Interview: For Lack of a Term
Hailing from the budding music scene of Yonkers, NY, For Lack of a Term is an alternative punk rock four piece known around for their unique live sound and energetic performances. Frontman Ryan Dempsey & drummer Chris Beairsto, who have worked together on past musical projects, brought in bassist Arthur Wernham to start the band, and shortly after Conor Cullen joined the group on guitar and backing vocals. In 2019, For Lack of a Term release “Recalibrate,” & shortly after followed the EP, up with the tour inspired track “Good Day Cafe”. The band are set to release a new record in 2021.
Read below to learn more about them and their work!
How did you guys meet being all from New York?
Arthur-“It’s kind of a history I guess. So our front man Ryan and our drummer Chris met back in 2008 and they had played in previous projects together and they went through multiple line up changes under the name FLOAT. A lot of those didn’t work out though. .Obviously haha. So one day we kinda linked up. Me and Chris are childhood friends, we’ve known each other since like 3rd grade so. He’s always been a drummer and I’ve always been a guitarist and bassist. But I was doing heavier things music wise, like hard core, metal core, all that. One day they needed a fill in and I was still in another project and I did some filin gigs but we ended up having such a good time that they were like ‘hey do you wanna make this like a full time thing? Do you wanna stick with this?’ and I was like ‘Absolutely!’. I actually said no at first haha but I ended up saying absolutely and yeah. We were FLOAT for, I think I joined in, I officially joined in 2015 and we were float until 2017 and after that it's been ‘For Lack Of A Term’ since”
Any significant meaning behind the name?
Arthur- “FLOAT was for lack of a term abbreviated and I didn’t find that out, we were trying to do one thing, we had a lot of new music, we had a solidified line up. We had a lot of things going to our set. We thought FLOAT did not represent any of that and we wanted something that would be familiar but it wouldn’t discredit anything in the past we’ve done, so we were talking one day and Chris, our drummer, had said to me, ‘why don’t we just revert back to what we were?’ and I was like ‘which was??’ ‘For lack of a term’ and I was like ‘Yes! why have we not been doing that’ So yeah we ran with that. It was kind of a rebranding kind of thing
What’s the main thing keeping you sane during all of this craziness the past year?
Arthur- “ I am an essential worker so when things first kicked off, definitely getting out of the house to go to work, that once or twice a week was amazing just because the other 5-6 days I’m stuck inside you know. You have to be safe and abide by the rules to keep others safe but it was just so repetitive, my routine again, so it was just go to work, working on music. I pick up little things in between, started doing photography and stuff, just things I can do from home, that I can get my bearings in”
Anything exciting in the works for this year that fans can look forward to? New ep or single?
Arthur- “Definitely. We are sitting on some new music, actually a lot of new music. We just dropped a hot sauce back in February, which is pretty cool, it was an exclusive with this guy Luke, who made it for us and it’s like a custom made, homemade hot sauce. It’s super delicious. We’ve got a bunch of little things coming. We’ve got some exclusive designs that we've been talking about. A lot of content coming from you, a lot of music and things of that to accompany it.
You guys made a hot sauce back in early February! How did that come into the works?
Arthur- “ So this band, I can’t remember their name, i feel awful I can’t remember their name, but I’ve literally never met them. It was one of my friends showed a post and the band was like ‘yo we made this hot sauce’ and I was like ‘Woah’. So my buddy who shared, I was like ‘Yo did you get the hot sauce, was it good’ and he was like no its a custom hot sauce, this guy does them and I touched base with the guy and he was kind of like ‘Yeah dude, I make hot sauces. I’m a chef, I like to make hot sauces’ and I was like alright what’s your rate. and he was like ‘yeah I do it for companies, I do it for others I just make hot sauces’. It was honestly super cool. I hit him up and he was super polite, super down to earth, super nice. So he told us his rates and I was like give us 20-30 hot sauces whatever the amount was, and they’ve been selling pretty well honestly. It was like a one-off thing, we were looking to do coffee grinds, because we’d seen bands doing coffee collars. Like I don’t know if you’ve seen movements at all. They did coffee beans and I was like that’s sick because I drink coffee at least 4 times a day, it's an unhealthy habit, it's awful. But we couldn’t find anyone who produced their own coffee beans so we thought the hot sauce thing is kinda sick, let's do it. Something helping the music scene right now, this is like prime time for creativity. I feel like bands are doing anything and everything to keep themselves afloat and keep them going and keep their names out there. When the world does resume, DIY is gonna thrive. But you know, venues are taking a hit right now which blows. As awful as everything is right now, i think its a super cool time to see what everyone can do
What are you most looking forward to when live music comes back?
Arthur- “ Festivals and tours. I want that back so bad. We had a couple of festivals booked last year, same for tours that I just had to pull the plug on because things were getting out of hand. There's a band from our area called ‘Shake Out’ and they were in the middle of a cross country run, like in Arkansas, like somewhere crazy far and hes like ‘Yeah its a 26 hour drive home’ and I'm like 26 hours!? But yeah
What’s been the most memorable part of doing music?
Arthur- “ ooh that’s a tough one. I don’t know if I can narrow it down but one most memorable.. I got like a top 3 maybe top 5 right. So we did a tour last summer, down to Florida and back, 7 days. That was probably one of my favorite tours we’ve ever done, just because it was with our buddies, another astronaut, their from the Bronx, their super cool, super down to earth dudes and we’ve been plying shows with those guys for god knows how long and it was really cool , it was in August if I’m not mistaken, a summer tour. There was something super humbling, the thought that we used to play the same DIY halls and now we are booking our own runs. We got to shoot down to Florida of all placed which is like super sick. I kind of regret not going to Disney if I’m being honest, I really wanted to do that, but yeah, that was probably on of them. Okay so there was also, I played a date of the Vans warp tour, actually 2 dates of the warp tour with another project and we had fans come from , this was the buffalo date I think and these girls drove from like North Carolina, this was easy like a 10+ hour drive and yeah they told us, ‘ we found out you were only playing these Northern date so we took the drive’ and even like when for lack of a term goes somewhere whether it be Jersey or Florida, when someone knows our songs, even at this point it’s still like a ‘Woah that’s kind of cool’. Definitely the fan interaction is always something because that’s really what keeps us going, just like the tour thing, it is just super humbling, like you can get to this point if you try hard enough and that is always something I found to be I guess like a reality check. Fan interaction, touring and we played with Drake bell a while ago, maybe 2-3 years ago and that was super super cool because I loved Drake and Josh and his whole set was Nickelodeon songs so it was like Nostalgia, it was super fun. All he did was play theme songs and covers and its crazy to see Drake Bell play, ‘Ice Ice Baby’ Its like a once in a life time thing, you can’t really describe that. Meeting these people who are like i love this song, thank you’ Its just super humbling and nice to hear”
Listen to ‘ Good Day Cafe’ HERE.
Watch the official video for ‘RECALIBRATE’ below and listen to it HERE.