“I just want someone to find their new favorite song.” A talk with Pierce Fulton

There once was a wunderkind tucked away in a sleepy town of Vermont who grew up with a tiny amp and guitar as his medium. As he grew older and taller, Pierce Fulton has tried his hands on various instruments before being exposed to electronic music during his senior year of high school. Now 23, this east coast native has been seen on stages at TomorrowLand and Electric Zoo just after wrapping up his spring tour. Releasing remixes from The Killers to Above & Beyond, Fulton continues to demonstrate his love to experiment with his ever evolving style.

Photography by Mike Greene
interviewed by Mel Truong

You have a new single out now called Landmines. Can you tell us a bit about the songs meaning?

Yeah – so Landmines is a song I wrote with JHart and it was a really fun writing experience. It was actually a song we squeezed out after writing another (that I didn’t end up finishing) while we had 30 min left in the studio we were in. Basically we were eating lunch expecting to just hang until the session was over and I started playing the chords on piano that come in on the chorus during “you say you wanna stay…” and he started singing some riffs. We thought of some lyric ideas and had a bit of back & fourth on direction vocally and in 30 minutes Landmines was born! At first it was called “For The Last Time” but I thought “Landmines” was much more powerful. The song is about going back to a significant other “for the last time” after much on and off. The whole Landmines reference is basically: you’ve stepped on a landmine, do you jump off or stand on it together forever?

J.Hart is regarded as one of the top writers of the generation, what was it like working with him?

He was one of my favorite collaborators to date. He’s a really fun and energetic guy and boy, he can sing. Writing with him was so fun and everything felt super natural together. All around awesome guy to work with!

Would you say past relationships have played a role in creating the song? The lyrics are reminiscent of a past love

What’s weird is when I write lyrics I find it too exposing to write about my own feelings, emotions, joys or problems. I’m not trying to tell the world what’s going on in PF land but I often write stories that can relate to something personal maybe just a little. Both JHart and I admitted to having some personal influence on our writing of “Landmines” so sometimes I can’t help it.

When you’re creating music such as this, is there a certain reaction you hope your fans take home?

I just want someone to find their new favorite song. You can digest it any way you want I just want to make enjoyable music, regardless of the message or mood.

We’ve heard you’ve grown up to oldies rock music… do you think this genre of music has influenced your current style?

Absolutely. I’ve been listening to a lot of blues and jazz during my free time and flights and it totally finds its way back in my music. Songwriting wise, I use blues for a lot of lyrical ideas. It’s as simple as “hey I’m blue and here’s why”. I also have realized a lot of my new music sort of follows a standard classic rock formula and now I plan on leaning more into that curve.

Do you think the instruments you’ve grown up playing have influenced your musical style at all?

Not really influenced but they happened to find their way back into my music, almost by chance. I used to never record guitar in my songs because I was like “it’s electronic music guitars sound weird”. And then one day I had a song that sort of begged for a guitar and I loved it so much that I’ve been writing almost strictly with my guitar these past 5 months.

Where do you receive your inspiration from? Is there a specific person or artist?

Mostly just the fact that I want to make music I’m proud of. I go thru new influences and inspiration every day, week, month so it’s always changing and evolving. I’ve been reading Keith Richards’ biography on flights these past few weeks and that’s REALLY inspired me, especially when he talks about his songwriting process with Mick Jagger.

When you produce is there a formula you follow or is it more like gardening where you start weaving sounds together and see where it goes?

I used to follow a formula but after a while it made me start to hate my sound. Now I just let anything go from whatever starting point. For example today I made this weird distorted loop out of small chops of an old vocal and started singing ideas over it. Then I wrote a quick vocal, sang it, wrote chords and the idea was done in like 4-5 hours. All that’s left is production and arrangement. I just recently started fully writing and singing on my stuff, even if I’m not the singer in the end on some of this new stuff eventually I want to be singing on it all. Just really changes the process and spices things up.

Since you’ve started performing for larger audiences, has there been anything you’ve taken away from your experiences that has influenced your sound?

Well I always assumed that when I started to play big festival stages, I’d have to play big festival music (big kick, high energy stuff). I’m glad I never really tried that because all the melodic and groovy stuff I play works just as well, maybe even better. I like to think if everyone else is playing the heaviest shit they will appreciate some nice melodies and groove.

How excited were you when you found out you were allowed to shoot a small hand canon into the crowd at Lavo? How do you feel about Pierce Fulton branded hand canons?

Hahaha I think they’re pretty funny. I’d rather like a hand cannon that sprayed out cereal or something so you can have a snack in the club.

If Adventure Club decided they wanted to stop DJing and form a punk rock band, going back to their throwback days, would you join?

1000000%

What instrument would you play?

I’d play blues slide guitar and make it punk as hell

What would you call yourselves?

Vegan TV Dinner

Which band would you emulate?

Something that’s punk meets blues and polka. We would go nowhere haha.

What would your first album be titled?

Midnight Snack