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May 15, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Justin Borucki

King Falcon are a new outfit out of Queens, New York who are carrying the torch for old-school rock and roll with a scrappy indie grit. The band started as a duo, fronted by singer and guitarist Michael Rubin with James Terranova on drums. The pair debuted back in 2020 with their single, “Shake, Shake, Shake,” before their touring plans were waylaid by the pandemic. In the years since, they’ve brought in Tom Diognardi on drums while Terranova moved to bass, cementing the band as a trio. They also returned last year with a new single, “When The Party’s Over,” followed by their latest effort, “Cadillac.”

The band leans into the classic rock swagger for their latest track, telling the story of a freewheeling joyride in a stolen Cadillac. The track certainly proves they know when to step on the gas, especially when it comes to its insanely catchy chorus and searing guitar solo. But at the same time, