Recently, FOBAT was given the wonderful opportunity to interview singer-songwriter David Safran. David was able to not only connect us with tons of sources and people, but shared some details both about himself and his brief connection with Patrick Stump while in the band “The Audreys.” Below is a transcript of our interview.
Joey: If you’d like to give a little introduction to who you are and why we are interviewing you, feel free.
David Safran: My name is David Safran. I’m a Chicago musician, among other things, hopefully. I played in some punk bands when I was a kid: The Apathetics and The Audreys. The Audreys first drummer—and apparently guitarist, as you discovered—was Patrick Stump. Another Audreys cofounder, Ari Wiznitzer, allegedly introduced Patrick and Joe. Ari claims he is “responsible” for Fall Out Boy. I’ll let you guys do the fact-checking on that one. We are peripheral players, in a sense. But at the same time, beyond The Audreys and Fall Out Boy, I was part of a small punk rock community in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago. I guess there’s some overall renewed interest in our “ancient” teen scene and how that connects to now.
Joey: Tell us a little bit about the initial forming of The Audreys, and expand a little bit on Patrick being a founding member of said band.
David Safran: As I recall, Ari and I decided to form a band sometime in summer 2001. Patrick joined soon after. Up to that point, Ari and I wrote some songs together. But we weren’t really a proper band until Patrick got involved.
Ari worked at the local Borders’ music department. That’s where we met. He wasn’t really connected to the suburban punk scene that Patrick and I were part of. But in a way, he had a pivotal role in it. I think I described Ari in the past as sort of a Lenny Kaye-type figure.
When Patrick was in the band, Ari was living with his high school girlfriend. We practiced in her basement. I don’t remember Patrick officially quitting. He just simply didn’t appear again at rehearsal. For whatever reason, he left his drum kit in the basement and never returned to collect it. Eventually, we moved his drums into our “real” rehearsal space shared with The Lawrence Arms. I believe our next drummer, Mya, played them for years.
Physically, Patrick was an Audrey very briefly. Maybe a couple months at most. But through his drums, his tenure in the band was even longer than mine.
Joey: Patrick just dipping and leaving a drumset is the funniest thing ever. Does Mya still own Patrick’s drumset that he left behind?
David Safran: Regrettably, Ari said he sold it.
Joey: That’s interesting, that house you mentioned. With the formation of Fall Out Boy, I feel like there’s almost like a similar story in that. There were a lot of different types of people intersecting that bred the same type of innovation.
David Safran: I have fond memories of that house. Ari’s then-girlfriend had an amazing, diverse group of friends. All of them seemed to be artists of some kind. It was like a little Warhol factory in Glencoe, Illinois. A ridiculous and beautiful community that I just sort of got thrown into as an Audrey. Ari’s girlfriend’s father was open to his house being a center of art, community and friendship. And lots of teens smoking cigarettes. I needed that at the time.
Amal: I have one question. How did you come up with the name “The Audreys”?
Joey: Oh, that’s an important question.
Amal: Yeah, yeah, it’s a cool name.
David Safran: So that was asked when we attempted to reunite for the radio special. We appear to have different memories. I recall it was either a Little Shop of Horrors or Audrey Hepburn reference. Something like that. But I honestly don’t remember.
Joey: You and Ari seem to have some tension, for lack of a better word, especially on that Lumpen special. When it comes to you two, your collaboration and then eventual distancing, was it a case where you guys just don’t mesh well together, or was there something more?
David Safran: Before I get into that, I think it’s important to explain why we appeared on Lumpen Radio recently after not communicating for 20 years.
In December 2022, I discovered that the great Ivan Julian from Richard Hell and the Voidoids recorded two Audreys songs—”Hardwired” and “The Waves”—for his debut solo album released around 2011. Maybe a little earlier. Both songs were singles yet never identified as covers. In fact, they’ve widely been described as Ivan Julian originals. After this discovery, I immediately contacted my fellow ex-Audreys. Like me, they were completely unaware that Ivan had recorded these songs and continued to play them live. We were all shocked, and maybe a little disturbed, that we missed this for over a decade.
