Exposed Vocals just sat down with ‘The 5 AM’ for an exclusive interview

Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?

Christophe: Ben and I both grew up in a town near Aarschot, Belgium. After a very short history as a cover band with Joep on guitars, I learned how to play the guitar and we started jamming and writing songs. Ferre joined the band and that’s when it all took off. Ferre lives in the same area but we hadn’t met before the band. Joep is a special case <laughs>.

Joep: I grew up in The Netherlands before I moved to Belgium. I guess I started making music at the age of 15. It opened up a brand new world for me and I never stopped exploring it. The first rehearsal with Ben and Christophe felt instantly right. That musical chemistry was there from the very beginning. Ferre joined us shortly after and fit in seamlessly.

Christophe: I always loved to sing and each time there was an opportunity, I found myself on stage singing in front of an audience. With The 5 AM it all fell together. I don’t see ‘being an artist’ as a very conscious choice: You just got to get out there and perform on stage.

Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?

Ben: Probably some extensive brainstorming led us there. When ‘The 5 AM’ popped up, it made a lot of sense to us, considering 5 AM as a milestone: The 5 AM. When you’re awake at 5 AM you’ve either spent a good night partying or it’s the start of a new, productive day. It refers to both our working ethics and our parties.

Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?

Joep: Good question. Honestly, we never thought that through really well. I mean strategy wise. You record some songs, make an album and make it available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Deezer, etc. Recording costs some money, at least if you go for analog recordings like we did. I guess it did make sense to put a price on our album. Do we mind that people download our music for free somewhere on the web? Probably not, as we want our music to be heard. I guess we’re just very grateful to all the people out there that support us by buying our music.

Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?

Christophe: Build your own crowd and focus on them to make them come to your shows, each and every time. Make your shows interesting for them. This requires some creativity and efforts that go beyond music but it definitely worked for us. We organized some shows in the early days. Those sold-out shows made it easier to convince bookers and owners of venues. We have as well acoustic and soft-electric sets which allows us to play more gigs in the same region, each time in a different setting. And we don’t do talent shows.

Joep: YES, Indeed! There are a lot of talent shows in our region and I guess it’s the easy way to get some exposure as a starting band. However, many bands fail to create a solid foundation like Christophe mentioned and eventually can’t fulfill the expectations after winning a talent show. I never liked the idea of music as a competition anyway.

Christophe: Participating in a talent show is putting your faith in the hands of an organization. But what do they have to say about your music? Why does their opinion matter? There only one thing that counts and that’s the response of the audience. You don’t need a talent show for that. And if you have an audience, the gigs will follow.

Exposed Vocals: Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?

Ferre: We’re generally well-rehearsed. Though we take risks with new songs and improvisations.

Ben: Sometimes there is a note that doesn’t fit in too well but hey, it’s LIVE music: It’s all part of the show! We’ve never pursued a clinical perfection anyway and we’re not going to do that either. The feel of a song and the experience of a set are most important to us.

Exposed Vocals: Do you tour? Anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?

Ben: Oh sure interesting things happen: To start with our shows! We’re pretty disciplined before our shows so no juicy stories there. Anyway, when a show is finished and everybody is excited, you never know where the night ends up. It’s always a surprise. And we never remember a thing of it <smiles>.

Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?

Christophe: It depends. For some songs I have some ideas at home and I’ll take them to our rehearsal space where it goes into its own direction. Many songs start in the rehearsal space with jams. Those come very natural and spontaneous. We jam a lot. When it’s worth exploring we’ll try to form it into a song.

Joep: This often proves out to be a challenging process. One day we’re all very excited about a jam. The next weeks we try to pursue that original feel and just doesn’t seem to work. It sometimes takes us weeks to break the jam down to its essence, to form a song and to learn how to play it and sound right. Meanwhile Christophe finishes the lyrics and our jam becomes a song. Recording everything we do is key. If we wouldn’t record our jams and rehearsals, most of the magic would be gone. This way we can be very productive .

Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?

Joep: Our main online platform is our website www.the5am.net and I believe we’re on every online platform possible. The ones we use most are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and ReverbNation.

We spend a lot of time to get those right and to keep them up-to-date. We have a great photographer and she visits many of our shows. Her contribution to our band and our online presence cannot be overestimated. She’s brilliant!

Exposed Vocals: What are some really embarrassing songs that we might find on your mp3 player?

Ben: When I’m not listening to Gregorian choirs, I listen to an album of Mindfulness meditation. I’m currently totally into Whale Sounds.

Joep: We all have different personalities and our musical taste differ wildly. I listen to virtually anything, as long as it has soul. I guess there’s some music in my collection that other’s would consider as embarrassing but I don’t care about that.

