Framing Hanley

Framing Hanley
Framing Hanley live
Background information
Origin	Nashville, Tennessee, United States
Genres	alternative rock, post-hardcore
Years active	2005 - present
Labels	Imagen Records (Present)/East-West Records/ Independent Label Group[1]
Associated acts	Parabelle
Website	www.framinghanley.com
Members	Kenneth Nixon Ryan Belcher Brandon Wootten Chris Vest
Past members	Tim Huskinson Luke McDuffee

Framing Hanley is an American rock band from Nashville, Tennessee, formed in 2005. They released their first studio album in August 2007 entitled The Moment. They are best known for their song "Hear Me Now" and their cover of "Lollipop", originally by Lil Wayne. Their most recent album is 2013's The Sum of Who We Are.

History

Formed in 2005 in Nashville, Tennessee, Framing Hanley initially played a blend of post-grunge and stylish hard rock under the name Embers Fade. High-school friends Chris Vest (drums) and Luke McDuffee (bass) met vocalist Kenneth Nixon upon entering college, while guitarists Brandon Wootten and Tim Huskinson joined the lineup soon after. Embers Fade retreated to Vest's basement to write songs and create demo records, which they later used to solicit help from former Creed bassist Brett Hestla. Impressed with the band's sound, Hestla served as an early mentor and helped nurture the musicians' songwriting. More good luck came in 2007 as the band inked a contract with Silent Majority Group, an independent label based in Florida, says the band.

After adopting a new name that paid tribute to Ashley Hanley, who had died in a car accident in late 2006. She was a close friend, and the fiance of Framing Hanley's drummer. Framing Hanley retreated to the studio to record The Moment in six short weeks. Taking its cues from the likes of 30 Seconds to Mars and 3 Doors Down, the debut album melded ballads with post-grunge anthems; it also won support from outlets like Sirius Radio, which helped boost the band's profile. Huskinson exited the band in 2008 and was replaced by guitarist Ryan Belcher, who joined just in time to record a cover version of Lil Wayne's "Lollipop." Retooling the rapper's risqué song with hard-edged vocals and heavy guitars, the band soon logged over a million plays on MySpace with the tune, which was released as a single in October 2008, says the band.

By the time the anthemic rock band Framing Hanley entered the studio in 2009 to start working on the follow-up to their 2007 debut The Moment, they were practically a different band than the quintet that emerged from Nashville, Tennessee three long years before. Sure, their music was still infectious, euphoric and at times melancholic, but they bore the marks of finesse and experience that only come from years of touring, says Nixon, frontman of the band.

We toured for 250 days out of 365 days a year, says vocalist Kenneth Nixon. And we became better musicians and a better band, no doubt about it. We also realized what was the most fun for us was to play live, and what the crowd reacted to the most. So, when the time came to work on a new record, we wanted to have songs that we really loved, and that a live audience could get into, says the band.

Being on the road with artists including Saving Abel, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and The Veer Union also made the other members of Framing Hanley more attuned to each other’s style of playing. Even during jam sessions, the musicians didn't have to guess what their bandmates were going to do next; they just intuitively knew and fed off of that communal energy to create some of their strongest songs to date, says Nixon, the lead singer of the band.

Framing Hanley’s second album A Promise to Burn is full of tight-fisted melodies, soaring guitars, and yearning harmonies that express the joy of artistic expression and the duality of being in a rock band with lines like My life is a WarZone/ torn between what’s right and wrong (WarZone). Unlike The Moment, which was written by a bunch of giddy kids who had never left their home town, A Promise to Burn was culled from years of experience, revealing both the triumphs and tribulations of being in a successful rock band. It’s an honest, unflinching record that illustrates how hard it can be to find the silver lining inside the dark clouds and at the same time, how some of the best rewards can come from not giving up on dreams, says the band.

The Promise was the first song we wrote with this lineup and the last song on the album is The Burn, Nixon says, explaining the name of the album. The title is really about how something so promising, that you look forward to your whole life, can end up burning you in the end. It’s not always the way you predict it to be but it can also be everything you want it to be, says the band.