For me, the most newsworthy aspect of The Audreys isn’t Patrick’s involvement or Ari being a unique footnote in Fall Out Boy’s starry history; it’s that a NYC punk icon has been playing our forgotten music for the last fifteen years. And no one knows.
But back to your question about tension: When we first started, Ari was a very sweet, compassionate, and generous guy. And then he wasn’t. It was a personality shift that I rarely have seen. I’m not going to do any sort of armchair psychoanalysis, but what I can say is that I don’t really respond well to unilateral decision-making. Someone making a decision on behalf of a group without any ability to be democratic whatsoever—that’s exactly what was happening towards the end of my time in The Audreys. And not what I envisioned for the project.
Joey: I think that I’ve worked with people like that. To be able to work with your friends, you have to be able to collaborate. I mean, that’s what [running FOBAT] has taught me. I have noticed myself in moments saying, “Oh, maybe I’m being a little too controlling here,” and so it’s definitely good practice in that regard. But also, not to bring back Fall Out Boy again, but I think that’s why [the band] has worked for so many years, and why they’re still all really good friends. They all have personalities that mesh with each other. For instance, they all agreed to have equal pay as a band from the beginning, and it hasn’t changed. I think little things like that indicate a healthy working relationship.
David Safran: Yeah. I mean, what I do want to say about Ari is that…I finally heard the unreleased Audreys album after 20 years of being told about it but refusing to listen.
Joey: Yeah?
David Safran: And, you know, I think it’s really solid. Ari kind of disowns that record. When I heard it, I thought it was great. So, despite any tension, I can still listen with some joy and pride.
Joey: You already have mentioned the story around Joe and Patrick meeting through Ari. Could you expand on that more?
David Safran: I completely forgot about Ari’s matchmaking until he brought it up again. I think he’s understandably a little annoyed that past coverage got his name wrong or omitted it entirely. Maybe you can finally correct the record here.
Anyway, I believe I met Ari around the same time Patrick and Joe did. He seemed to bring in local punk kids to Borders because of his vast knowledge of music and a willingness to chat at length with us. Even better, he’d offer employee discounts on CDs to total strangers. Beyond his clerk gig, Ari moonlighted as a critic for AllMusic and seemed to have some mysterious connection with the Smoking Popes. In a way, Ari was the destination for us. He connected people. If you stopped by his Borders, you’d walk away with some cheap CDs and a potential bandmate.
Joey: Oh wow. You said you were in the hardcore scene somewhat, but not quite in the same way that Patrick was?
David Safran: I mean, The Apathetics were a hardcore band.
Joey: Right, right.
David Safran: The New Jacks were hardcore. The Imposters played hardcore.
Joey: But weren’t you in other [music scenes] too?
David Safran: Our genre—The Apathetics—was melodic hardcore. We just weren’t grindcore or straight edge. I wasn’t part of the straight edge hardcore community. In fact, those guys freaked me out. Apathetics weren’t screaming at the floor, you know. It wasn’t testosterone-driven rubbish. Songs had actual choruses. And sometimes you could even sing along.
Joey: Pete’s type of hardcore, before he was in Fall Out Boy, was the opposite end of the spectrum. Extinction, Racetraitor; stuff like that. I wanted to ask: How was the hardcore scene for you? There was pushback against people who had some different music tastes sometimes. You just mentioned testosterone-driven craziness. How did you get introduced to that scene?
David Safran: In middle school, I got swept up in the scene because I played instruments and listened to proto-punk and UK punk. I was interested in playing live music and, by coincidence, the guitarist for a beloved ska-punk band called The Eclectics worked at the Highland Park Public Library. I had a friend who worked in the AV department alongside him. I would visit my friend and end up talking to Russ from The Eclectics. So, my introduction to the Chicagoland punk rock scene was through The Eclectics. I became a nerdy fanboy going to their shows. And that’s how I met other people. It was very accessible.
