When it comes to my musical tastes, they’re all over the place. Growing up it was hair metal in the 80s, metal, rap, and techno in the ’90s, and indie and alternative rock in the 2000′s.  If 2010 has been any indication of what this decade may hold, it’s that I’m in to rocking bands with women lead singers!  Looking at my RBN purchases thus far, I see In This Moment, Alchemilla, and now Audio Fiction.  With a self-described sound that combines the best parts of No Doubt and Garbage, Audio Fiction knows what they are good at, and does it very well.  If you’re in or around the NYC area, they’ll prove it to you at a free show April 30th at Best Buy by Union Square, and again at Webster Hall on June 17th.

Audio Fiction is also big fans of Rock Band, so it comes as no surprise that they had their song “Race the Hourglass” available in the Rock Band Network upon launch.  With amazing vocals, an infectious beat, and a killer guitar riff (with a kick-ass solo), this is one track you don’t want to miss.  Go back and pick it up, if you haven’t!

I recently had a chance to catch up with Mark O’Toole and Darren Korb, drummer and bassist for Audio Fiction, to ask him about the band, his notoriety in New York City, and the Rock Band Network.  Check it out!

RockBandAide: Tell us about Audio Fiction and the members of the band.

Mark O’Toole: Audio Fiction formed around six years ago in NYC but at that time half the band was from Ireland, now it’s just myself. The members of the band include Kristin Wilson our rocker chick singer, Charles Park on Page-like guitars, auteur Darren Korb on driving bass, and band co-founder and manager, me on drums. We have started to play with keyboards on live shows and Dennis Natal has joined us for these shows.

RBA: How would you describe your music to people who have never heard it?

MO: Well, the press have generally described us as a cross between No Doubt and Garbage, but we think we are more like the resulting bastard stepchild of both. Live we are more rock’n’roll.

RBA: What are some of your musical influences?

MO: Each of the members actually bring a wide range of different personal influences to the band from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s. For instance Charles is heavily into classic rock and guitar solos, which you can hear on “Race the Hourglass.” As a result, agreeing on a cover song to play live sometimes becomes a painful process, but it’s precisely this that helps us create our own sound.

It’s easier to write and agree on our own material. In essence, we bring all our own influences to the writing and “Audiofictionalize” the sound to create our music. Which is why I think people love the songs on our album. The constant refrain we hear is people say “Wow, you have more than 3 great tracks we love and not just one good song and the rest crappy fillers.”

Check out more after the jump!

RBA: I’m always intrigued about the song writing process for musicians. What’s more fun for you to write, the lyrics or the music? And when you create a song, which comes first?

MO: That’s a good question. I think that can vary from song to song or band to band. U2 for instance tend to create the music in sessions and Bono wraps out the song until it becomes something and then goes back and tweaks it. He may have had an idea before he started on what he wanted to say. For us is definitely varies. I wrote the lyrics to “I’m Alive” before the music, then we created the music and tweaked the lyrics as we progressed through the song. In that case, he knew what he wanted to say with the song. It’s a post 9-11 homage to New York after being caught up in all that craziness that day. With “Ever Wonder,” the band wrote the song acoustically first in my apartment with the music generally coming first and creating the lyrics when we knew what we wanted the song to say. I have to say it can be a fun process when it all clicks, but sometimes we could work on one song for a while, leave it unfinished and come back to it months later. Collaborating on song writing is a lot of fun and creatively rewarding.

RBA: Where do you find inspiration for your songs? What has been the oddest source of inspiration?

MO: Generally speaking inspiration can be found in everyday things and personal feelings that mean something to us. Darren wrote “All I Have” about mourning a past relationship. A number of people have commented that it sounded like a song for our times, with American soldiers loosing their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Wishful Thinking” was inspired by a girl I saw in the gym every day who he thought was gorgeous but she never noticed he was there and needless to say he never had the balls to say hi. The he noticed one day she had a large diamond ring on her left hand. Taken.

RBA: How often do you perform live?

MO: The band likes to play out as much as possible when we are not writing. In NYC, we play about one a month. Our shows are fun, we love playing live.

We play a free show April 30th at Best Buy by Union Square NYC and then again at Webster Hall, NYC June 17th.

RBA: What is your favorite song to perform live (originals or covers)?

MO: You might get 4 different answers on that question from each band member. We do like performing our newer songs that are not on the record. We recently added Dennis Natal to our live show on keyboards and that’s been a fun experience. We get to road test the newer songs live before recording them for a new EP that we are planning for this year. There we said it – congrats RBA is the first to know!

RBA: You heard it here first, folks! What can your fans expect to see, or more importantly experience, when you perform live?

MO: They ask why is there a crack addled granny dancing in the front row?

On a more somber note, two things come to mind, one is people say wow, they can actually play live and secondly, we rock out live compared to a studio produced album.

RBA: Where do you envision yourself 10 years from now, musically?

MO: We’re glad you added “musically” in there because we were gonna say winning the lotto.

Hmm…10 years…can we be ambitious? How about with a massively increased fan base, five more albums and a Grammy.

RBA: What has been your favorite memory as a band thus far?

MO: Jesus, do you have 5 pages for that one? There’s been so many. Our first review – seeing our name in print and a stranger actually getting it. Our first gig sh*tting ourselves. Bra’s being thrown onstage (not sure if that was for the boys or Kristin). Charles breaking a string live right before a solo, he manages to re-string it while the rest of the band continued to play then gets it right for the first note of the solo, bang right on time. I kick off the wrong song while the rest of the band played another song. Playing the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York was amazing. Right there we knew we could play a stadium and fill the stage, arena and own it.

