get a lot of satisfaction out of that because there is a lot of time and heart that goes into the songs. I prefer people to like my playing because it’s me; then coming up to me and saying how well I copied so and so guitarist. That’s not my job as a musician. We do what we do and we enjoy it very much. We know that not every body is going to like it and that’s fine with us. As I said, we do what we do.
You can also visit me at SoundClick.com
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