FUEL CONTINUE ON WITH SONGWRITING CORE IN TACT

With a new album out, Fuel talk about the decision to continue on with a new lineup, but with the same successful songwriting core.

Fuel have released their first album of new material since 2003’s ‘Natural Selection’ and on the new album ‘Angels and Devils’ the band found themselves with not only a new drummer in Tommy Stewart, but also a new vocalist as well. After former lead vocalist and face of the band, Brett Scallions, unexpectedly left the band in 2006 the two founding members of Fuel, Carl Bell and Jeff Abercrombie had a tough decision on their hands. Should they continue on as Fuel and find a new singer or should they just start a new band from scratch. After many lengthy conversations the band decided to carry on as Fuel and after a world wide search, settled on Toryn Green on vocals.

So with the new vocalist, yet the songwriting core still remaining in tact did the band come close to giving up on Fuel?

“We talked about it, just because some of the fans out there on the websites said ‘You can’t go on as Fuel because it will never be the same.’ So, they’re right. It won’t be the same. At the same time, Jeff and I were saying we got too much invested in this and we put too much heart and soul into this to start again from the ground up and try to build it all over again. So, let’s go out and see what we can find as far as a singer. I’ve written, myself have written most all of the music and all the lyrics so at least you still have that in tact. I think it would be different if all the song writers were gone and it’s just a shell of what the band used to be, it’d be a different thing. But since that was all there what we had to go find was ‘Let’s go find a guy who can sing and do it justice as well as bring whatever else he can bring to the table. I think with Toryn, I think we definately found it. On this record the vocals

We caught up with Carl Bell to talk about having Brett Scallions abruptly quitting the band and their decision to carry on together as Fuel.

“I don’t know Brett just called up one day and says, Brett had some issues that he needed to deal with and he just calls up and bows out. He called up and said ‘I’m out.’ Ok, what do you do? So basically Jeff and I looked at each other like ‘What now?’ The record was mostly written and let’s just continue on, we’ve got too much work in this thing and let’s see if we can carry on. There was a lot of discussion whether we should carry on as Fuel or should we start again. In the end there’s just too much work here and we’ve put too much work in this thing. Let’s keep it going!”

Before settling on Toryn Green as their new vocalist the band was in serious discussions with Chris Daughtry of American Idol fame to be their singer, but Daughtry’s label wouldn’t let him out of his contract to join the band. With Toryn Green and Tommy Stewart, former drummer for Godsmack, joining the fold, and with their new album in stores and debuting at #1 in the Rock category at iTunes and #7 overall at iTunes, look for the band to announced a very extensive run of tour dates to close out the year. The band has a short run of tour dates already booked with dates extending until September 16th in North Carolina. Fuel have also announced a free show on September 6th, 2007 for the Baltimore Raven’s Kick-off Party in Maryland.