After Two Years and 200 Beers, Greg Gilmore and the Fever Dreams are Ready to Release Their Debut Album, “Premonition”
Jaden Urban looks into how local Reno band Greg Gilmore and the Fever Dreams are ready to drop off their first album titled, “Premonition”.
The album consists of 10 songs. Pus Cavern Recording studio in Sacramento is where they started making the album in March of 2020, just as the COVID-19 lockdown was about to hit. Joe Johnston engineered for them, and he also helped engineer for the rock band “Cake” back in the 90s.
“I think we counted that we drank 200 beers while we were recording the album,” Gilmore said.
Just two months before their studio session, their lead guitar player quit, so it was only four of them that ended up at the studio session. The group started out only hoping to record four–five songs, but as the lockdown was taking place, the band hibernated in the studio and wound up making 10 songs. After the band added Jorge Pulido-Rubio as their lead guitarist, they went back in to have Jorge add his parts and his flavors to what the band had already cooked up.
The band went back a couple of times to touch-up on the records, but as of August 2020, the album was complete and mastered. The pandemic has been a big issue for the group as they have been waiting and deciding to see when the right time is to drop their album, but COVID over the past couple of years would start to show signs it’s getting better, and then it would flip the script on us. Also, some personal things that Gilmore was going through also pushed back the album’s release.
The drummer of the band, Jeff Knight is moving soon, so the group wanted to make sure to get the album out before he goes so they can all play together. Gilmore is unsure how it’s going to work with Knight being in a completely different state, but abides that the band will be able to make it work and that their only focus is on the album at this point.
With the album being titled, “Premonition” a lot of themes that are present in the record were the impending dooms that Gilmore felt were coming in his life.
“Sometimes it’s hard to walk away from things so you stay in a situation longer than you should,” Gilmore said. “It’s all about the writing on the wall and it’s kind of like looking forward, and ‘I know this is coming, there’s not a lot I can do about it, so I’m going to just enjoy things that you can enjoy while you can’, but there’s like a dark cloud hanging over your head.”
“Some of my favorite messages that I’ve ever gotten from the past with people are like ‘this song really helped me get through a really hard time’ so I think helping people get through turmoil is something I always aim towards,” he said.
One of Gilmore’s favorite memories from making the album is from the first track, “She’s Watching You”. The band was traveling to Sacramento in a massive snowstorm which made a 2-hour drive into a 7-hour long exhausting trip. Brendon Lund, the bassist for the band, used to use a bucket and chains for a percussive type of sound for his last band, so they decided to use the same chains they used to chain up for the snowstorm to use on the first song of the LP.
“Overall, I always had this very hard-nosed, set in stone kind of thing where I was against over-production,” Gilmore said. “I wanted to keep it where the band records live, we do it in one of the first 3 takes [to make] an honest interpretation of what the band sounds like. This time, the 3rd track ‘I Can’t Wait’ there’s like 100 tracks on it which is not something I’ve ever really been about before and a lot of the arrangements are very full and produced.”
With “Premonition” you get a lot of different sounds, genres, moods, and tones throughout it.
“I would describe it like weather in Reno,” Gilmore said. “Like if you’re not a fan of the current song maybe just wait for the next one. It changes moods pretty regularly, I can be a pretty moody person so I feel like it’s a pretty honest representation of myself. I like a lot when albums change moods from song to song.”
“It’s varietal, but it’s cohesive in a sense that the instrumentation is the same throughout,” Gilmore said of the new album. “I mean it’s drums, guitar, keyboards, vocals. There’s not anything other than that other than maybe some percussive stuff. There’s not like a big horn section on a song or chello on another song. It’s all pretty straight instrumentation. It’s varietal in its moods.”
Gilmore shared that he tried to keep past bands in a, as he calls it, a “genrebox”. He shares that this album was his experimentation with digital work use such as the use of synths. He shared bands such as, The Cure, Killers, White Stripes, Tom Petty, and the Beatles.
“I’m kind of a sponge, I soak stuff up,” Gilmore said. “After you clean several things and then squeeze the sponge out it’s all together in a weird grime.”
Punk, new wave, dance numbers, ballads, rock and roll, blues, and folk are some of the genres that are explored on this album.
Gilmore describes the song “Best for Last” as a “new wavey dance number that goes into country-Grateful Dead tinged song.”
Plans for the future involve a tour with dates yet to be announced. The band is hosting a release concert for their album on May 7th at Cyprus with tickets starting at $10. You can preorder their new album on CD, Vinyl, Digital, and Cassette at their website here. The first 50 preorders get a handwritten poem from Gilmore and their name in the linear notes.
