It's Cool in College Park: Catching Up with First in Flight
By Mary Perez
Graphic by Emily Lantzy
It’s a regular Thursday night, but just down the street from the University of Maryland, Milkboy Arthouse is buzzing with excitement for a fun night of performances, starting off with a lively set from a band who proudly represent Milpitas, California. Hitting the stage with a fun older track, “Danger,” First in Flight quickly captured the crowd’s attention with their self-described “cotton candy in a mosh pit” sound. The band – composed of vocalist Pat McCloskey, guitarist Richard Mier, bassist David Topete, and drummer Max Huss – put on quite the show, and I felt extremely grateful to be there to witness it all. After an energetic performance filled with captivating guitar riffs, backflips, and a setlist of new and old songs alike, the guys sat down to talk to me about their recent tours, newest singles, and stories with fans.
Let’s talk about these first few dates of Dream Tour. How have the shows been so far?
Pat McCloskey: Really good! Denver was the first one, and that was a rush. In my opinion, that was probably the best show in terms of everything together, but this is such a big new opportunity for us, being on a US tour with a previously-signed band. It’s been a lot of fun. One of the things I love, and you saw tonight, is the crowds, whether big or small. This one was a little smaller, but they’re so into it. It’s been awesome to have such a great crowd to perform to on a better stage; it’s definitely been a level up for us.
David Topete: Just to kinda echo what Pat said, we didn’t really know what to expect, to be honest. It was the first time we had ever done something like this. Denver kinda put us at ease, in a sense. We were like, “It’s gonna be alright.” There are people there that love music and they’re willing to engage with you, and that’s pretty much all we could ask for.
Max Huss: It’s just a more professional way to do a tour. I felt taken more seriously, which was nice. We’ve been working a long time to do something like this, so it’s nice to go. We don’t have to do a ton of promotions for these shows. We kinda just roll in, and everything’s going really smoothly. It feels like we’re growing up a little bit.
PM: He kinda said it, but this was a big goal for us. While this tour’s been a ton of work, there have been challenging moments, but it is a sense of relief and accomplishment like, “Hey, we did this. Onto the next!”
Recently, you also toured with Forts Like Vana. What has the experience been like in getting to play these shows throughout the United States?
Richard Mier: With Forts Like Vana, it was actually a big test to do something really outside of California that wasn’t Oregon or Washington. That one was the first time we flew out as a band with our gear and everything. We rented a car and went to a lot of places we had never been to. Obviously, with Ohio, Max is from there, and Pat’s from Chicago, so they’ve actually been to a lot of places, but obviously not as a band to play. That actually kinda warmed us up for this, and we did a lot of 8-hour drives.
PM: Piggybacking off of Richard with the whole test thing, you guys all said this before, but there was a sense of wanting to tour across the country. There are all of these Twitter bands that seem to be getting all of this attention, and we just felt like, “Well, let’s see if this could actually work,” because of the amount of times people said to tour with Forts Like Vana. We were like, “Well, fuck it. Okay, we will,” and it worked out great. I have to say that was booked way before this, and had we not done that, we would have been much less prepared for this. It worked out perfectly, and those guys are awesome. We really enjoyed it.
RM: It’s actually funny because we actually confirmed and finalized this tour while on the Forts Like Vana tour, and I was like, “Okay, we gotta prepare.” I looked at the calendar. When we got back, it was only two and a half to barely three weeks before this one started. I was a little sad coming back from the Forts one because I was doing what I love and all that stuff, and I wanted to come back to it, but then I realized I only had to wait two weeks! We’re all enjoying it, waking up in one city and going to bed in another.
Did you have a favorite memory or show from the Forts Like Vana tour?
DT: It’s on video already, but when our roadies basically fought each other with fireworks. That was one of the highlights, literally. That was fun. It was fun having those guys around. We couldn’t work out this time to bring them along, but that was the highlight for me, getting to watch them destroy each other.
RM: The cool thing about it was that was just one of those off days, where we were just chilling in Ohio, watching fireworks. It was something so special that I was just sitting back and enjoying it.
PM: Me and the Forts guys were like, “We’re good! We’re just gonna have a beer.”
RM: Everyone was just chilling and enjoying themselves. It was like, “This right here, this moment, is really, really nice.”