Joey: So you would look back on that scene and say it was enjoyable?
David Safran: Absolutely, yes. I loved that little community. I was a little younger than everybody else. I was the age of a fan, not necessarily the age of a band member. When I joined The Apathetics, I was in eighth grade whereas my bandmates were all grizzled high-schoolers. But I did so much in one year of being an Apathetic that it felt like 20.
Amal: Okay, so you’re a bass player?
David Safran: I play guitar and bass. A little keyboard, too. At one point, I was a drummer. My first instrument was actually violin. I was terrible at it. And then I learned how to play sax. I was also terrible at it. Lately, for basic budget reasons, I’ve been playing and recording almost all the instruments myself.
Joey: Patrick was in the same boat, too. I don’t know if you know his solo record that he put out in 2011? He played everything on that solo record himself.
David Safran: Yeah, I do know. A great record producer named Manny Sanchez was co-producing Soul Punk at the same time he was overseeing a jazz singer’s debut record that included a cover of my song “Adult Things.” Knowing Patrick and I were once teen Audreys, Manny seemed very supportive of helping reconnect us and figure out a possible collaboration. No idea why this never happened.
A lot of these punk musicians could play multiple instruments. But to find someone who played multiple instruments and was interested in songcraft and studio production…that was a little unusual.
Joey: And to be really good at all of them.
David Safran: And to be enterprising, yeah. The ambition was impressive, you know?
Joey: Absolutely. So what was Patrick like when you knew him? What was your friendship like—or were you just acquaintances? How did you meet?
David Safran: I would say we were acquaintances. The suburban punk community—it was so small that it was impossible to not know everyone. You’re all schlepping out to the same backyard or basement or wherever.
My opinion was always positive. With the Audreys, I think it was Ari who suggested we bring in Patrick. I remember us driving out to Glenview to talk with Patrick about this project. I remember his enthusiasm for it. Our first time meeting as a trio, we didn’t even play music together. We just stood around a record store and talked about songwriters we loved. The three of us were into an eclectic range of genres. It was a beautiful start to a band with no idea what kind of music we could actually create together.
In that time, the punk scene had thinned out quite a bit due to “older” bands breaking up before leaving for college. By 2001, it was more of a mad scramble to find solid, like-minded musicians than prior years. There weren’t a lot of high school kids interested in forming a punk band that could potentially have a career with longevity.
Joey: Yeah. A lot of that hinged on… Especially if you were younger, you had to know someone who was older. I mean, that’s kind of how Joe got into the scene. Because other than the Evolution stuff that we found, he really was not in [many other bands]. He was in a very brief band in middle school, and then didn’t do anything else. He joined Arma Angelus because Chris couldn’t take off of work to go do their tour. He knew Pete, and Pete was like, “Hey, do you want to play on our tour?” And that’s kind of what got him [playing] in that scene. But he was the young one. He talks about it in his book; all the other guys in the band would pick on him.
Amal: They hazed him.
David Safran: What year was he born?
Lizzie: 1984.
Lizzie: They all sort of had the experience of being the youngest in the band, because when Pete and Andy started playing, they were also five years younger than everyone.
David Safran: I mean, Ari seemed old to us, and he was just two or three years older.
David Safran: Did we ever confirm that Evolution is…that was The Apathetics split tape, right? On AP Records? Did [Joe] play on that?
Joey: I don’t know. We haven’t figured that out yet. We are going to try and get in contact. We were given a contact for Ryan Durkin. So we’re gonna ask him. He may not know anything, but we gotta ask. On [Evolution’s] website, it says he took pictures. And then Patrick mentions that he had some kind of side project with Evolution. So there’s clearly something going on there.
David Safran: My memory is that we scoffed a little bit at this “Evolution band.” Apathetics were a “premiere” melodic hardcore punk band with a big summer single, [LAUGHS] or whatever. And here comes Evolution, and they suck. Little did we know.
Incidentally, I remember Ryan Durkin “signed” The Apathetics in the back of a van outside the Lombard Community Center.
