Your Favorite Color Talk Debut Studio Album, Favourite Stage Instruments And More

From Huntington Beach, CA, Your Favorite Color is a rising indie alt rock band featuring lead vocalist Matt Warren and keyboardist Nicky Neighbors, along with Cameron Pearson on bass, Matthew Fosmire on drums (aka “Foz”) and guitarist David Silveria. They chatted to us about their debut studio album ‘For You’ and more:

Who is in Your Favorite Color, what do they play, and how did you meet?

Matt: Hi. This is Matt. I sing for the band.

David: Hi. My name is David, and I play guitar for the band.

Nicky: This is Nikki. I play Keys.

Cameron: This is Cam, and I play bass.

Foz: I’m Foz and I play the drums. We all met back in high school, I was in a band with David back when we were like 16 and then I joined in to Your Favorite Color later in 2020 when I moved back home.

Matt: We all met in high school through surfing and a collective shared passion for music and an ability for all of us to play instruments together.

When did you guys begin songwriting?

Matt: I think it differs for everybody, but I think we all began songwriting together probably around 2015, while we were in high school.

What is your earliest musical memory?

Or unless you guys wanna do it altogether. So it depends on your direction. Let’s start with Cam and then go, like, backwards, like Cam, Nikki, David, and me. Yeah. Do we okay.

Cameron: My earliest music memory is my dad teaching me the D chord on one of his guitars, and I’ll always remember learning my first chord.

David: My earliest memory is sitting in middle school and tapping with my foot and my hands and figuring out, like, you know, how to play something with your feet and with both your hands differently at the same time, like discovering how to play drums and rhythm. That’s my earliest musical memory.

Foz: My earliest musical memory is seeing my first concert. When I was about 9 or 10 I saw Fleetwood Mac at Staples Center which was such an awesome first concert.

Nicky: I have the first one where I, like, felt some sort of music. I was on vacation with my parents, and we were at a cabin up in the mountains. My dad the whole weekend, we didn’t have TV, was just spinning, like, Steely Dan records the whole time. And I remember specifically, like, feeling a vibe in music for the first time where I’m like, woah. Actually, I like this. You know? So that was kind of it. It wasn’t really related to me playing anything, but I remember vibing out as a as a toddler.

Matt: My earliest memory of music was my parents taking me to a Green Day concert at an amphitheatre in Utah and walking into the very loud concert, and Franz Ferdinand was opening up for Green Day. As we were walking to our seat, Franz Ferdinand was playing, ‘Take Me Out’, and I was just obsessed with the feeling that that gave me.

And then also when Green Day came out, that was insane. I just remember how much he said ‘fuck’, like, in between every song. He just kept saying the word ‘fuck’ which was crazy in Utah because it’s very, like, Mormon culture and a lot of not swearing, things like that. No rated R movies at that age. You know? So to hear someone go out there and just be yelling, like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck on a stage was pretty insane. Definitely nailed into my head. Love that.

Your new single For You is out now. What is the story slash inspiration behind the track?

Matt: ‘For You’ is about needing to exist for somebody and feeling like you would maybe die without them. It’s being needy and being just lost on your own. That’s what that song’s about, needing to exist for somebody.

Nicky: That was written when we took a trip to Joshua Tree and we rented a house, and we wanted there to be nobody else around so we could spend the whole week in there. I think this was around COVID times, but we didn’t want to halt any inspiration. So we had the house for the whole weekend and there was nobody around, so we couldn’t bother anybody if we were loud. We moved furniture out of the house and set up how we wanted. At any point in the day, if we felt like jamming, like, if it’s 3 in the afternoon then we could all jam together, or it could be that we went to go get dinner and then come back at midnight, and the instruments are set up and they’re plugged in.

It was a 72 hour period where we could freely go and play together with no restrictions, and ‘For You’ was made that way.

You have released your debut album with the same name. How did you approach the making of the album?

Matt: We made this album from gathering a collection of demos and singles we had released over the previous 6 years of us being a band and being songwriters. We took the very best songs, revamped them in my home studio to the best of our ability, and then we brought them to our producer, Stefan Macarowich, who then elevated the tracks, emotion, and production quality tenfold.

Where did you record the album, and who produced it?

Matt: We recorded the album at a studio called The Resort in Tustin, California. Our producer is, Stefan Macarowich, and he is a wizard.

This single is accompanied by an official music video. What was the thought process behind the video, and who directed it?