RBA: I’ve heard you’ve had a run-in with a famous (infamous) ex-dictator in the Philippines. What happened exactly?

MO: I was in Manila and ran into her by accident. I couldn’t resist sarcastically asking her did she have a spare pair of shoes for Kristin. (Imelda Marcos, wife of Dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was famous for her 6,000+ shoes collection). Needless to say she wasn’t amused. He later watched a critical documentary on her life story and was sh*tting himself after because let’s just say people sometimes “go missing” when they cross her. The New York Post’s Page Six later picked up on the story.

RBA: And you’ve also managed to find your way on to an episode of Taxicab Confessions? Spill the beans… knowing the show, this should be good…

MO: It was the first time Taxicab Confessions came back to New York after a 10 year hiatus while in Vegas. So nobody knew they were secretly filming the show. A friend and I stumbled into a cab around 4am after a long night on the town. I jabbered on about dating in NY, my Irish mother, and strippers. When we sobered up the next day, we called HBO and rescinded the release. The director, Joe Gantz, bugged me for three months pleading with me to be on the show as he felt it was very funny. In the end, I relented but insisted a camera crew from HBO come down to film the band live so we could use the footage. HBO first aired the show in 2005 and it keeps coming on about 4 times a year since. It’s been said that that particular episode is the highest rated ever, and compared to some of the other passengers on that episode, I kept my clothes on. I even changed my look so people wouldn’t bother me on the street. The lesson here is do not hail a cab lit up like a Christmas tree when four sheets to the wind.

RBA: I’ve also read that you had a little incident involving Drew Barrymore and Fabrizio Moretti (drummer for The Strokes) a few years back. How does trouble keep finding you, Mark?

MO: Hmm…I’m now starting to see a pattern here myself. I happened to be doing an interview for a music blog at The Beauty Bar down by Union Square. We ended up sitting at the bar beside Drew and her then boyfriend Fabrizio. A scuffle broke out in their crew. Admittedly when the fracas started I grabbed what I thought was the interviewer Jenny, ended up being a “I’m not amused” Drew. When it all died down I had a nice chat with Fabrizio after. He’s a cool guy.

RBA: Any advice for aspiring artists?

Darren Korb: Because everyone has a busy life outside of the band, it’s easy to get caught up in everything else and not take the time to write new material. My advice for aspiring artists would be to write as much as possible. Forget about censoring yourself and whether or not a particular song is going to be a “hit”. The more you write, the less precious everything becomes, and it makes collaboration work so much better!

RBA: How did the opportunity present itself for putting your music in the Rock Band Network?

DK: I’m a huge Rock Band fanatic and knew about the Rock Band Network since it was announced. I downloaded all the authoring tools and used my previous engineering and software recording backgrounds to figure out how to use them, based on the documents on the Creators.Rockband.com website. I authored “Race the Hourglass” by myself and submitted it to Creators for a few rounds of testing and that was that. We were amazed that we got included in the debut launch of RBN with a select bunch of artists.

RBA: How did you decide on what songs you wanted to make available for Rock Band? Was it a long process, or a simple decision?

DK: We just considered what would be the most fun to play all around. We picked “Race the Hourglass” cause it’s upbeat, has a solid hook, and a fun guitar solo. We figured those things are a good combo for Rock Band.

RBA: Being that your music will be featured in the game Rock Band, have any of you played the game? Would you play your own song in the game to see how it is?

DK: Everyone in the band has played Rock Band at some time or another. Of course we’d play our song! I’ve already gotten 100% on my expert bass part!! The rest of us won’t admit our scores.

RBA: Ha! What are some of the differences between making your tracks available for Rock Band versus more traditional music marketing?

DK: Prepping tracks for Rock Band takes a lot more work than, say, putting a song up in the iTunes store. That takes virtually no extra work. You just submit your stuff to the right channels and you’ll eventually be made available in the iTunes store. For Rock Band, it takes 40 hours of work to get your track from finished recording to playable Rock Band track, so that is probably the biggest difference technically. From a marketing standpoint, Rock Band a great opportunity to have new people exposed to your music. The chances of someone stumbling onto your track on iTunes, loving it instantly, and buying it are pretty slim. But in Rock Band people can download a demo of the track, see if they like playing it, then decide whether or not to buy it. Already someone who’s played your track in Rock Band has much deeper connection to the music than someone who clicks “preview” in iTunes. Although iTunes pays the artist more, RBN takes a much larger cut. But that said the cross marketing helps us eventually get our music out to a wider audience.

RBA: Do you feel that games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero have an impact on a player’s interest in playing a real instrument at some point?

DK: Absolutely! Games like these make it even cooler to rock! It also provides people with a fundamental understanding of a lot of the basic rhythmic skills you need for playing actual music. And the drums in particular are pretty close to the real thing. There are definitely a few expert drummers out there who could sit down at a real set and know what to do.

RBA: Is there anything that you would like the Rock Band community to know about you before you debut on the Rock Band Network?

MO: Well the good news is we have debuted already on the launch of Rock Band Network, so you can find us under Audio Fiction!  The band authored our own track for RBN, we produced our own album, we direct our own videos, we setup our own tiny label to distribute the music and we manage ourselves. If that’s not the true definition of indie artist, then what is? So support from the RBN community is a very, very big deal for bands like us. Being on Rock Band helps bands like us level the playing field with the bigger more established labels.

RBA: Awesome, and good luck on the Rock Band Network!  Thanks for your time!

For more info on Audio Fiction, check out their official website, or on Facebook or Myspace.  Their song “Race the Hourglass“ is currently available in the Rock Band Network.  Directly below is a sample of the expert guitar track from Race the Hourglass.

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