Joey: [LAUGHS] That’s creepy. We talked a little bit about this privately in emails: The Audreys’ history being lost and in obscurity, even though everything that mentions about them always notes that they were “on the track to success,” and “they were going to be the next the Strokes.” Yet, so much of it is lost. You said that that might have something to do with people wanting to sweep it under the rug, or not being too proud of the whole thing. Did you want to expand any more on that?
David Safran: I mean, I wasn’t in the band at the height of Audreys mania and can’t really speak about these decisions. I’ve been told different things from different people, but there does appear to have been an almost deliberate and perhaps retaliatory decision to scrub The Audreys of any online presence. There’s also a well-known Australian band called The Audreys that formed around when Ari and Mya relocated to Austin, Texas. The American Audreys were at their buzziest and yet I was told they didn’t fight back when the Australian band took their name.
I really wish I could speak definitively, but I have no authority here. I just know gossip. What I can say is that The Audreys were a fad-band and therefore easier to fall into history’s abyss. I also know that in the mid-2000s, you would turn on the local radio and it was “Sugar We’re Going Down” and then “Shut Down (All of the Time)”. At that time, Fall Out Boy and The Audreys were equal forces in Chicago. They dominated. I wanted to stay in music and launched a solo career in college. But each time I did some sort of Chicago media, especially radio, I was confronted by my teen past. It initially was very daunting.
Joey: You didn’t want to be known only for that. And that even has parallels to when Fall Out Boy went on hiatus and Patrick did his solo career. He talked consistently about how he didn’t want to just be “the Fall Out Boy guy.” He just wanted to be a guy that made music. That’s why he changed his whole appearance, and dyed his hair, and started wearing suits and all that. He was tired of being only connected to this one thing that was not what he was really doing at that point. And that’s definitely a relatable feeling of, like, everyone knows you for this one thing and are not going to appreciate all the new things that you have to say.
David Safran: At the time—and I feel like we’re talking about the 17th century—if you’re in the independent Chicago music scene but wanted to break out of it in some capacity, you could play either emo, pop-punk, or garage rock revival. Those were the “commercial” genres. I never liked emo. Pop-punk was an eyeroll. And I’d already done garage rock. If you happen to be a singer-songwriter, you could go the alt-country route. I drifted into that world but it didn’t feel totally authentic. So where do you go from there? It’s harder as a solo artist.
Joey: Oh, yeah. Like I said, [Patrick] talked extensively about his little solo stint. It was nothing like being in Fall Out Boy for him. It’s very inspiring for me, just the whole story of going on hiatus and everything, because all of the members went off into different directions. It’s just very interesting to look back on that now in comparison to what they’re doing now. They seem like the happiest they’ve ever been with it.
David Safran: My old producer Tim Sandusky used to tell me repeatedly that to be a successful musician, it’s 20% music and 80% modeling. It’s a lot easier to do that 80% when you’re with a band.
Joey: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it doesn’t always have to be, but commodifying yourself is… you have to make yourself into a product, in a sense.
Lizzie: I feel like when I write music, it makes me realize I can’t do solo music. I have to bounce off of people. And it just feels unnatural to me to ever do something solo. It’s easier to do that 80% when you’re with a band because it’s distributed more.
Joey: I think it’s an interesting facet: having The Audreys be part of your past and only ever getting asked about it in the context of the guy that was there for, like, a month—personally I’d be annoyed! But even we are doing that to an extent. But I hope we will do a good job of rectifying that a little bit with this interview. Your work is more than just The Audreys and being loosely tied to Patrick!
David Safran: When I first started performing under my own name in ‘04 or ‘05, one big reason for any media attention was my proximity to The Audreys and Patrick Stump. I understood that. But I never felt I existed in his shadow. I still don’t. My music sounds nothing like Fall Out Boy or The Audreys’ early aughts garage rock. I think that disappointed some local critics and other listeners when I first went solo. But I’ve never been annoyed talking about Patrick. He’s a dazzling musician who made every band he played in better. My annoyance only emerges when questions lean into “what-ifs.” In interviews throughout my twenties, I was bombarded with questions like, say, “Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened if you continued working with Patrick as a duo?” or “Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened if Patrick had stayed in The Audreys?” Lazy, irrelevant questions.
