Review Fix chats with Fools for Kings’ Jordan Picken, who details the band’s origin, creative process and goals, as well as their new EP, “Crown.â€
Review Fix: How did the project start?
Jordan Picken:Â After meeting at school, the four of us decided to start a band where we just covered some of our favourite artists. Recently, this evolved into wanting to write our own music, with our debut EP Crown released this year.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Picken:Â I usually just like to improvise with some riffs and go from there. I always need something to build the rest of the song around, either a riff or a melody for a chorus. Between us, we will all have different pieces of songs that we then match up if we feel certain riffs/melodies or verses/choruses. However, lyrics are always the last element to come together, it is the least natural part for all of us.
Review Fix: What’s your standout song? How was it written?
Picken:Â My favourite is the EP title track Crown. The first thing that I wrote for the band was the chorus for this song, just having the lead guitar part and the final riff that I felt definitely belonged together, but I was unsure for a while of the rest of the elements. We eventually wrote all the melodies on the piano, that just seems to be a good way for us to visualise a melody. Then our drummer and bassist added their own touches with an almost stomp beat over the top of the guitar.
Review Fix: What are your goals for 2020?
Picken:Â Seeing as playing live is virtually impossible currently, we want to use the time to write as much material as we possibly can before being able to test it live.
Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?
Picken:Â Whenever we write our songs, the end goal is always to make them sound as good as possible live, so we want to be able to put on a good show. We want our music to be the kind of thing that pumps you up and want to blast the speakers up to listen to.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Picken:Â We want to continue writing new songs whilst waiting to be able to take it onto the stage and keep growing the band as much as we can.
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports.
Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders.
His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023.
Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief.
Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale.
Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.
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