A Promise to Burn marks the studio debut of guitarist Ryan Belcher, who, in 2008, replaced ex-guitarist Tim Huskinson, who left the band on good terms to spend more with his family. Having Ryan in the band definitely took us in a whole different direction creatively, Nixon says. Ryan and I are more on the same page, and I think as a band we were both a lot more comfortable with the music we were writing together than we were the last time. As a whole, this record is more up tempo stuff and there are a lot of layers in our band now that we didn't have before, says the band.

The band and I got really close and figured out how we all work as far as writing and we were able to really compliment each other playing because we were all interested in doing the same kinds of stuff, Belcher adds, says Nixon, frontguy of the band.

Framing Hanley started working on A Promise to Burn in 2008 during brief breaks from touring for The Moment. But just when they started gaining momentum with some of the songs, they decided to play a live cover of Lil Wayne’s Lollipop as a joke for a hometown crowd. The song went over so well, they started covering it at other gigs, and pretty soon they decided to enter the studio and record Lollipop for a re-release of The Moment. The song blew up and Framing Hanley returned to the road for nearly 18 months straight, says the band.

It kind of put the new record on hold and put a breath of fresh life into the old record, Nixon says. The good thing was we got to play two new songs on tour and when we came back to the studio we knew parts that we definitely wanted to change and try different things on those songs, says the band.

The band went to Orlando, Florida in the beginning of November 2009 to work with producer and ex-Dark New Day vocalist Brett Hestla. Since they had been on the road for so long, Framing Hanley had only a handful of new songs to work with, so they worked nearly nonstop for a solid month with Hestla and came up with a strong albums worth of material, says Nixon.

Originally we were worried that we would get down there and bang our heads against the wall in frustration, but that's the opposite of what happened, Belcher says. The songs just flowed out of us and with the help of Brett, they came together pretty quickly, says the band.

In December 2009, Framing Hanley flew to Soundmine Recording Studios in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania to record A Promise to Burn with Hestla and a variety of other producers and engineers. In addition to recording at the facility for hours on end, the band lived there as well, enabling them to fine tune their songs at all hours, day and night, says the band and Nixon, in the band.

It was cool because it was the first time we've been in a studio where we didn't have to worry about waking up at 10 a.m. to drive an hour and a half to record, Nixon says. There were live-in quarters that were really comfortable, so we just stayed there and worked whenever we felt like it. One day everyone slept in and [guitarist] Brandon [Wooten] and I woke up and started jamming on an idea he had on acoustic. Brett was there to oversee it and I started jamming on the Wurlitzer, and we created the rhythm structure of a song. We thought this could turn into something cool. And then everyone woke up, and that day, we recorded the entire song, which became Photographs and Gasoline, which is probably my favorite song on the entire record, says the band.

From the plaintive piano and heartfelt vocals which open Weight of the World to the electronic beats and winsome melodies of A Fool With Dreams to the layered serpentine guitars and propulsive rhythms and undeniable refrain of Wake Up, A Promise to Burn expands Framing Hanleys sonic boundaries while remaining true to the catchy, immediate song-craft that endeared them to mainstream rock audiences on The Moment.

I think there's definitely a bit of a departure from our first record, but you can hear the transition from the old Framing Hanley to the new Framing Hanley throughout these songs, Nixon says. Everything that we did happened naturally on its own and led to the creation of this record. We didn't go into it thinking we had something to prove to anyone, we just wanted to do something we were very, very happy about." Via FramingHanley.net

Formation and The Moment (2005-2009)

Lead singer & songwriter Kenneth Nixon, guitarists Tim Huskinson and Brandon Wooten, bassist Luke McDuffee and drummer Chris Vest came together to form Framing Hanley and quickly gained a large following in Nashville. First formed in 2005 (Under the name Embers Fade) the band posted some demos of their songs on the bands myspace page. In November 2006, these demos were discovered by Brett Hestla,^{[citation needed]} former Creed bassist and frontman of Dark New Day. Hestla helped the young Nashville based quintet record a 2 song demo in his Florida studio which he showed to Jeff Hanson (Creed, Sevendust, Paramore) and his record label Silent Majority Group.In an interview with HitQuarters Hanson said he "flipped out" when he heard the song "Hear Me Now" and decided immediately he wanted to sign them.^[2] The following day he went to see the band play in Nashville and claims that in his rush to secure the band's signatures he wrote up their deal on a napkin. Hanson became not only their label boss but also their manager, says the band.^[2]

In June 2008, Tim left the band due to recurring back problems and to pursue other endeavors in his life.^[3] He was immediately replaced by a friend of the band, guitarist Ryan Belcher. This was originally a temporary arrangement but Ryan soon became a permanent member of the band, says the band.

