Fluffy Lumbers is Samuel Franklin, a native of New Jersey and a current Sarah Lawrence student. While Fluffy Lumbers is Franklin’s main gig, he also plays in multiple other Underwater Peoples bands. He is a cinema freak, a funny guy, a drummer before a guitarist and a lover of free coke. (a-cola).
Fluffy Lumbers is releasing its debut 12″ on Underwater Peoples in the not too distant future and is playing at Sarah Lawrence on Wednesday (with Pants Yell!), the Cake Shop on Nov. 21 and Bruar Falls on Dec. 5. The album is being recorded in his parents basement over Thanksgiving vacation and features mostly all new tracks. Franklin says “the cover, back cover and all inserts will be 3-D interactive holograms.” WOAH.
Read on if you’re interested in hilarity. Franklin talks bandmates, New Jersey, music categorization and much more.
What is a Fluffy Lumber?
Reactions to the name have ranged from “yeah” to “that’s the worst band name I’ve ever heard.” Frankly, I probably could have done a lot worse. Thinking about it, a lot of my favorite bands have what could be considered “bad” band names but I guess band names have never really mattered much to me. I realized at the onset that I probably wouldn’t be able to come up with a name of Guided By Voices or The Rolling Stones caliber so I just tried to choose something that sounded vaguely comforting and pleasant. Some people seem to think it’s referencing a fictional wholesale wood distributor, that’s fine. Someone made a joke once on a message board that it’s a synonym for flaccidity, that’s fine too. “Were you high?” No, I wasn’t high. It’s really just a name. Recent misspellings include: Fuzzy Lumbers, Fluffy Lumber, The Fluff Lumbers and Rob Bip & The Pacers.
When did you form this band? Tell me about the members?
In the fall of 2007 I began working towards a BFA at the School Of The Museum Of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts but due to an allergic reaction to something (maybe just some sort of late summer/fall seasonal thing?) the skin around my eyes became swollen and my eyes themselves were usually inflamed and watering. Looking this way, I rarely wanted to leave the single I had in the dorms except to attend class so I found that the best way to spend my time other than doing homework and going to the movies by myself was to record songs with my Casio keyboard and some guitar pedals. I sent these songs to a few friends and they were into it so I kept recording and, after learning the most basic basics of the guitar I received that Christmas, started playing shows by myself when I was invited. I decided from the get-go that the recordings would consist of only myself mostly because I find recording with other people to be very stressful but this summer and fall I asked some of my best friends to back me up at shows and they obliged. Luka Usmiani (bass), Ian Drennan (guitar), Ian Dykstra (drums), Alexander Steinberg (guitar), Alex Craig (guitar), Sebastian Castillo (guitar) have all played in various incarnations of the live band since June.
How is it playing drums in your own band?
People seem to like it but I would rather play guitar. My worry is that people will start calling the music ‘No Age-esque’ or something along those lines because all it took was a song about a COPS episode for people to start calling my music “beach,” “summer” and “surf.” The beach is fun sometimes but I don’t really feel strongly either way about it, summer’s cool and everything but I prefer fall and winter, and surf….what? I never really got that one. Drums were my first instrument so one could argue that the live show is tighter when I play drums and can’t make mistakes on the guitar but playing guitar is just more fun for me at this point.
