Facts About Funerals

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Featuring former and current members of New West Motels, Swell (Beggar’s Banquet/Badman Recording), Sera Cahoone (Sub Pop), The Kissers and Smile Brigade (Beep Repaired).
“Bittersweet, melancholic pop, with a dark, old-world undercurrent...”
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FACTS ABOUT FUNERALS was born from the ashes of tragedy. While fronting the band New West Motels, singer/songwriter Rob Sharp lost his sister (to cancer) and both his parents (to a car crash) in a period of two months. The music stopped.
Rob unplugged his guitars and took a leave of absence to deal with the emotional and physical realities of such loss. But moving back to his childhood home on the west coast of Puget Sound (to deal with various legal and estate issues) slowly forced him to realize music might be the only salve available to him.
Surrounding himself with the sounds of Nick Drake, the Pernice Brothers, Reindeer Section, Supertramp (everyone has their vices), Sparklehorse, and other various vinyl records blaring over a '50s Telefunken stereo console, through all hours of the night, new songs started stirring inside him.
The band was rebirthed, with Rob relocating back to Seattle. The new songs attracted a stellar cast of supporting characters, with only guitarist Max Keene remaining from the former lineup. Doran Bastin and Mat Mathews (longtime rhythm section for the bands Hello From Waveland and Swell) joined in, followed by piano player Pete Colclasure formerly of folk rockers The Kissers, and eventually Seattle pedal-steel phenom Jay Kardong (Sera Cahoone, Grand Archives, among others) would join in, after being asked to add his unique sound to a couple of their recorded cuts.
In December of 2006, the core of the band flew to Merseyside, England, to track an album at APE Studios, in Little Neston, overlooking North Wales. They lived and recorded at the studio, 'round the clock, 8 days straight, melding the core of a work to be titled "Love Songs & Funeral Homes" (a title taken from the Daniel Johnston bio-pic "The Devil & Daniel Johnston", when a fan asks Daniel what his songs are about and he answers "love songs and funeral homes"). Pianos, a Mellotron, ‘50s Vox and Fender amps, tape delays and plate reverbs, Helios and Neumann mixing boards used once by The Who and Supertramp, all got twiddled and tinkered with until the boys were finally sated.
What was clear when they got back to the states, however, was that the light-hearted pop inflections of the New West Motels sound was glaringlly absent (long-time fan Gary Miller of Seattle Power Pop continued to write about the band even though he bemoaned the fact that they weren't really a pop band anymore). Indeed, it was clear that this was definitely a new band. A new band in need of a new name.
Anyone who writes knows the age-old adage: “if you want your words to ring true, write what you know best.” Truth is often simple like that. At an early show at Emo’s in Austin, the band shacked up in a little farmhouse owned by Rob’s in-laws, where his 91 year-old grandmother just happened to keep stacks of information about death and dying, and obituaries with the names of people she knew circled. Lying on the floor amidst the mess was the official Texas pamphlet— “Facts About Funerals”. Everyone loved it, especially Rob, hearing in his mind that same timeless adage: “write what you know best.” They had found their name.
"Love Songs & Funeral Homes" comes out August 5th, 2008, on San Francisco boutique label Evangeline Records. Mixed by Tim Mooney (of American Music Club and Sun Kil Moon).
PRESS/PR: Robert Vickers/Proxy Media [email protected] (212).674.3541
BOOKING: Rob Dube/Paper Scissors (206).427.2552