Bad Seed Rising's Francheska Pastor

By Jay Oakley

You've got some new music coming out, tell us about it.

Yes, we have A Place Called Home which came out April of this year, it's only five dollars on iTunes and hopefully we're going back into the studio very soon.

You have a show coming up with Saint Asonia, are you excited about that?

Oh, very excited. That's going to be awesome, we haven't played home in a very long time. We're very excited to play there and hopefully all of our friends and family will come out because I'm not sure when we'll be able to play Baltimore again.

So, you have a lot of outside Baltimore shows coming up?

Yes, we're gonna be on tour. I can not say with who but it's going to spanning across the US and going into Canada a little bit. Very excited about that, first time playing in Canada and first time playing out of the country.

With everything that you guys have accomplished so far, playing big festivals and with big bands, what has Bad Seed Rising given you so far?

A lot of experience and a lot of happiness. I've learned a lot about myself through this and who I really wanna be. All my life and being a young kid people tell you who to be and it's frustrating when so many people tell you who to be when you don't know yourself who you are. This band helped me branch out and made me more of a socialite. I used to have bad anxiety about talking to people, I would never talk but now people tell me how I won't stop talking. But I'm very excited to be with them. I couldn't have asked for better mates, they're like my brothers. The music that we're making together really makes me happy and for a while people were telling us what music to make. Fuck that, we want to do our own thing, so we've been doing our own thing and it's just really cool.

The last tour we when on was with Adelitas Way and they were the coolest ever, we wanna tour with them again. They were the greatest people ever, no egos there, just completely down-to-earth dudes, they're hilarious as shit and I would totally tour with them again. All the other people we've worked with so far, they don't talk to you. What's the point of touring if you're not having fun with other people? You're already spending eight to fourteen to twenty ours on the RV or the bus or whatever you're in with the same people. Sometimes you're just listening to music or reading a book or in the boys case working on homework. It's nice to get out because once you transfer from your RV to the dressing room then it's just the same four walls. For me and the boys and our girl Caitlyn Willard, she's our photographer, she's our merch girl and she's just fantastic at everything she does, we all walk around and we'll go to different stores and we'll just explore the city. It doesn't matter if you've been to that city a million times I'll still explore it. I'll explore different things that I haven't explored yet.

That's true because the way I look at, after spending X amount of time in a bus or cooped up I'd want to get away from it. Not that some "me time" isn't important for people but there are times where if I was playing I'd hang with people and mingle because the last thing I'd want is to go anywhere near the bus.

Exactly! The thing is I really don't like being alone. It's nice to have "me time" but personally for my "me time" it's on the toilet. I ain't gotta poop or anything, I just sit on the toilet. I know it's weird but I just do. Even at home, I'll spend and hour on the toilet, on my phone, on Twitter, on Instagram, Facebook and just chill because that's just my "me time."

That's hysterical because bathrooms, forever, have often been referred to as people's "offices."

Right, Right! Oh my God! That's just where I find my sanctuary. So, yeah, I don't like chilling on the RV or chilling in the dressing room or chilling in the venue. You spent drive for so long, you set up your gear and then you have like five hours before the show starts so you can go have fun.

When it comes to the writing process for music, is it a team effort or does anyone in particular take the lead on it?

The way it's been the last year, Mason (Gainer, guitarist) has been bringing in riffs and Aiden (Marceron, drummer) will go off that and the boys will jam on it together. On A Place Called Home a lot of those songs Aiden would make up the riffs. He'd tell them to Mason play it by singing the riff. I would go ahead a write lyrics. For this album we came into the studio for pre-production, we had three or four songs that we liked and we'd go ahead and record them. We decided we didn't like them so we deleted them. We wrote seven songs that we really liked in forty-eight hours.

I worked with Drew Fulk (producer) and my friend Wes Lauterbach and we worked on lyrics and melodies and every single song took about fourteen hours for lyrics. I know it's crazy but when you're in a group of people I feel like people talk over me and it's hard, especially if I'm having anxiety. But, over the last year I've been working on not having anxiety and telling people exactly what I want.

Sure because I'd say that since you have gotten to put in so much work, you're so much tighter and now you can put the time and effort into tunes that are yours and putting out the message that you want.

Yeah, now that I'm eighteen and I've lived some kind of life now. At fourteen I thought I'd lived some kind of life too but no I guess not. I think I'm a lot more self-aware in realizing who I wanna be. I'm discovering a lot of injustices in this world and a lot of inequality and that's what I wanna talk about and treating other people with respect. I've been on that end, I am a brown, little girl. I've got three things against me. People don't treat me with respect because I'm brown, I'm a girl and I'm tiny. So, I've been on the other end of that stick and I want to teach people that you don't have to put up with that bullshit. It's your life and they should do what ever they want.

Francheska, thanks so much for taking some time to just kick it and talk.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, I've had a great conversation with you.