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Photo by Ana-Maria Trudel

Hailing from the Canadian Maritimes, Fireball Kid sets a singular scene: picture glowing beer bottles with anthropomorphic features, interlocking arms as they settle on a log around a campfire, ready to hear the latest ghost story passed down for generations. On his latest album, Deer Path Turn To A Shortcut, Fireball Kid pulls back the veil on party culture, juxtaposing the glorification against the deadliness, letting both breathe stories onto the record that are neither right nor wrong. Entranced by the honesty and gritty indie rock tone, we called Fireball Kid up to hear more about the creation of the album and the legends of local party-goers: 

OnesToWatch: Why Fireball Kid? Are you really into Fireball? Is it a superhero name? 

Fireball Kid: It's funny because I'm an Earth sign and I feel more at ease with water and ground. But, the story comes from when I was 16– I'm 30 now –hanging with a friend outside the basement we used to jam in. This guy was a burnout. He was telling me about this fighter that they call the Fireball Kid because he never gives up. He was into MMA or something. And I was 16 and baked. I was like, no, dude, I'm the Fireball Kid. Which is funny. But it also spoke to me at the time because it has that human spirit vibe, a belief in yourself. I still obviously resonate with it on some level because I'm still here all these years later. It’s an optimism and energy thing more than anything else. 

I love that. We're here celebrating your album, Deer Path Turn To A Shortcut. I would love to start with: if listeners have never heard your music before, what's the first song you would tell them to listen to? Whether it's on the album or not. 


On the new record, you'd want to start with “At Your Leisure,” which is not the big single. It's the first track and it sets the tone for the ghostly forest magic, dusky lake thing I'm going for on this record. If you were to look for a second track to speak to my whole catalogue, I would listen to “I Like Going Out” on my previous record, which is really up the party-pop alley.

That's a good segue, because this current project feels like the hangxiety album. 

Yeah, big time. 

This is definitely a different sound for you. How did you develop this new sonic direction? 

In a way, it's coming full circle back to indie rock. I was a big indie rock teen, and I think I rebelled against it when I grew up. I hit my 20s and I wanted to do this synth pop, really simple and straightforward sound, almost out of spite. I almost wanted it to be so dumbed down. And I've kind of come all the way back around to my indie rock roots. On top of that, I felt ready to grow as a writer again and actually say something. I do think I was saying something when I was singing about partying–there was a tongue-in-cheekness to it, and a wholehearted discussion of sorts going down– but coming back to the hanganxiety and a bit sadder place was out of a desire to push myself artistically and do something well thought out and a little more ambitious and with heart. It's something more human. 

Did you mean to make an album or did the songs find each other?

They always kind of sort themselves out. I'm always writing and there usually comes a time, pretty quickly, where I look at what I’ve created and feel like it’s a record. The record quickly rears its head. I'm always writing the next record. I'm never aimlessly writing. But there's definitely a moment where I feel ready to commit to it. 

Right. How did you then land on the title for the album–Deer Path Turn To A Shortcut–once you saw what was being presented in front of you? 

Usually they come right to me, but this time I had to sit down with a piece of paper and write phrases over and over again until I found one that felt kind of magic.
It's in the present tense, so it feels almost like a spell, an incantation, or a command to this spirit place that we exist in across the whole record. I was thinking about deer paths and desire lines and natural things, how these lines and paths get made. A deer path is when you're following what you think is a trail in the woods, but it's actually just a weird passageway made by deer running, and then you follow it and you get stuck. It speaks to the whole alcoholism thing that’s being deconstructed on the record. But also, the other side of that is how humans create desire lines when taking shortcuts, how you see the grass all beaten down. It's like dabbling in people's inclinations and following each other's inclinations and getting lost in nature all at once. It says a lot and says nothing. 


I really like it. I think it is what you want to make of it. 

Yeah, we can all project on it. Which is good.
You want it to be a little magical and elusive. 

I have to talk about the cover art. I think it's my favorite thing ever. 

Really? 

Four beer bottles linking arms on a log, that’s good stuff. 

I'm so glad you can tell that they're linking. My friend Allison Higgins made the sculpture. She's an artist also from the East Coast of Canada. We're from the Maritimes. We all live in Montreal. A big group of us have found each other out there and obviously tons of non-maritimers too. She's an artist and woodworker and a best friend of mine. I'd asked her to do this sculpture based on a fuddling cup, which is a bar game from the UK in the 18th century, where it would be three or more ceramic mugs all sculpted together. They'd be interwoven, like how you see the bottles linking arms. But it’s a puzzle where you don’t know which arms were connected and which arms were flowing through. So there's only one angle you could drink from without spilling it on yourself. 


Oh, that's so cool. 

It’s also really funny because it sounds so complex, but the people who were playing this game were hammered in the UK, in the 1700s. I thought that was really cool. Allison and I both grew up at pit parties on the East Coast and drinking Moosehead and Alexander Keith's out of bottles. So there was a lot that we connected on right away and she delivered.
The bottles are actually glowing, too. She filled them with resin. Originally we were going to have a bunch of different sizes and I had to drink all this booze to keep giving her bottles. We were freezing our asses off on a little island near Montreal, shooting it in November.

This is so Canadian. 

It really is. 

Question, Fireball Kid is technically a band, yeah? 


