About Jordan Lally

While in college at Mount St. Mary's in Emmitsburg, MD, I fell in love with the music of Sublime. I had heard of the reggae-rock band back in high school and enjoyed them, but at that time I was more interested in listening to classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin and The Grateful Dead, hip-hop like Notorious B.I.G. and 2 Pac and some modern rock like Live, Jimmie's Chicken Shack, etc. However, Sublime was IT for me in college and became my biggest musical influence from that point on. I would often dream about being in a band, but I had picked up a guitar only a handful of times in my life and I was far too shy to ever even think about singing in front of people, so a band seemed far too unrealistic. Four years after entering Mount St. Mary's College, I graduated with a psychology degree in hand, but not a clue in my head. It was during this time in my life that I wrote the words that would become the lyrics to the song "fiction20down."

The year that followed college was a tough one for me. The idea of doing music for a living wouldn't leave my head, but I hadn't moved one step closer to it. During that year I did a lot of thinking and came to the conclusion that singing in front of people was an impossibility for me. It was a fear I felt I could not overcome, and so I focused on the idea of producing music. It was still a long shot, as most producers come from a musical background or from a technical/engineering background - and I came from neither. However with my ever-supportive parents at my back I enrolled in the Sheffield Institute of the Recording Arts. I graduated their audio engineering program within a year and became an intern at their professional recording studio. Over the next year, I did everything from cleaning bathrooms to taking out the trash, all in an effort to "pay my dues" and earn the opportunity to assist on recording sessions at the studio. I did earn such opportunities and eventually graduated from the internship program and became a free-lance engineer at Sheffield. During my time at Sheffield I had the opportunity to work with many international artists from pop legends like R&B's Kool and the Gang to classical greats like renowned pianist Roger Williams and many more. The experience was invaluable, but I wanted to work with artists and bands similar to those that I'd grown up listening to, so in 2005 I left Sheffield and opened my own recording studio- The Reveler Recording Company.

One of my first solo production projects was with a regional band called Long Time Coming. The band featured the bassist Che who was the original bass player for Jimmy's Chicken Shack. With the opportunity to record and produce a former member of a band I idolized in high school, I thought I was on my way! Over the next year or two I didn't often get to the opportunity to produce musicians whom I'd idolized, but I did get the opportunity to work with a number of up and coming artists. I recorded, mixed and produced everything from punk rock to hip-hop to opera, all out of the Reveler Recording Studio. All the while I was enjoying what I was doing, but wishing I was on the "other side of the glass". More clearly, I wished to be the one writing and performing music.

One day in the Fall of 2006, Todd Hipsley, a long-time friend of mine, came by the studio to check it out. Throughout high school he was always the kid with the guitar at the bonfire or at the party. That day his guitar was sitting in the back of his jeep when he arrived and I asked him to bring it in the studio. He obliged, and I set up a mic and just asked him to jam. I had no rhyme or reason, I'd always known he was a great guitar player and just wanted to get some of his work on "tape." He left the studio not thinking much of what he'd "laid down," but while he was playing one particular riff, an idea for a vocal melody struck me and I immediately recorded it. That was the birth of the first Fiction 20 Down song ever written - "20something".

We followed the same formula over the next few months - Todd would come to the studio, I would "mic up" his guitar and he would jam. After he left I would listen through the guitar tracks, cut and paste some ideas together and record my vocals. Eventually we had more than 15 songs and we decided to put together an album. We rented a bass, which Todd was playing for the first and only time in his life and in one night we wrote all the bass lines together. We followed that with hiring a great session drummer by the name of Zach R whom I'd met during my travels at Sheffield. And that, more or less, that is how our first album Down n' Out + Up n' Rising came to be.

Track number 6 off of that first album was "fiction20down." As I mentioned I wrote the lyrics well before I was into making music. At the time I was realizing that fear had led to a lot of missed opportunities in my life and in "fiction20down" I was writing about some hypothetical “missed opportunities” in my future and how I wanted them to be fiction 20 years down the line. To be in a band, to get up and sing and perform in front of people and so on that was one of those potential "missed opportunities." In my head, this band had the potential to be my ticket to conquer that fear, so Fiction 20 Down seemed like the perfect band name.

