Fist Fight in the Parking Lot

Interview with Fist Fight in the Parking Lot

February 22, 2016

Describe your band, telling a little about it. 

We’re a hard rock band who dabbles in the occult and Papa Johns.

What are your names? / Who plays what?

Abby Krizner- Guitar and Vocals

Jason Sichi - Guitar 

Johnnie Metal - Bass

Chris Ru-dogg Ruane - Drums

Have members played with any other bands?

Jason, Johnnie, and Chris played together for over ten years in Mojo Filter and Abby played with The Motorpsychos for six years. Both bands had a great relationship over the years and even did a Southern tour together. We were all friends by the time we had a chance to put Fist Fight in the Parking Lot together.

Do you write your own music or perform covers?  Has it always been this way? 

We’ve always written our own music and do very few covers.

What year did the band form?  2009

Where is bands home?  Most of the band is from Pittsburgh but we rehearse and record at The Leaning Studio of Greene in Sarver, PA.

What's your style or genre?  The kind where whiskey makes everyone sound better.

What inspires your music? Drugs, serial killers, regrettable judgment, rodeo clowns. 

How often do you rehearse?  

Roughly once a week.

What gear do you guys use?  Abby uses an Orange Rockerverb 100 and her favorite guitar to play live is her ’57 Goldtop Les Paul Custom. Jason uses Marshall amps, and any guitar with a Humbucker. Johnnie uses Rickenbacker and Fender Basses, with Orange amps. Chris uses Pearl Drums, and Zildjian Cymbals

Do you utilize a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that?  We’ve never used a booking agency. We’re content with picking and choosing our own shows so having a booking agency come in and do it for us has never made sense financially. 

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that?   We’ve worked with Music Collectives in the past, which is less of a label and more of a community of bands working together to push each other forward. We’re luckily self-sufficient for recording with our last two records (and the upcoming third) all being do-it-yourself efforts with our drummer Chris acting as engineer and doing the mixing. Then we usually bring in other people to help us listen through to make sure we’ve got fresh ears on it and haven’t gone insane. A label would really only make sense for us if we wanted to start doing things we couldn’t afford, but so far so good. 

What are your songs about? 

Mandatory murder. 

Who does the composing and writes the lyrics?  Jason usually starts the process with bringing in riffs and songs that we’ll jam on at rehearsal until it has a life of its own. Once the song structure is laid out, Abby writes lyrics and melody. 

Do you start with the music or the lyrics?

Music then lyrics. 

Do you compose in a certain enviroment? 

For whatever reason, Rudogg likes to fill the room with thousands of tiny spiders before we start any jams.

Have you done any covers live? 

Very few; we’ve covered Queens of the Stone Age, Dozer, and Priestess in the past but the majority of the sets are original material.

What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs?  We’ve been on a few dead Sunday night shows where you open up for a upcoming band, which is essentially bands playing for bands. Everyone should play shows like that. It makes packed shows that much more exciting. We’ve been lucky to have some great gigs and festivals that have given us a chance to play in front of bigger crowds, like The Strip District Music Festival, Rock For Life,  Deutschtown  Music Festival and opening for Clutch at Stage AE. 

What ages are most of your concert attendants?  We don’t play many all ages shows so it’s mostly 21+

Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary?  We have a general idea of what we’re going to play but have now been a band long enough to be able to dig into the archives to play some of our older stuff and bust out a new one to give it a test drive.

Do you have a regular place you play live often?  Not really, we’ll pretty much go anywhere.

What was your first gig like?  It’s tough to remember, but we opened for Skell in a bar very far away from Pittsburgh so that we could fuck up and figure things out without having too many people hold us accountable. 

What was your latest gig?  Our most recent gig was a packed house at the Strip District Music Festival. 

Have you had to cancel a gig?  No. We’ve driven in blizzards to other states for gigs. We’re pretty good about honoring our commitments. 

Where have you played live this year? 

Mostly all Pittsburgh stuff; Altar Bar and Smiling Moose come to mind. We also love the crew in Leechburg, Sarver and Iselin and will play places like The Sidebar or Iselin Ball Field. The out of town shows we’ve played this year took us to Ohio with our buddies in Brimstone Coven.

Where do you plan to gig the coming year? 

We’ll actually have a quiet year in terms of playing out because we’re in the studio working on our third release.

When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale?  As soon as we had some cash we did a quick run of t-shirts and burned some CD’s to start selling. We were lucky that people snagged those up and that was able to help us fund more merch options with new designs. And we always have our albums and stickers on hand.

Where can people buy your merchandise? 

We sell the most stuff at shows but new people tend to buy merch through our bandcamp page or paypal.

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records?  We’re for it. No one is in this band to make money, we just like what we do. However people hear our music is fine with us.

How do you think the music industry have changed because of this?  Online downloading means you can get your music literally to anyone around the world. Again it’s not a money maker because people can just listen and choose not to buy it. Maybe we’d be upset if we were Rihanna or something but thankfully we’re not. 

Do you have any role models or idols? 

We hate everyone equally

Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? 

Both. The inspiration you find from more classic bands are embedded at this point; they’re how you learned to play or what inspired you to do it in the first place. And there’s lots of new bands who are doing cool things so anyone who says all new music sucks isn’t looking in the right places. 

What have been your biggest obstacles? 

Sleeping in the same room when we’re on the road. Everyone farts. 

What advice would you give other bands or artists?  Go to college. 

How do you get psyched for a gig? 

We snort pixie sticks and shotgun Mountain Dew. We have an endorsement with them, so at this point we don’t have a choice. 

Do you have any new material? 

Yes, we’re in the process of finishing and recording all of the new songs for an upcoming release. 

What are your web sites? 

Our official site was bought by a sex trafficking website so now we just use facebook, twitter and bandcamp. 

How can people reach you?  

Any booking inquiries go to fistfightintheparkinglot@gmail.com but it seems like most people still prefer Facebook to get things moving. 

Social media addresses?

facebook.com/fistfightintheparkinglot

twitter: @ffitpl

https://fistfightintheparkinglot.bandcamp.com

What are your plans for the future? 

We’ll record the new album and hopefully be ready to release it by the Fall. 

What do you think of my work? 

You are a prince among thieves. 

How do you think that this interview could help you in the local music scene and beyond?  Can people who like rock and roll read?  If so, we’re fucked. 

What is one thing even your biggest fans don't know about the band?  We’ve each killed a man in Cambodia with dental floss. It was part of the band initiation, and luckily in Cambodia, it’s legal.