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You know how sometimes you just stumble upon this great cover of a song you've never heard before and you sit and ponder what made the band decide to cover a song totally out of their genre.

This is how I discovered Framing Hanley. I happened to come across hearing a remix of Lil' Wayne's Lollipop and was totally intrigued by the rock band from Nashville, Tennessee. It's not very often that a rock band can take a hip hop song and make it something of their own. I was afforded the chance to speak with Nixon about their music, how Lollipop came about and which Power Ranger is his favourite.

“I mean the stuff we're writing now, I think is better than anything we've written before individually and as a band and it's really fun.”
Nixon: Framing Hanley

First off for all our readers who don't know, please tell us who you are and what you do for the band.

I'm Nixon, I'm lead vocals.

How did Framing Hanley come about?

Um actually originally I answered a bulletin, on like a bulletin board at college that we were attending, a band looking for a lead singer and um went in that week, auditioned, was given the opportunity to meet Chris and Trevor, the bass player as there was a different line up at the time and they wanted to do a complete 360 with the band and get some new guitar players and ended up where we're at now.

As a band, or even as an individual, what is your creative process for creating new music?

Um it's different like sometimes someone will speak up and have an idea musically or I'll have an idea where we want to go with the song lyrically and we'll just go from there. It usually just involves the five of us sitting around scheming for a little bit and that's basically how the music is.

So you just basically come up with it on the fly?

Sometimes, I mean sometimes, well a lot of the best writing we do is on tour and you've reached that point where you're boxed up with these guys and you're staying in the same vehicle at all times and you do everything you can to get away from it and you start writing and you're like 'hey'I got this idea' so you bring it. Most of our writing starts out acoustic.

You guys released "The Moment" in March of 2007, what keeps you going for writing music and being in the studio?

Right now we just went through a line up change, we got a new guitar player, Ryan joined our band and it's just pretty much, I mean that right there is just kind of, you know created a spark for us cuz of the new line up and we just weren't hurried with the line up change, but I mean the stuff we're writing now, I think is better than anything we've written before individually and as a band and it's really fun. I mean, we came home after tour and have written like four or five new songs and tracked one song and uh Lollipop was originally a joke that I had mentioned that song in rehearsal one day and it kinda had a life of it's own and it's where it's at now it's kinda cool, it's given us more opportunities now with our cd being out now right around the time a band should be putting out their sophomore record but I think Lollipop is going to breathe fresh life into everything.

I actually just the other day finally listened to the remake of Lil Wayne's "Lollipop" that you guys did, and I have to say I loved it. What made you guys decide to cover that song?

A twelve pack of beer. No we were just sitting around one day and uh, we heard that on the radio on the way to rehearsal and I had been drinking so I said something like 'hey we should play that song it would be fun'. I was just joking around and the next day at rehearsal, Ryan was playing the little melody part on guitar and like 45 minutes later we had rehearsed so we were like alright cool let's play this show and so we played that for the first time and we just kept playing it live and the label caught on and they asked us to record the song and I mean, we never really thought that it'd be worth it.

I was checking out your youtube, and I have to say I love the fact that you do video updates, we at the sound faction actually make small videos when we are together, what made you decide to just make 'check-in' videos for your fans?

Well I mean especially with the internet being such a key to music and especially when we're on tour and we don't get to stay in touch with the fans as much that's just a way for them to kinda relate to where we're at and where we're going when we're out on the road cuz for a lot of people they don't know what it's like you know what the whole touring thing involves but we try to do stuff like that just to keep everyone involved.

You guys did a tour this year with Tantric? How was that? And what was life like on the road like?

It was crazy, they're on the same label as us and we didn't know what to expect at first. I remember back in high school and the song 'Mourning' was like one of my favourite songs back then and one night I ended up going on stage and doing that song with them. It was definitely surreal. They are some hard partyers. They were supposed to take us under their wing and instead they would make us drink bottles of vodka with them every night on tour. It was pretty ridiculous.

So far, what has been your biggest challenge as a band and what has been your best moment?

I don't know really, I mean we've been lucky enough to, well obviously we've been lucky enough to get involved in this industry. Usually they call us and we do interviews just to get ourselves out there but we've been fortunate enough to be on familiar tours going out with, well we went out with Trapt and Fuel and then of course the Tantric tour. And you know as an opening band you go out every night with the intention to just open the show cuz the fans are there to see the headliners usually but you just want to get people's attention whether it's one person or 6 people a night that come over and meet us at our merch table and if one person comes over then 6 more might.

Best moment for me is always going to be the first time we heard our song on the radio. We were recording our record in Orlando, Florida and at like 5 in the morning they were playing our single cuz we had our single on the radio before we'd done the record so that's kinda crazy. That was definitely probably the best moment for me, I mean it was the most surreal moment.

If there was a chance that you were in charge of the music industry, what would be the first thing you would change

I don't know, sometimes it seems like it's a dying industry just because it's so easy to get music for free. But we don't complain about it because well if someone likes our music enough to hear it then I don't want to change that. Um I don't know, there's a lot of things that especially with being signed and everything it's kinda lame cuz you only get one shot and that's it. And you know that it might not be your fault when it's all over. But we're looking for a label where we have a lot of control over our career, our future so pretty much if things don't work out, we're always going to be the ones to blame.

Music has a tendency to impact a lot of people, being in a band, and even being an individual looking in from the outside, how has music impacted you? How has it influenced your outlook on life/anything?

For me it's always been something I can relate to and it's pretty cool the way someone can write a song about something and someone else may not, well they could interpret the song to mean something else and that's the most beautiful thing about music is that it's so universal and like anyone can take their own meaning from a song and they can make a song mean to them whatever or how it relates to their life.

As a fairly new band on the scene, and with your experiences, what advice would you pass along to a band thats trying to make it in the industry?

I don't know, I mean it's all about time really. I remember when our first single came out and then three months later we were sitting home doing nothing and now this whole Lollipop thing and you think you're going to move again and you really can't determine what the time frame is going to be. But basically if you believe in it enough you can make it happen, no matter how long you've been around.

The Sound Faction is made up of five girls who are random at best, love to laugh and make others laugh. We try with each interview to ask five of the most random questions that you will ever experience in an interview

What Power Ranger would you be and why?

The White Ranger cuz he was, wait was it the white ranger was the... [insert guy talking in background about the purple power ranger] No the White Ranger was the cool one. Yeah he was the one that was like Rico Sauve.

Whats your favorite five letter word?

Ummmm, I don't know. I can think of a lot of favourite four letter words. Um I don't know, I guess... music. That's five letters.

If you were a scented candle what would you smell like?

Hey we had a cheesecake candle, those things smell good. A cheesecake candle, I'd smell like cheesecake. Actually it doesn't smell anything like cheesecake, it just smells good.

If you could be any fictional character who would it be and why?

Oh Batman, definitely Batman. He's badass.

Do you have a favorite dinosaur?

Stegosaurus, for sure.

We'd like to thank Nixon for taking the time to talk to us. Go check out Framing Hanley at their myspace http://www.myspace.com/framinghanley. And catch them on tour with Theory of a Deadman soon.