Ok, so we had the album and we had the band name, now the hard part... performing live.

We scheduled our first performance in the backyard of my parent's house. Down n' Out + Up n' Rising had been out now for a few months, but we were calling this our CD release party. It was an acoustic show. We invited friends and family and there were probably 50 or so there. Lord only knows how we sounded (please note: those of you who were there, we do not need, nor do we want to know how we sounded :). In any event we got through it, so it was a success. We scheduled our first true show, a full band gig at a club called the Brass Monkey in Baltimore in September of that year. We survived.

We continued playing the Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania music scene throughout 2008 eventually graduating to venues like The Recher Theatre in Towson, MD and events like the Millennium Music Conference in Harrisburg, PA. After a year of playing live together we recorded the second F20D album titled Welcome to the Grassroots.

In February 2009 we were approached by an agent out of New Jersey to whom we had mailed a copy of Welcome to the Grassroots. He offered Fiction 20 Down some touring, radio & television opportunities... all of which would require a greater commitment of time. I was stoked, but original band members and my good friends Todd, Matt Batarseh, Chris Massaro and Ben Potok choose step aside for the good of the band. Their respective lifestyles would not allow for the rigors of a touring rock band. And so the new Fiction 20 Down was born. With Benjamin Metzger on lead guitar, DJ Fritzges on the bass and Mike Marx-Gibbons on the drums, F20D hit the road and we've been touring the East Coast touring ever since.

The latest F20D album Comfortable Fools was written, recorded, mixed and mastered in under 3 months in early 2009. The album features everything the "new" F20D brings to the table - an original brew of rock, reggae, hip-hop, acoustic and more. It's difficult for me to be all that objective, but I believe this album is my best production work to date. I also believe it is the best Fiction 20 Down album released to date.

The first review Comfortable Fools received was from a music blogger from Denmark, he said "almost every song off this album sounds like it could be a hit single." Shortly after, Skope Magazine did a feature on the band and album and said we "merge reggae and rock like they've never heard before" and did a subsequent album review praising the LP saying, "Fiction 20 Down are the real deal". The Centre Daily Times review came in next, writing "in terms of sheer musicianship, Fiction 20 Down have it nailed down pat... Comfortable Fools is mixed and mastered superbly." These reviews are very gratifying and while we appreciate them and have high hopes for those to come, the truth is at the end of the day we only care what our friends & fans think and we've truly been overwhelmed at the response for the new record.

If you've stuck with me this long and you're still reading, then you are either completely bored at work or you are a fan. If you are bored, then you might want to check out the game Acno's Energizer at MiniClip (it used to get me through my day job before I started doing the music thing :), BUT if you are a fan then all I can do is offer my absolute and heartfelt thanks and appreciation. I've been telling the story of F20D as I've lived it, but have yet to mention you guys - bottom line - Fiction 20 Down will only go as far as you take us. Thank you for listening, thank you for writing us, thank you for spreading the word about our music, thank you for singing along, thank you for dancing and partying with us at shows, thank you for giving me the confidence to do what I do. You have no idea how fulfilling your appreciation and support are for me and the entire band and how much you inspire everything we do.

We are indebted to you.

- Jordan

Jordan's Equipment

Elixir Strings
Snarling Dog Brain Picks
American Telecaster
Takamine Electric-Acoustic
Satchurator Distortion Pedal
Boss DD20 Giga Delay Twin Pedal
Vox Amp AC15 Custom Classic
SM Beta 58 Vocal Mic
UE Custom In-Ear Monitors
iPhone*

* Funny enough, the iPhone might be the most important piece of "equipment" I own.
I write my lyrics & our set lists in the notepad, record all vocal/guitar song ideas as I write them,
update F20D's MySpace, Facebook and Twitter pages, and more.