INTERVIEW: FELICITY AT SO WHAT?! MUSIC FESTIVAL 2022

We sent Hannah down to Arlington, Texas to cover So What?! Music Festival 2022. While there, she met up with FELICITY to talk about playing the fest, writing music, plans for the rest of 2022 + more!

Hannah: So how does it feel to be playing this year’s So What Music Fest alongside all these big names? I mean we got State Champs, Simple Plan, Grandson, and Blackbear.

Felicity: It’s a dream come true for us, we’ve been huge fans of So What?! Fest and it’s been a dream come true just to even be able to be here to watch it. All the bands that are gonna be here, it has that closest thing to Warped Tour kind of feel. Playing it is just even more of a dream come true.

There’s like different mashups of genres, but maybe pushes the limits more than willing to do so. I think that’s really cool to be able to go from stage to stage and see that and just make connections with these artists too. Because when are you going to have an opportunity to be around artists, all these fans, all the fans like it’s really hard to make that happen. So this is pretty special I think.

H: Out of all the Harry Styles’ songs you could have covered, why “Watermelon Sugar?“

F: I think honestly it just felt like the most widely known of all his songs because like if you don’t listen to Harry Styles you’re not really going to know too many songs unless you listen to the radio. It seems like a lot of our fan base don’t really listen to the radio, but they know who Harry Styles is. So it’s kind of like an easy move.

I think the summer of 2020 it was definitely like the song of the summer. No one else had done a cover of it, but we’re also like how come no one else has done this yet because we love this song. It would be really cool to make a rock version of it.

We released that song on a Friday or whatever. I think two days later Sunday he won a Grammy, like you’re welcome! People either love him and they hate us for ruining the song for them. Or people are hating us because they hate Harry Styles. It’s all just funny.

H: the Tiktok Harries especially, they’re kinda mean and not to be messed with *laughs* get pop goes punk to make a comeback and add your cover of “Watermelon Sugar.”

H: What three songs of yours would you give to somebody who’s never heard of your band?

F: What three songs? I think the first one would be “The Weather,” it just has a lot of different styles, but it also has a familiar sound. It feels like a campfire sing-a-long type song.

Yeah, I think maybe, I think “Wish You Weren’t Here.” That was actually the first time we’ve ever closed the set with that song but we thought l it felt right. We just love that song. As a band, we don’t take ourselves super seriously. Like it’s really hard for us to like, write about serious stuff or act serious or try to be cool and I feel like there’s just this like, fun lightheartedness about that song. Last would have to be “Pendulum” for sure just because we also love to write like some heavier stuff. And we kind of have that balance of a lot of different genres of music. So I feel like out of our heavier songs that’s one that we feel like a lot of people might get into and like.

H: Any sets you guys are dying to catch? Like, who is your must see?

F: I think for me without a doubt I want to see I Set My Friends On Fire. So I’m just very excited.

Yeah, definitely State Champs never get sick of seeing them. They are so amazing live. And I would say I’m really excited to see Billmuri!

Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! I’m really excited to see them. A lot of people don’t know how legendary they are, like It was really influential to me when I was growing up. There’s just so many bands like I’m really having fun clearly. Sum 41, Simple Plan. I mean, come on. I can go on.

H: For me it’s State Champs all the way. I mean all our readers here know that’s my band but Chunk is a good one too. Because I feel like if you’re in this scene, you have to see them, they haven’t played a show in a while.

H: What was the experience like getting to write a full-length album as opposed to your EPS?

F: I think with a full-length album, you have more of an opportunity to kind of experiment with different styles because when you have that EP or four songs, it’s alright we have to do this! We have to do this but when you have more than four, like “C’est La Vie,” which is the ending track, it just has a completely different vibe.We also have “Highs and Lows,” another deeper track, which is something that we would never normally do. But you have that opportunity to experiment and maybe bring someone else into your band that you know might not listen to the other styles.

But it gives you that luxury to be a little bit more explorative with who you are as an artist. And then it can also lead you down a new path

Yeah, you never know if you write a song that you probably wouldn’t have written if it was on an EP because it may be too much of an outlier for like a four or five song EP. When you have 10 or 11 songs you can take that risk and you never know sometimes that could be the biggest song. It really happens all the time with bands and I feel like an album can also take you on a journey sometimes.

H: So side question: Say someone releases an album, the first time you listen to it, do you have to listen to it front to back to hear that journey or are you a shuffle person?

F: If they released it mostly in singles I’m just gonna shuffle it but if there’s like maybe one or two singles then I’ll do a front to back

yeah, I think as musicians too. We want to do front to back because we know the experience of how much thought just goes into this track order and I know we thought about our song order. We probably have 20 different versions of the song order of the album and we only had 10 songs. Yeah, so I normally thought it’s time to document that so I think with other things like doing a justice given to them, listen to it the way the artist wanted you to listen. So many times people will just focus on the singles and like some of those deeper cuts are the best on the album.

H: How was it collaborating with Dan Marsala on “Ignite?“

F: Having the opportunity to kind of talk with him like we we met him at Warped Rewind, where we were playing this Warped Tour kind of cruise that we had the opportunity to take part in. When he was cool with it, we were like now we have to choose what song we want him to do, and then finally Ignite became that song. I just felt like it had that energy and Dan Marsala just brought another like sound to it and we love him as musicians and just how humble he is as a person. I hope to be that, like him in the future.

We got to play a festival with Story Of The Year a couple months ago and he got to come out and do it and for us like that’s always the moment you dream of if you have a feature like that.

H: What can we expect to see from FELICITY in the rest of 2022 and early 2023?

F: Right now, we are working on new music. We’ve been working on it since last July. So it’s been almost a year but we are being pretty ambitious. For the last year, we’ve been working on two albums at once because we had a year and a half where we didn’t play any shows, a year and a half where we didn’t really get to make music. So we’re trying to kind of make up for last time. The first one is almost finished, and we should be in the studio in the next couple of months and hopefully finishing up a lot of that and then our goal is to have something out by the end of this year, which would be awesome. That’s really our main focus and make a lot of fun TikToks. Then Dear Universe has its one year anniversary in a couple months.

H: Are you going to try and do like a release show, like a play in full of Dear Universe for the anniversary?

F: We haven’t thought about that. But maybe like a birthday cake for It, or we’ll do like a live stream or something

Um, but we are booking a big cover show in August, which is not announced yet. It’s going to be a cover night and we’re going to do a Nickelback cover set. So we’re doing that, then, you know, hopefully some more festivals and stuff this fall.

H: Where can fans follow you to stay up to date on what’s next?

F: Oh, yeah, we try to make it super easy. It’s even written on the back of my guitar. @WeAreFelicity, w e a r e f e l i c i t y. we’re on Facebook Instagram TikTok, Reddit.

H: Thank you guys so much for your time. This was so much fun, honestly.

Make sure to check these guys out, they’ve got big plans for the next year and you don’t want to miss it!

Check out our full So What?! Music Festival 2022 recap!

TAGS: So What?! Music Festival | FELICITY