Christophe: I only listen to cool music <winks>.

Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it? 

Ferre: Then we would probably not be here.

Christophe: A tour in United States! That’s a long time dream and we receive a very good response from the US. Our music is played on US radio stations, we have two songs in a Hollywood film and we get very favorable reviews of our album ‘Free’ up here. Exposed Vocals wrote an amazing review and we’re very thankful for that. We regularly receive messages of people in the US who love our music and want to see us live. That would be the first thing on our minds.

Exposed Vocals: Any planned studio upgrades? What are you working with now?

Christophe: We have a small BOSS 8-track studio mixer. We use it for demos and pre-productions and it serves pretty well. We hire a studio for album or single recordings. We don’t plan any upgrades.

Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?

Ben: First of all, playing live. That’s where the rubber hits the road. But we’re also known for our stunts. Last year we played a show from a hot air balloon. It required a lot of organization but it definitely paid off. The stunt was broadcasted on national TV and we had a lot of exposure in newspapers and on social media like Facebook.

Joep: The web is our primary channel for promoting The 5 AM. We do very well on ReverbNation.com: we were Featured Artist on their homepage and one of our songs was selected for the ReverbNation Discover App. This way we got noticed by film director Candice Cain. She picked our song ‘Free’ to feature in her movie ‘What Happened Last Night’ featuring Amber Rose, Alix Kermes, Clayton Snyder, Shelley Regner & Jake Thomas. Soon after we agreed on ‘Free’, she was on the phone asking if we could write another song for the film with Alix Kermes in mind, held upside down in a keg stand by David Otunga. Sure!

Ben: We started jamming and soon we got that driven guitar riff that defines the song.

Joep: She invited us for the screening at the Cannes Film Festival, together with the actors and crew, and we played an acoustic session over there.This was another occasion when we hit the Belgian TV news and we were in all newspapers. The film isn’t released yet and has already won some awards including Best Feature Film. ‘What Happened Last Night’ will be in the theaters in the US and Canada November 4th. It’s absolutely hilarious, you’ve got to check it out!!

Exposed Vocals: If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with? Why? 

Christophe: Those would be the artists we love and that influenced us: Nirvana, AC/DC, Foo Fighters, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin…

Ben: Led Zeppelin with John Bonham on drums! I always loved the idea of those music festivals on a cruise ship. That would be a perfect setting. And of course, The 5 AM has got to perform.

Joep: Definitely! And I have some personal favs: Big Star, Bruce Springsteen, Ryan Adams, The Lemonheads, The Beatles, The Pixies! And what about Elvis?! And I’d like to bring some bands back together like The Smiths and The Talking Heads.

Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?

Joep: We have many things coming up. We’re considered for a GOLDEN GLOBE nomination! <laughs> Really! Our song ‘Runnin’ Runnin” in the film ‘What Happened Last Night’ has been submitted for ‘Best Original Song in a Feature Film’. We’re not expecting anything but the idea that there is a very, very small possibility that we get nominated for a Golden Globe is fun though.

Christophe: We will do some recordings in 2017 and we’ve recently started a collaboration with a booking agency which is the next step to play more and bigger music festivals in Europe. We’re ready for that. We’ll play some other venues as well.

Ben: There is another very exciting project coming up, probably next year, but we can’t tell you to much about it now.

Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing? 

Joep: I can’t think of a life without music. I guess that applies to anyone of us. We would probably do something else music related instead.

Exposed Vocals: Do you remember buying your first album? Who was it? What was going through your head? 

Christophe: Nevermind! That rough energy and the sound of the drums are amazing. It’s still one of my favorite albums.

Ben: I guess that would be Green Day’s Dookie. It’s one of those albums where you want to be the drummer of the band.

Ferre: This was Outkast –  Speakerboxxx/ The Love Below.

Joep: My first album was ‘Greatest Hits 2’ of Queen, probably followed by some early U2 records. My nephew was completely into Queen and I guess that’s what influenced me to buy a Queen record.

Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?

Joep: Sometimes The 5 AM feels pretty much like 24/7 company. Each time an opportunity comes by, you’ve got to be on top of it. When you snooze, you loose. It’s always challenging but getting out of bed at 5 AM works for me. You can be very productive in the mornings. Though, I admit it’s not always easy to combine this with our inverted 5 AM schedules when we gig. It’s giving me social jetlag regularly.

Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in the next year or so? 

Christophe: More club shows, more festival shows in Europe, a single release possibly and something we can’t tell you about… Keep an eye on www.the5am.net and follow us on www.facebook.com/the5am.