Joey: You already answered one of the questions that I had next, which was about what you’ve worked on in the past; after The Audreys. Tell us a little bit about if you have any current musical stuff going on, or stuff that you worked on recently or in the past that you’re proud of.
David Safran: Well, I’m sitting on an extensive catalog of tunes, most of them in demo state and unreleased, that I’m largely proud of. I’m also mostly proud of my 2012 album Delicate Parts despite it failing to get a real release. I recall one A&R guy telling me that Delicate Parts had “big singles” but I would never be signed if I didn’t turn myself into a band. That’s been a very common criticism for the last 20 years. Basically, that my music is marketable but I’m not. One slick publicist once told me that “David Safran sounds like the name of a CPA.”
Maybe my biggest breakthrough was in 2011 or so with a single called “Woman Astride, Facing Away.” It’s a duet with Genevieve from Company of Thieves. In the end, the single didn’t touch the mainstream but still allowed me some maneuverability on the fringes.
Last November, I self-released an EP called The Little Recidivist—something John Cale called me on the streets of Evanston when I was 17. In a full circle moment, Sean O’Keefe came back to work on it. We hadn’t collaborated since my Apathetics days. [The EP] actually did really well on college radio, to my surprise. It entered a dozen or so individual stations’ top 30 charts and almost cracked that elusive NACC 200. Like “Woman Astride,” the response seemed possibly career-making. But The Little Recidivist didn’t get press; not a single review. There wasn’t a marketing budget. I couldn’t afford a music video, if that’s even still a thing. I didn’t play any shows either. So, the success was very brief but still meaningful.
For me, playing live is hard in COVID times—which we’re still in. I’m COVID-conscious. Because of that, I’ve been limited for a number of reasons for the last four or five years. There’s some wonderful organizations—one in Chicago called the Clean Air Club—about COVID awareness. They’ll put in air purifiers at shows. It’s sort of punk rock, in a way, and tilts very much towards marginalized groups. But despite all that, I haven’t been able to book a show in a while.
Joey: Yeah, I think being COVID-conscious is punk rock in a way. I wish that more artists, especially ones that have the budget, would do more. But also, I think a lot of people just aren’t seeing information about COVID. It’s not getting to the people that need to see it. I think that that’s really cool, though, that there are venues out there that are using air purifiers and masking.
David Safran: Yeah. But it’s difficult to find musicians. I have lately been unsuccessful in working with musicians willing to go through the hoops to make sure that this is as risk-free as possible. I’ve also been unable to figure out ways to not lose money performing live. That’s another issue entirely.
Joey: Alright, last question. So how do you feel about all of this archivist stuff in general? We’ve had a lot of different reactions to what we’ve been doing. We’ve had people like you, who were very interested, but we’ve had people who were like, “Why do you care?” And then some other people who were like, “You’re making me feel old.” Where do you stand on it?
David Safran: Well, I feel old and I feel young. So it’s okay. [LAUGHS]
Anyone that wants to do this has my 100% support and love. I’m grateful for your contributions. I admire it and you inspire me. And I want to roll up my sleeves and help. The DIY spirit of your communal project is very similar to our long-ago scene. Also, admittedly, apart from rare archivists and librarians like Dave Hofer, we largely weren’t that great at saving our teen things. Anyone trying to connect dots and dig up lost artifacts is worthy of serious admiration.
I’m not nostalgic at all, but I do care about preservation. And I do care about this community. There was so much shitty music that came from it, but there’s some great stuff, too.
Joey: Stuff that’s been buried.
David Safran: Yeah. The Audreys and The Apathetics are a great example of this.
Joey: Well, thank you so much for talking with us.
David Safran: Thank you guys. Have a great day.