Fastball

The new album hadn’t even hit the streets when Hollywood began logging enthusiastic reactions from mailings of advance copies. Radio started playing the poppy-rock debut single, “The Way,” nearly two months before the record went on sale, and phones started ringing.

Even Zuniga couldn’t get enough of his own stuff. “I’d never really listened to my own music for pleasure because you spend so much time creating it that by the time you’re done, you don’t really ever want to hear it again,” he told POLLSTAR. “But this time, I would listen to our record for pleasure, almost like it was another band.”

The buzz around Fastball is a long time coming. Zuniga and Shuffield had been through the record company mill already with a band called Big Car. And Fastball’s debut with the Hollywood label, Make Your Mama Proud, turned out to be another disappointment. “I think they dropped the ball on our first record,” Zuniga said. He figures that record would have gone somewhere if it hadn’t been for a lack of promotion.

“The first time around, the only people that knew about the band were music lovers,” Zuniga said. Those were the people who actively seek out music and go to see bands they’ve never heard of or maybe only read about, he said. “But your average person that works a job and comes home and then every once in awhile goes out, those people are harder to reach. They have to hear about you from the radio.”

Though Hollywood didn’t push the debut record at radio, the label did provide full tour support. With that, and an A&R rep that never gave up, the band managed to weather the tough times. Now, with a new promotion team that “freaked out” when they heard the new record, Fastball has been made a priority at the label.

Zuniga said the amazing response to the band’s latest effort has opened his eyes to the importance of songwriting. He and Scalzo share the responsibility equally. Having two singers and songwriters is the band’s biggest asset, he said; and it makes for stiff competition, as well. “You definitely feel the heat and it makes you really want to be great.”

Zuniga and Scalzo never write together. “We’re too opinionated. We can’t even get past the first verse together,” Zuniga said. “He sees things one way and I see things another way. But we’re big fans of each other’s songwriting once the songs are finished.”

With no collaboration in songwriting, one must at least assume the sound difference between the band’s first and second albums was a conspired move. Make Your Mama Proud leaned far more toward punk rock than the passionate pop grooves of All The Pain Money Can Buy. As it turns out, that transition was made with no communication between the songwriters. It must have been fate.

“We did a lot of touring on the first record and I remember one night, specifically, in San Antonio where we were just blasting through our set. Everything was like 150 miles an hour,” Zuniga said. “And I remember being just short of reaching a breaking point, going, ‘You know, I’m tired of beating people over the head. Wouldn’t it be nice to sing them a slow song that I could really deliver directly to them.’ I just started getting a longing to express myself differently.”

Subsequently, Zuniga made a demo tape of some slow songs that he really fell in love with and he made a decision: “I don’t care if anyone in the band wants to do this or not. This is what I’m gonna do.” Then he worried a bit that the rest of the band might not be into it. That was until one day when, totally unprompted, Scalzo brought in a demo tape to run past the band. “It was slow and moody, kind of melancholy,” Zuniga said. “And I was like, ‘Man, that’s unbelievable that he would write such a great song and it would be so in tune with what I’m doing. And we haven’t even talked about it.’ So at that point, I knew we could do this record.”

Inquiring minds were finally able to find out what all the hubbub around the new record was about when it went on sale last week. But the true test of success will be touring, Zuniga said. The band hit the road earlier this month for a U.S. club tour, which will stop off in its home base for South By Southwest, and then continue on a stint with Whiskeytown. Zuniga figures the tour will end “sometime in the next millennium.”

In the meantime, he continues to prepare that oh so tongue-in-cheek spiel he’ll use when fame and fortune set in. It should go something like this: “I’m the greatest songwriter on the face of the Earth and 200 years from now, people will still be trying to figure out how I did what I did.”