MH: That was really fun. That was at my aunt’s house. We got to stay with my family and shoot off fireworks and hang out. I mean, there’s just nothing better than that. Also, the show in Chicago was the best one. We have a new banner-
PM: We couldn’t bring it on stage tonight because it’s too big! We were so bummed about it.
MH: We got that in Chicago, so that was the first time we got to use that. The crowd was pretty big and really engaged, so it was a great end to the tour.
PM: Funnily enough, my favorite [show] wasn’t Chicago, even though it’s my hometown. It was Kentucky. That show, in my opinion, was very crowded, and there was something about going onstage in fucking Kentucky and there were a ton of people singing the words to our songs. It was like, “Oh my God, we’re in the middle of nowhere, and people are singing our stuff.” That’s really cool.
RM: Yeah, we shared the bill with some metal bands, and it was interesting! After we played, the headliner metal band’s drummer took me aside and was like, “Man, that was the best live show I’ve seen in a while.” This is from a band where they’ve been around and are established and everything. Coming from him and that background, it meant a lot.
Coming back to Dream Tour, what would be your dream tour lineup?
MH: I mean, one of you are going to say Walk the Moon, but I’m just gonna claim it.
DT: Well, I was gonna say Duran Duran.
PM: Well, you see there’s a dream lineup and a dream lineup that would actually work. Like I would love to tour with the Chili Peppers, but no one would give a shit about us while we’re playing. So that’s gonna be a no from me, dawg. I’m gonna throw a curveball on this one that most people won’t think: I would love to tour with Bad Suns. That would be mine, and throw Smallpools on there!
RM: If you’re thinking two-band bill, [for the] headliner? Actually 5SOS. They’re a big influence on us, and last time I saw them at San Jose State [University], they had The Aces open. That was fantastic. I love The Aces, I love 5SOS. But sharing the stage with them? We are very different, and that’s why I think it would work. We have some things that are similar, but we’re very largely different, so we could add variety to the show.
Let’s talk about your latest release, “Chopsticks and Champagne.” What inspired this song?
PM: “Never Alone” was sorta dark, right? Growing up, I didn’t listen to a lot of emo music or sadder music. It’s not that I don’t like it, but it’s just not my thing. When writing “Chopsticks and Champagne,” I wanted to get away from a song that focuses on “I’m sad, I’m sad, I’m sad” to “I’m gonna push past whatever it is that’s making me sad.” The lyrics are sorta open-ended, so you can interpret them any way you want. I was writing it while I was quitting my job, and I knew there would be a moment when I’d go in and turn in my paper and say, “I’m resigning.” I knew, at that moment, my life was gonna open up. “Chopsticks and Champagne” was supposed to focus on pushing past and reaching that moment when you break through, whether it be telling that person “I’m breaking up with you” or turning a resignation letter or telling your parents that you’re moving out or whatever the case may be. I wanted to focus on giving more of a positive energy instead of just the sadness that I wasn’t huge on.
With “Chopsticks and Champagne” came a change in your usual pink attire, and we’ve now entered the red era. Why red?
DT: To be honest, when you think of chopsticks and Asian food, the box is like a white and red box usually.
RM: Panda Express has red in their logo!
MH: It’s fun to change it up!
PM: We wanted to do the music video in red, just a different angle to do red. We did not expect to take it this far, but we started to get very positive reviews from our team. We were like, “Well, we did the pink for two years. I guess we could try and switch it up.”
RM: I know some fans are concerned, but the pink is, in a sense, eternal-
PM: Pink’s eternal!
RM: We obviously still own the shoes, so we’re not gonna throw them away. If you see any photos or see us on this current tour, I have a pink guitar. It’s the one used on “Chopsticks,” and I took that one on tour. It’s never really fully disappearing. It’s gonna live on some way.
MH: Also it’s way easier to find red gear than pink gear. Vans just makes red shoes in their stores, but you have to get the pink ones from Journeys.
PM: The pink was so hard! I had to wear two sizes too small because they didn’t make it in my size.
MH: Red’s just easier, but pink will stay.
Can you tell me a little more about how you decided to make the video for “Chopsticks and Champagne” more of a performance rather than a story like “Never Alone?”
