One Flew West Releases New Album, Plays Meow Wolf

One Flew West is riding the wave of pop-punk revival that centers around bands who found early influence of ’90s/early-aughts bands like Green Day and especially Blink 182.

But bassist Dawson Fry says that One Flew West has a sound that can stand on its own, because the band brings influences beyond those pop punk outfits of twenty years ago. The other three members – guitarist and singer Linden Jackson, guitarist David DiSalvo and drummer Jonah Bartels – started playing together more than ten years ago, in a much different style. “It used to be a six-member outfit that was more geared toward folky-style music,” Fry explains.

The band originated in Longmont, about an hour north of Denver, and Fry says that being geographically separated from bands playing in Denver also contributes to what he sees as a distinct style. “We fit in well with a lot of the other bands in our area while still being unique,” he adds.

But while the band still rehearses in Longmont, its members are happy to be a part of Denver’s healthy punk-rock and pop-punk scenes.

Fry joined the band in 2017, around the same time its style began to shift and take a more pop-rock and -punk sound that is present on its debut full-length, The Blur, which drops Friday, March 25, on Smartpunk Records. The band will play a release show at Meow Wolf that evening.

“That marks a definite change for us sonically,” he says. “It’s kind of where we found our niche and where we are most comfortable.”

He adds that the band’s recording sessions at the Blasting Room, Fort Collins’s legendary punk-rock studio founded by Bill Stevenson of the Descendents and Black Flag, influenced its sound. “[The Blasting Room] sums up really well a lot of our influences,” Fry says. “That’s where Rise Against does nearly all their work. Descendents have done their recent work there. Being in that environment really leans you in that direction.”

The band wrote about half the songs on The Blur at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and the other half about halfway through. Fry says listeners will hear the thematic difference as the album progresses. The songs at the beginning center around the future and the uneasy feeling that accompanied that time, when everything felt so uncertain.

“It’s very pointed at the events that started with events that started with the pandemic,” Fry says. “I think people will find that the songs we did a little later on kind of take a departure from that. They go back to more of our standard subject matter. I think at that time we were all ready to stop talking about the pandemic.”

He adds that “Deep End,” the latest single release, was one of the songs written at the beginning of the pandemic, when being a musician suddenly became a dubious proposition at best.

“We have dedicated years of our lives to being in a band and putting music together,” he says. “To have a kind of uncontrolled event basically put a complete hold on the music industry really put a lot of questions in our heads as musicians.”

Although it’s not an overtly political group, Fry says One Flew West will occasionally comment on the political situation in the United States. The track “Hopeless” takes that direction.

“We don’t lean into the political side of things super heavily,” he says. “But we all feel strongly about our beliefs related to a lot of current issues in our country. ‘Hopeless’ was kind of our one track on the album where we wanted to make a statement and put it out there and then move on to other subject matter.”

“Trial and Error,” though written a few years ago, is also a political song, but Fry says it’s one that is open to interpretation by the listener.

“The beauty of ‘Trial and Error’ is we kept it really anonymous,” he says. “I think it’s easy to infer where we stand on that track. But the beauty of that song is you can be from either side of the aisle and something is going to pop into your head, but it might be different for each listener.”

Fry says the band’s live performances are raw, and the band doesn’t use any backing tracks to bolster its sound. What you see is what you get, he says. He adds that the band has opened for groups with distinctly different sounds – Plain White T’s and the Descendents – and received a good response from the crowd.

“We can fit sonically with a large variety of music,” he says. “We pull in so many different elements of punk, pop, folk and even some pop-rock elements. You’ll hear a little bit of all those elements in our music. That makes us versatile across many different genres.”

The Blur drops Friday, March 25, via Smartpunk Records. The band is playing an album-release show at Meow Wolf, 1338 First Street, on Friday, March 25, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $22.50 and available at tickets.meowwolf.com. One Flew West plays the So What?! Music Festival in Arlington, Texas, on May 29. For more information, visit oneflewwest.com.