I had the pleasure of talking to The Ones You Forgot before their EP release show in Asbury Park, NJ to talk about their new music and what they hope to achieve with the release of their new music.
Let’s talk your new EP “Too Afraid To Say”; what was the writing process like?
Jenna: For one, we’re just happy that it’s here finally, it’s been a long time in the making so we’re really excited. Writing this, we kind of tried to focus on taking new ways to write songs because a lot of the time, Ferd’s the start of the songwriting process always and a lot of the songs were still that way and this time we tried to really sit together and put together the songs in a room when we were all at practice and it was kind of a new thing; that’s how “Here Forever”, the single came to be. We just started jamming it together and I think that’s the first time we really did that as far as songwriting goes so we’re excited because these songs came together in a new way that we’ve never done before. We worked with Rob Freeman, he produced and mixed the record.
Matt: Working with Rob is definitely an experience. He was kinda the first studio that we stayed at and worked with the couple days we were there. Working with Rob was definitely unique, it was definitely very cool to have that first in-studio feel. We were working with someone who was very professional, very established and has so much under his belt and it’s just cool because it really felt like he cared about our music and cared about us as people and really just helped us be as happy with this record as we could.
Jenna: It was a really good experience. We had songs prepared that we loved and we loved them even more when they were done which we didn’t even think was possible. Getting those songs back was just the greatest feeling ever and we’re just so happy that the day is finally here and we’re gonna play these songs. We’re really excited for everyone to hear them live and jam out to them.
What are your favorite songs off of the EP?
Matt: Here, Forever and Too Afraid to Say. They capture two different sides of the spectrum and they meet in the middle and it’s us. I really like those songs and I just connect with both of those greatly.
Jenna: Right now, mine is probably Here, Forever. It changes and it’s changed a lot ever since the songs were done. I just love them all. But I think Here, Forever is the one where if someone came to me and was like ‘send me a song by your band’, I would send them that.
Ferd: I would send them that or Too Afraid to Say. I show people Everywhere, Everything, that’s my favorite song.
What would you say was the hardest song to write on the album?
Jenna: For me personally it was Everywhere, Everything. It’s the last song we wrote and we finished that song a few days before we went into the studio. The band had no idea the parts that I wrote before we went into the studio so thank god they liked them or I would’ve been in trouble. Writing that I didn’t really have as much of a direction for that song as I did for the others. For the others, I knew what I wanted to talk about and this one was all about a confusing point I was going through in my life and I didn’t know how to explain it in any way. I was watching a lot of anime at the time, particularly a show called “Bleach” and I tried to relate my lyrics to the story because I really liked it. The song isn’t completely about that but some of the lyrics that I had related to the show. It’s influenced by it for sure. I think that one was the hardest to write but having that inspiration helped me lyric wise.
Ferd: I would say Here, Forever because I’m picky when it comes to writing guitar solos and if there’s one small thing that I don’t like about it I usually end up changing the entire solo itself. I went through probably 3-4 guitar solos while writing that song.
Jenna: We’ll demo the songs out through guitar pro and for the longest time the solo was just a gap and nothing was there.
Matt: They (Jenna and Ferd) are the big writers as far as putting the ideas together. All of our songs pretty much stayed the same except for One Step Ahead. Our producer said “honestly this could be a lot better” and he stuck me and Ferd in a room together to write it and I didn’t know what I was doing so that was my hardest.
Justin: That was my hardest too. A lot of my drums got changed on that and a lot of the verses as well. It was just dumb things that were so easy and I look back and think ‘how come I couldn’t do that?’ but I just had an idea in my head and I was also pretty nervous because it was my first time in a real studio. I was away from home, we were staying over there. It took me a long time to get that down. When we went back to the studio, it was cool, I felt a lot better with myself.
What do you hope to achieve with the release of Too Afraid To Say?
Matt: I wanna get people to connect with this EP a lot more and get a lot of people interested in the music.
Jenna: Adding on to what Matt said, my personal goal is just to get the most people to hear it. This is the first time we’ve really thought about the release process and made a strategy on how we wanted everything to roll out. Just to get it to the most ears as possible and if they like it, that’s awesome, if they don’t, that’s okay too. I just want as many people as possible to listen to it and hopefully when someone does listen to it they can take something away from it.
You’ve opened for bands such as Boys Like Girls and Never Shout Never at venues such as Starland Ballroom and Gamechanger World. How do you feel that opening for such iconic acts has helped you progress so early on in your career?
Jenna: It’s been awesome! The artists that we’ve gotten to play with are artists that we’ve grown up listening too so it was a really cool full circle moment. Especially Boys Like Girls, I used to love them when I was in the 5th grade and The Great Escape came out, they were the band, ya know? It’s really been a great experience and I think it’s taught us to step up our game with our live show. Playing at Starland is a really awesome experience and you learn a lot from it and we really were so conscious about our sound. We’ve played Starland a lot, we played with Never Shout Never as well. I feel like opening for those acts helped us with our live show and it also helped us interact with our fans too because you meet so many people. It really taught us to talk to people and interact with people, especially at Boys Like Girls; that was the first time we had people come up to us and talk to us about the music and we thought ‘wow this is so cool!’.
Matt: At first it’s kind of just like “wait what?!”. It’s so sweet to meet those people and it’s incredibly humbling to meet people that go to shows and just the fact that they give us a chance and come early to watch us, it’s a really cool feeling.
Jenna: Just to have people who even if they’re not feeling the music, they’re still standing there watching. That means a lot that people go ahead and do that. If they really wanted to they could boo us. It just means a lot to us that people come out to see us.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received regarding the band?
Matt: Just to have fun with what we’re doing and don’t take things too seriously. Don’t turn it into a chore. Have fun and be respectful, that stuff goes such a long way. You hear bands talk about it all the time when people are genuine, straightforward, and nice it gets you places and you’re respected. Be a good person and have fun with it.
Jenna: Having fun is the best piece of advice that I’ve received and also the best piece of advice that I could give someone. It’s so easy to get caught up in being nervous about it and beat yourself up. When we have a not a great performance or something, it ruins my day and I’m trying to remind myself that we love it and we have fun and that’s what it should be about.
The band was recently featured on Alternative Press. How does that accomplishment feel?
Jenna: I still have a stack of AP magazines. We all grew up reading that magazine or keeping up on Instagram. That was again, such a full circle moment. Being a musician and having them say we want to feature this and show it to people was really cool. They did it live on their Facebook so we saw people showing up and commenting. It was really exciting and really nerve wracking. Really cool experience and we’re really glad that they thought that our music was good enough to showcase because that was a goal when we were releasing this EP but when we saw that it was happening we thought “oh my god, this is a real thing!”. It was a very cool moment.
Matt: Growing up in that scene of music, AP is that magazine and it’s so awesome that we even got the opportunity to do it; nobody expected it to happen. It was a mix of excitement and being blessed and it was really, really cool.
What are your long-term goals for the band?
Matt: I would say that we’re all very passionate about what we’re doing and the music and stuff. It would be a dream to do this for a very long time. Right now it’s just to continue to play shows, branch out more, play more music, end game would be that we’d love to play music as long as we can.
Jenna: We would love for this to become a full time job but just to be able to do it and to keep having fun.
You can check out the bands’ new EP “Too Afraid To Say” below and make sure to follow the band on their socials to keep up to date with new music and concerts in your area!