Matt: The video concept was an extension vibe wise and visually of our album art, of a black and white grainy film like picture of a hand. We wanted to capture that black and

white dream space type of feeling while also capturing the live energy of the song, a very rocky song, which is why we had the band playing in the music video as well with all of our instruments and whatnot. My girlfriend actually was the one dancing as kind of like a ballet freestyle type dancing in the video. And she was kind of the symbol of a woman, or the relationships and the romanticism scattered throughout the album. She’s the one we are trying to exist for in the video per se. It was directed by Noah Zielinski and Kellan Watts and starring Sophia Silveria.

Do you have any interesting, funny, or memorable stories from a recording session?

Matt: During the recording of ‘Medicine’, we were exploring making a didgeridoo instrument sound with my own voice and it’s a very strange sound. Sounds like out of the movie Dune when all the guys are hovering up in the sky, and we were, like, recording the song. So next thing we know, all the guys turn around, and I’m on all fours leaning over, into a microphone and recording me doing that into the song ‘Medicine’. Wait. Is that in the song? I think we took it out, but who knows?

David: It’s in there, but it’s so low in the mix. I think it was so funny that we left it in, but I think it’s super low. You can’t even hear it.

Nicky: Our producer got a kick out of putting stuff really tucked into the mixes. Like, we caught him one time after a studio session there was a karate studio close by, and they were doing a class. Everyone’s doing the chants and stuff. We caught him one time holding his phone up to take a voice memo of it, and he snuck a little sample into a song.

Matt: And then he put the karate kids into ‘Boy Toy’.

Nicky: So he’s entertaining himself while we’re focusing so hard trying to make an album and where he’s just, like, laughing to himself. It was so funny.

What two things do you hope to achieve once you left the stage?

Matt: When I think when we step off the stage we want people to be left with something that they won’t forget and to be very unexpectedly surprised by an opening band or, like, by a band they have not seen live before. But surprised in the best way possible and to exceed any sort of expectation and to walk away thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I felt so alive during that’.

Ultimately, we wanted to just feel like one really big party where we all jump and go insane and we scream and we yell, but we also cry and we have moments, like, just the whole thing. We want to just span the whole range of human emotions all the most intense high energy way possible that no one will ever forget.

Foz: Playing as best as I can and being in the moment enjoying every second of playing.

Did you use any particular instruments, microphones, recording equipment to help you get a particular sound slash tone for your record?

Matt: When we were recording ‘Stained’, there was a moment when David was playing guitar on the pre-chorus of that song, and we couldn’t find a whammy bar for his guitar. So instead, we put a screwdriver in it. And as David was playing certain notes, I would shake the screwdriver to get that super wobbly crazy ricochet of a gun bullet sound, in the pre-chorus of ‘Stained’.

Nicky: We had a lot of the electronic moments in the album. We got the idea down on just our home computers and digital synths, but it was really cool going in the studio because we got our hands on an old Juno 106, which is an analogue synth that you actually have to tune. So we were able to combine electronic parts that are supposed to be really computerized and perfect with analogue gear and it just makes it sound like it has more of a feeling and it’s more real. We also played with a bit of modular synthesizers when we wanted parts to feel a little more experimental. I’m stepping away from the perfect grid of the song, and you can plug in a piece of old gear and make a weird sound with it.

There was this really sort of, like, cheesy keyboard that’s called a ESQ1, but it’s not the kinda keyboard where you sit down and you make your own sound and you dial it in. It’s sort of this funny one where it has these sound cartridges, and every sound on it is, like, straight out of the 80s. Some of them are the goofiest sounds you’ll ever hear, but, sometimes you can mess with them and stuff. So, yeah, this we play this one really weird keyboard called it ESQ1 and it gave us some really funny tones, but they somehow worked really well too.

Do you have any favourite stage instruments, effects, pedals, microphones, etc?

Cameron: Tuner.

Nicky: My MS 20 keyboard, which I also have to tune. So tuner.

David: My stand that holds my guitars. Yeah. That’s a that’s a good piece of equipment.

Matt: I really love my SCV7 microphone.

Where is your hometown, and could you please describe it in 5 words?

Whole band: We are from Huntington Beach. Irishman, Killarney’s, Hurricanes, Sharkeez, Pen… those are local bars we like to go to!

Which of the tracks on the album hear you at your a happiest, angriest, and most reflective?