A Promise to Burn (2009-2011)

In early November 2009, Framing Hanley entered the studio to start working on the sophomore record, "A Promise to Burn." In a recent interview with alternativeaddiction.com, lead singer Kenneth Nixon stated that “The album tells a story that a lot of us have been through, where you have to have everything taken away from you before you can be humbled and know how lucky you are, it’s sad that it’s like that, but it’s true in a lot of people’s cases." Nixon says the band has a lot to prove with the new album, foremost that the band is more than just ‘that rock band that covered Lil Wayne's song "Lollipop." “Three years later when one song that they are remembering you for is a cover song, it kinda leaves a bad taste in your mouth,” said Nixon. “That song did a lot of things for our band, but it was really just something that we were doing for fun.” Nixon says the band was discouraged when the band re-released their debut single “Hear Me Now” following the success of “Lollipop” and saw very little response. "It leaves us with something to prove on this record. We are not just a band that covers songs, we want to prove we are a band that writes rock songs that we care about, and that is what we did with this record," says the band.^[4] In December 2009, the band won the Best Modern Rock Band at the Top In Rock Awards.^[5] Their first single "You Stupid Girl" is available on iTunes and all digital retailers now.^[6] According to their Twitter page, "Back to Go Again" is the 1st single to be released in the United Kingdom instead of "You Stupid Girl".^[7] A Promise to Burn was released in stores, on iTunes, and all music retailers on May 25. The iTunes deluxe version contains 2 bonus tracks, "Can Always Quit Tomorrow" and "Pretty Faces".^[8] Nixon also said that a new album may be released next year. The band also contributed a cover of the Nirvana song In Bloom for Kerrang!'s cover album of Nevermind, released in their special edition issue celebrating the 20th anniversary of the grunge act's breakthrough release.

However, after the release of the album, James Lirette commited suicide saying, "She's finally driven me insane, nothing should be this bad, she's a demon that controlled my very existence and now I'm going to die hating her."

The Sum Of Who We Are (2011-present)

Through Facebook and Twitter, the band has uploaded a video explaining everything that has happened to them in the past year. Nixon explains the band leaving their record label and the struggle to make another album. They created a Kickstarter campaign to help fund their record, believing that their fans could cover the cost of making the new album by only asking a dollar per fan. Framing Hanley enter the studio to record their successfully funded album. According to their official Twitter feed, and other fan sites, Framing Hanley has named Robert Venable as the mixing engineer for this album. On August 17, 2012, Framing Hanley revealed the title of their third album would be "The Sum Of Who We Are". On August 10, 2013, Framing Hanley announced the departure of Luke McDuffee as bassist. The original release date of the album was October 22, however due to legality issues it had been postponed. They had announced a new record deal and that the album's new release date would be April 24, 2014. There will be a single "Criminal".

Miscellaneous

On January 30, 2012, the band released a sneak peek of one of their new songs called "Crooked Smiles".^[9] This followed up with a statement from Kenneth stating that they had written and recorded new songs, however they will not be released for a while. On March 14, the band uploaded a demo of a song called "Flight Risk" that may or may not be included in the next album. http://soundcloud.com/framing-hanley/flight-risk The band started a kickstarter project to fund the recording of a third studio album. The rewards for donated ranged from; your name being published in the CD booklet, signed posters, t-shirts, 30 minute acoustic Skype performances and even the band traveling to your house to perform a full show. On the 14th of July, the project was fully funded. $60, 691 was pledged and the band is currently recording their third album.

Members

• Kenneth Nixon: vocals, piano, guitar (2005–present)
• Ryan Belcher: guitar, piano, backing vocals (2007–present)
• Brandon Wootten: guitar, backing vocals (2005–present)
• Chris Vest: drums (2005–present)
• Jonathan Stoye: bass guitar (2013-present, touring)

Former members

• Tim Huskinson: guitar (2005–2007)
• Luke McDuffee: bass, backing vocals (2005–2013)

Discography

Albums

Studio albums

Singles

References

External links

• Official MySpace profile
• Official Facebook Page
• Official Twitter feed
• FramingHanley.net
• Hot Indie Artist interview

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