I want it to be even more of a band. It's mostly me and Zach, a close collaborator who produced the whole record. My best friend forever, Seth, too. We all have our own interlinked projects and Fireball Kid is more me leading the way. It is a band and it is also my band, and I also am Fireball Kid, but everyone is in Fireball Kid. If I'd actually been smart, it would just be a band where we all are the leaders, because then I wouldn't have to do all the emailing. I'm not very good at that. So it goes. 

We are all Fireball Kid. So you produced the whole album with Zack. 

Yes, Zack is the main producer, and Seth and I did a lot of the writing together. We spent 10 days at our friend's cabin a few summers ago hammering everything out and bringing it up to album stuff. 

Awesome. I'm always curious when people are that closely linked with the production of their projects. Were there any specific pieces of gear or plug-ins that you were going back to with each of the songs? 

There was definitely a vocal chain that Zack had developed that brings a noisy whisper into the vocals, it gives them this wet, textured feel. When we were recording it, we were in this wooden cabin that our friend owns in the mountains north of Montreal. I wanted the cabin itself to be heard–which I'm sure everyone who's ever fucking gone out and recorded in a cabin has said the same thing.
But I was like, let the wood squeak, let the dog’s collars jingling stay in. I asked Zack to make it sound like a campfire. We recorded so much with the windows open and birds chirping, and I really feel like that texture is present in the tracks. 

It's really hard to make something sound bad in a good way. 

Totally. I used to produce my stuff a lot and then decided to stop and just write songs and lean on better producers, and I couldn't have done this record the way Zack did at all. He's so good. It sounds messy in a way that's a vibe. 

It's intentional. It sounds clean. It's close. 

Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted. I wanted a texture, so I'm glad it came across.

We sort of touched on this with the alcoholism narrative, but did you notice any overarching themes as you were putting together this album? 

There was definitely a big emphasis on the hangover of the party, which thematically links it to past works. But, going further than that, there's this ghost story element to it. It’s about how we mythologize people in our lives and their drinking and their partying, for better and for worse, especially coming from Eastern Canada where everyone is a hard drinker or comes from hard drinkers or is freshly on or off the wagon. There's these stories and these figures that get blown up larger than life, whether it be your uncle or your grandpa or your neighbor or your friend’s older brother, there’s people who can drink themselves to death and it becomes legendary. The positive side of it is in the song, “King of the Lake,” where it's like talking about these guys who would just piddle around town their whole lives, but they're larger than life, and especially in their passing, you hear how he always kept 24 beers in the fridge in case someone came over. Which is normal, but it becomes this grandiose story you tell in their passing. Similarly, there's a song on it called “Hey Chucky” that's about my grandfather, walking home from a dance in Mabu Cape Breton when he was 17. He was hammered. And the story goes that a ghost walked him up the hill silently with a lantern and at the top was like, “Have a good one, Charlie,” and then disappeared. But all these stories, which are actually beautiful, are also linked in with this drinking and partying. And I fucking love drinking and partying. But I want to assess it and talk about both sides of it without it being one thing or the other. It’s fine to glorify it, but we need to acknowledge that it’s wrapped in an inherited chain of ghost stories and glamorization of being on a porch all night drinking and smoking and recognizing that that does fuck up our lives and get us killed and feeds into abusive family dynamics. But then also the magic that we talk about is very real as well. 

It’s an important conversation. Because there is magic in being in your 20s and going to the local bar with your friends at the end of the day, but at what point does it become a problem? It's nice to have those things side by side and just look at them. It never feels heavy on this project. 

 Good. I want people to be cast into their own well of emotions. It should be chill and fun and kind of sad. 

It’s all of that at the same time.
I have three final fun questions. I would love to know if the album was a candle, what would it smell like? 

It would actually just smell like a bonfire. You know how candles sometimes just smell like burning trees? Like pine incense. 

That's great. I'd also love to know what your favorite sound is right now, but a life sound, not a music sound. 


It’s springtime in Montreal, and that means the return of the really chatty birds. You don't really get those in the winter and they're pulling back up. That is my favorite time of year. I miss the birds so much. 
And the birds are back in town. 

The birds are back in town. That's awesome. My final question is who your OnesToWatch are, who are some artists that we should be listening to? 

Obviously I have to shout out Amery. Bestie from Montreal, she has new shit coming right now. Her other band Born at Midnight's dropping a big record soon, but her solo shit is also coming back and that's always my top rec. She's the best one doing it in the city right now. Who else do I love? Gizmo from PEI. They're a power pop group of guys a bit younger than me who are the nicest dudes ever and have a big awesome power pop record coming this year. Also Sekko. I just got put onto them this week, and I've been walking around, headphones in, picking up my laundry, listening to that combination of guitar and crunk. It's like Lil John meets McGee, I fucking love it. 

It really works for the indie boys that still love pop music. 

Totally. Also shouts out the homies in Ribbonskirt. And one final one, low key to the extent that I'm going to have to look up what he's called, because I missed his show in Montreal the other day. Tyrin from Montreal who plays in Crasher, he just played his first show under his new project, Harmony Syndrome. He was in this almost Sergeant Pepper's suit, that's a one to watch for me, and I haven't even heard it yet. 

This is incredible. Thank you so much for everything. 

Thank you!