Music Q&A with Fisher Mays of Wish Kit
Photo courtesy of Wish Kit
This Friday, January 28th, North Texan indie rock band, Wish Kit, will release their debut EP, Hot Gold! Ahead of the release, vocalist and guitarist, Fisher Mays, took some time to answer questions about the EP, what musician he would interview if he could, how he keeps it posi, and more!
Congratulations on the release of Hot Gold! What does the EP mean to you?
Thank you! To us the EP feels a little bit like growing up. We’ve all been playing in emo and punk bands for a long time now and this was our first time really trying to write something more straight forward, although who knows how well we actually accomplished that haha.
How did the pandemic affect the making and creative process of the EP, if it did at all?
We actually live together, so we started this band kind of as a way to cure quarantine boredom. It gave us the ability to really just focus on the songwriting aspect of it all instead of all of the extra noise that comes with being in a band. So I guess if anything the pandemic is what sparked this all in the first place for us.
When did you realize you wanted to create music?
I was a pretty unremarkable kid growing up, as I wasn’t necessarily smart or athletic and at that age those were kind of your only options. My dad bought me a Clash CD when I was 10, and from there I got into a bunch of other punk adjacent bands which gave me a real “wow, sports and school aren’t my only opportunities to have something to be good at” moment, and from there I was kind of hooked and knew what my passion was.
Who has been your favorite artist or band to see live?
I really love live music, and I have been very lucky to see a lot of my favorite bands like Superchunk, Guided By Voices, The Lemonheads, etc and was lucky to grow up in a scene where I got to see a lot of DIY shows and up and coming bands, but probably my favorite live music experience of all time was this time our guitar player Riley and I saw a Creed cover band at a local brewery where one of the guitar players was wearing bell bottoms and the singer was this old dude wearing a Scott Stapp wig and an affliction shirt who almost passed out from the heat and kept dumping water on himself and made the whole crowd chant Creed like five different times. It ruled.
If you had a chance to interview any of your musical heroes, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
Oh that’s a hard one... alive, probably Ryan Olcott of 12 Rods. That is someone who was very unfairly chewed up and spat out by the music industry and who I think deserves far more attention for their work, I would love to hear more on the stories he has to tell. As far as those no longer with us, probably Wiz from Mega City Four who tragically passed in 2006. That is someone who is criminally under appreciated for his influence and due to the deterioration of physical media like VHS, a lot of the interviews with him are either very poor quality or incomplete.
We all have our days where it may not be going as well as we’d like. People deal with their worst days in different ways. What helps you get through the bad days? How do you stay positive?
My method is always to just not dwell on stuff too hard. Everything can look bleak if you think on it too much because then you’re blocking out the positives to the situation and are not thinking clearly. So I just keep moving and everything will work out properly in the end, or I’ll die and at that point what is there to worry about.
Thank you for taking the time for this Q&A. Any last words or final message for the readers?
Thank you for the questions! Hope everyone is having a good start to the year and thanks for checking out the EP.