about the band:
Fossilized is a three-piece acoustic rock band from Wellington, New Zealand. We have been making music together since last millennium, though we reckon that sounds much more impressive than it really is.
Our lyrics have been labelled both witty and profound. We hate to disagree with anyone saying such nice things about us, but for modesty's sake must point out that having written over 500 songs between us, some wit and profundity was almost bound to seep into one or two of them somewhere along the way.
In 2006 we discovered the joys of home recording. With no exorbitant studio fees to prevent us, we recorded our debut album Don't Start Tying Strings To This and have been spitting out one CD after another ever since. Currently we are working on our second full-length album, along with a (very) Extended Play CD titled This Cannot Be Seen in the Stars, and a few other little things we probably shouldn't tell you about. Naturally, these projects are all set to be the best thing since sliced milk, and you are expected to await them with baited breath.
In the meantime, we sincerely hope that you enjoy our music. Feel free to have a listen, and send us an email to tell us what you think. And then tell all your friends. Or else.
The Culprits:
Joshua Baker lives in Wellington a short walk from a wonderful slab of native bush.
He's lived this life for his whole life. He is currently pursuing university study, but in his spare time he listens to way too much music and writes some of the songs you see here. Also there was a point in time where he was consistently beating Chris at Fifa '99 on the playstation.
For Joshua, songwriting is generally a bedroom ordeal, and the lyrics are greatly littered by what he has been thinking about close to the time. As far as is known, he is the only person to have ever used the words "umami", "cul-de-sac" and "row reduce" in the same song. He enjoys playing with timing and dissonant chord sequences
, because this makes him feel like a prophet, or something. He continues to try, and fail, to play the piano.
He prides himself on his ability to enjoy a wide range of popular music. He is hoping the previous sentence gets him out of producing a long list of his favourite artists, because such lists can never be exhaustive, and are often misleading. Let him just say that Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Brooke Fraser, Relient K and John Mayer all feature strongly in his music collection.
He is pretty sure that it is transparent to anyone reading this that he's writing about himself in the third person. He is not too worried about this though.
Chris Garside has a wealth of experience playing music, not only in Fossilized, but also for various rock and jazz bands at his high school. At the time of writing, Chris is in his final year of jazz school at Massey University.
Bass guitar and alto saxophone are his current main instruments, however on the various Fossilized recordings he can be found playing anything from tribal drums to 12-string guitar. His main musical influences incude Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Coldplay, Flaming Lips, Pluto and Radiohead among many others, like the Kings of Leon.
Chris' songwriting efforts for Fossilized are few and far between, but when he does manage to finish one, they surely are the way of the future!
Logan Smith refused to learn an instrument during his childhood, and was never particularly interested in music until he was about ten, when he began to work his way through his father's "Hits of the Sixties" CDs. It took him a couple more years to branch out beyond that decade, but now Logan listens to a very diverse range of music, incorporating anything from Thai loog thung country music to thrash metal to opera (though, to be fair, he tends to lean mostly towards folk and rock music).
During his high school years, Logan took lessons in guitar, cello, drums and singing - and by no means does he limit himself to instruments he actually knows how to play! His growing collection of obscure ethnic instruments and groovy 80s synthesisers add a "unique" texture to the band's music (interpret that how you will).
When not suffering from debilitating writer's block, Logan tends to churn out songs in production batches of similar theme and style, before moving on to something different. His favourite artists include Bob Dylan, Jason Molina, John Jacob Niles, Joni Mitchell, Jolie Holland, Elton John, Shearwater, The Mountain Goats, The Smothers Brothers, George Formby, Neill Finn, Queen and Janis Joplin (yes, he is aware that the letter "J" is somewhat overrepresented in this list. No, it's a mystery to him too).
Logan writes most of his songs in the early hours of the morning and coats them in layers of thick metaphor so that when he wakes up the following morning, he has difficulty remembering what they are about. He is satisfied that if he has trouble understanding them, the people of which they speak should be similarly confused.
fossilized band new zealand website design © copyright 2009 logan smith