DT: In the first video, it was more of a performance mixed with a very avant-garde story with “Danger.” Then, with “Never Alone,” it was almost like a horror movie with a twist. We’ve kinda done performance-story, and we’ve done just story, so now we’re just like, “Well, we haven’t done a straight performance video yet. Let’s just pick a cool location and go for it.” We rented better gear and different lenses just to up the ante a little bit. It was easier to shoot it. It was just performing how we would perform it at a live show and capturing it. It was just to change it up. Whatever our next video may be, we’ll change it up again.
Were there any funny or memorable moments from the video shooting?
PM: The Chinese sign said “noodles?”
RM: Dumplings!
All: Dumplings, yeah!
DT: It’s only for a little bit, but in the bridge when Pat’s rapping, that little sign isn’t even red. I tried to make it as red as I could-
MH: It’s pink!
PM: See? Pink is eternal.
DT: It was a cheap sign and looked cool.
RM: The crew was a lot less, so we got to enjoy it and it was a lot less stressful.
DT: “Never Alone” was a lot of people in one location for a long time, and it was just kinda hard to handle.
MH: We brought a pizza oven.
PM: Oh, yeah! We brought a pizza oven, and it didn’t work for a while.
RM: We figured it out eventually.
MH: We brought frozen pizzas to the location, and we brought an oven to cook them.
DT: Our boy, Austin, works at a warehouse so he kinda just hooked us up-
PM: Shoutout to Austin!
DT: Yeah, he goes “I’ll just bring the oven and some frozen pizzas, and we’ll just cook ‘em. It’s free.” He brought other stuff too, like juice and fruit and stuff, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Save some costs.
You recently announced your next single, “It’s Cool-”
MH: It is cool. Thank you.
What is that song about, and what can fans expect to hear?
PM: I don’t want to go too deep, but I’d say that this song is gonna be a lot more lighthearted. We wanted to really just have fun with this new single, and it does have a bit of a… I’m trying to think of the right word here-
DT: Romantic?
PM: It does have a bit of a romantic undertone… if you want to call it romance, that’s fine.
DT: Yeah! I mean you could call it Dalliance. It’s a very Dalliance-influenced song.
PM: That’s true! I would just go with romantic undertones and very lighthearted. I think they can expect, and I know this word is overused, but literally a bop. I mean, “Chopsticks and Champagne” is like “Yeah, fuck yeah,” but this one is like “Alright, yeah!”
DT: This is a song that comes after “Chopsticks.”
RM: Literally just a fun song. We just wanted to have a good, fun, solid song that people can enjoy, and we are playing it on this tour. This is the third time we played it live, and it’s been getting really good reception. People are enjoying it, and it’s actually serving the purpose. We actually are excited to release it. Everytime we release a new song, it becomes someone’s favorite song, so I’m curious to see what happens.
I’ve definitely tuned in to your livestreams as much as possible, and I’ve always admired how intimate they feel and how well you truly know your fans. Do you have any favorite stories or memories of your fans?
PM: Yeah, absolutely! I don’t want to say who, but there are a couple I have. I know everyone by name in those chats and streams, and just for me, I told someone this recently, it’s cooler to me because when we were smaller, people would just tweet at us and I’d always answer. This is a good thing, but our fanbase has gotten too big so it’s kinda nice for me to go onto those live streams and talk to everyone at once instead of feeling like I’m always behind. Two favorite stories I have: one was dealing with self harm, and they told me they were barely making it every time they wanted to not harm themselves. I talked to them and said, “That’s great! You need to keep barely making it every time, and if you just keep barely making it, you’ll keep making it!” You only need to win a football game by one to win, you don’t need to win by twenty. I told them that and they were at our Chicago show, and they came up to me and told me how much that meant to them. I thought that was really cool. Another person told me of how they found their old suicide note, which was before they knew us, and how sad they were. I kinda talked them through it and how great it was that they found the suicide note because eight months later, they’re still alive! I think to see the effect that Paturday has over four or five months, those mean a lot.
RM: Of course, over the Midwest tour and this tour, we have fans that give us binders of notes to us, fans showing us the tattoos they got, and it means so much to us. We appreciate all of those things, and they mean so much to us because I hear about that all the time. Music affects people and makes an impact on people’s lives, and clearly we’re already doing that.
I really like the variety of content on your YouTube channel lately. How have you been coming up with all of these new ideas for fun videos?