Matt: Our most reflective is ‘Forget The Summer’. Our angriest is ‘Stained’, and happiest is ‘Back To The Bottom’.

How do you look after your voices?

Matt: I’m the only one who really sings in the band but lots of sleep, lots of water, and good vocal warm ups, like proper vocal warm ups with proper technique that a coach helps me with.

There’s also this little water bottle mechanism I bring around with me everywhere called the DoctorVox. It looks like it’s blowing air through a straw into water to make the water bubble. That’s a pre-warm up I do before my warm up that really just wakes up the vocal cords, gets the blood flow going on, and just wakes up the voice before I even start singing. It also helps with vocal strengthening too. So if you do that all the time, proper warm up, get tons of sleep, tons of water before a show, you’re gonna be good to go.

You’re given the opportunity to write a score for a film adaptation of a novel that you enjoy. What novel is it and why?

Matt: I would choose Ender’s Game because we love 80s synthesizers, and that is like a sci fi type of movie. If not Ender’s Game, then, like, Blade Runner or something.

David: Novel? Mine would be, like, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. There’s so many of them. You know? So many different moods. Each book can have a different vibe.

Who designed/created the art the album artwork?

Matt: It was a collaborative effort between one of our awesome photographers named Salma Bustos. She took a photo of my girlfriend’s hand, Sofia. We were doing lots of different photos with the hand and then after we found the perfect photo, we went back and forth trying to find that perfect film grain, black and white feel. Something that’s kind of a trip on the mind to look at. Like, a hand is very weird to look at. But, yeah, it was a collaborative effort between Salma, Sofia, and I to make that artwork come to life. But beforehand we were on Pinterest with the band looking up lots of different stuff and putting our name and our box or colored block logos on lots of different stuff. And we did kinda find something similar to a hand. So we did go try to recreate that and made it our own.

Who are some of your musical influences? Do you have any recommendations?

Matt: Growing up I listened to The Strokes, Phoenix, The Killers, Cage the Elephant, and Young the Giant along with other indie bands. Nowadays, I’m falling more into 80s bands like The Cure, The Smiths, even 90s bands like Oasis.

Nicky: The Cure has always been a big one and then, LCD Soundsystem, probably.

David: My musical influences are Deftones and Interpol.

Cameron: I have a lot of bands I’m inspired by a lot of 80s/90s music and early 2000s.

Foz: Queens of the Stone Age, Deftones, The Killers, Turnstile.

Matt: We all love The Cure, Psychedelic Furs, Tears for Fears, Oasis.

Matt: I would recommend going and listening to Tomcbumpz. I swear to God, it’s a vibe.

Nicky: We’re all into Fontaines DC.

Do you have any live dates planned for UK/Europe in 2024/2025?

Matt: Nothing’s planned, but we want to, of course. We will be back!

Was this a difficult album to write?

Matt: I’d answer collectively for all of us: yes and no. It really was a collection of 6 years of work and discovering ourselves, which was hard work, and not giving up was hard work. There are songs from back in high school and songs that we wrote right before the album was recorded. Some songs came out really easily. The whole album is just like the first collection of Your Favorite Color. So, I would say that, yeah, it was difficult to get here. We had to stay committed to this band. We all have had to make a lot of sacrifices to work and personal lives to make this come to life and make Your Favorite Color come to life and to not give up being a band. We did not give up, and we kept writing music. And we met Stefan and we met George Prajin and we’re just lighting the fire now. So, yeah, it was it was difficult, but it was good, and it was awesome.

“What color do we see when we think of the album”?

· “Jumping really high” – Matt

· “Yours” – David (he is basically saying his favourite memory or feeling or experience is the same as yours)

· “Dancing with everyone” – Nicky

· “Galaga” – Cam (this is an arcade game)

What makes Your Favorite Color happy, and what makes you unhappy?

Cameron: I feel like we kinda all feel like this, but I think that the weather has a big impact on my emotions. Not to say that when it’s raining, I get sad, because sometimes I get happy when it’s raining, but I also get happy when it’s, like, really nice and sunny and good breeze out there. That’s something that, coming from Southern California, you definitely have emotions about the weather.

Matt: That can go for all of us for sure. Weather has a lot of play. In N Out makes us happy. Surfing makes us happy. The ocean makes us happy. Unhappy is traffic. And how expensive everything is.

David: And stubbing my toe.

Matt: Traffic and the expensive gas that we’re using to sit in that traffic.