DT: Some of them are suggestions the fans have told us, and some of them are just things we feel would be entertaining. The last video with Richard playing his guitars was just verbatim, and you can call it ripping off someone else, but we found our way to put a twist on it. It really comes down to seeing what y'all want to see, and we look at the analytics and see which videos are doing the best. It’s also just add some variety to the music, in a sense. We’ve done covers in the past, and we’ll probably go back to doing some here and there-
RM: You can never go wrong with those.
DT: But we don’t just want to be a cover band. We want to put some personality into the videos, and video is a better medium to that than a picture or a song. With songs, we can share a message or story, but with video, you can kinda see how we are as people, how we interact with each other. There are some subtle cues and comedy things that we do, like social cues, that are really fun if you actually see them. That’s also why we do live streams; it’s a different way of connecting. The Paturdays are things that just happen in a moment, and once it’s over, it’s gone. The video is something you can always come back to. There’s always something First in Flight that people can come back to and take in.
Now for some fun questions! What’s a song you wish you had written?
RM: It’s kinda generic on my end. I’m gonna say “Fade to Black” by Metallica. I love that song, and that’s actually my favorite band. That’s a song I can go back to after all these years, and it still hits me like the very first time I listened to it.
DT: “Separate Ways” by Journey.
RM: That’s my favorite Journey song. That’s epic!
PM: “Under the Bridge” by Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Do you have any unusual stories of how you started listening to one of your favorite artists?
PM: Oh, I got one! I started listening to Finish Ticket just because these guys told me about ‘em! I had no idea who they were three years ago.
RM: I just recently started listening to this New Zealand pop band, Yumi Zouma. Reason being, we were in Cincinnati for the Midwest tour and their music was being played in this very artsy store, and I Shazamed it. I kept listening to it, and I’ve so far bought all of their stuff on Google Play.
MH: That is a great way to find artists.
DT: I guess the only reason why I started listening to Walk the Moon was my brother was a big fan of them, and if he didn’t show me them, then the band probably wouldn’t have existed-
RM: Well, it would have gone in a different direction. [David] and I wanted to go for more of an industrial thing early on, and Walk the Moon kinda turned us that way.
What is the weirdest thing you’ve seen happen at a show?
DT: When we were watching this old thrash band at the Oakland Metro, there was this guy in a wheelchair that was rocking out really hard. To put the cherry on top, the people were pushing him on and kinda just lifted him up, and a bunch of these metalheads kinda put this guy in a wheelchair and he was crowd surfing.
RM: In the wheelchair. It was epic.
DT: I wouldn’t say it was weird or anything, but it was like “woah!”
If someone were to create a conspiracy theory about your band, what would it be about?
RM: Oh, I got it! This band is a front; it’s just a way for David and I to play metal for everybody.
PM: Richard’s actually 6 foot in real life.
DT: Pat is not from Craigslist.
PM: We got Pat from the newspaper!
DT: PennySaver!
MH: We don’t actually like milk tea.
Any final words for your fans?
PM: I would just say thanks so much for supporting us. This tour has been a huge goal, and it wouldn’t have been possible without their support. People always say that shit, but we really mean it. We told them from the beginning of the year, if they wanted to see us in their city, they needed to help with the email list. They’ve done that, and here we are. Can’t thank them enough. This is just the beginning.
RM: We’re currently on tour; Dream Tour with Finish Ticket. So come check us out if we come to your city, and our new single, “It’s Cool,” comes out October 18.
DT: We appreciate the fans’ support, but we also want the fans to support themselves in whatever they want to do in their lives!
As First in Flight continue their tour across the country, they continue to work hard to build those valuable relationships with fans, new and old, whether it be reuniting with friends on the East Coast or getting new listeners to join their mailing list. There is something so wonderfully heartwarming to see a band who cares so much about both their fanbase and music, and I believe that First in Flight deserve recognition for the dedication they show in making sure they know their fans on such a personal level. Their music is refreshing and takes influences from a wide range of artists and genres, and they definitely know how to create an exhilarating performance. First in Flight have a very promising future ahead of them, and they are definitely not just any Internet band. Their newest single, “It’s Cool,” comes out on October 18, and yes, Max is telling the truth when he said “It is cool.”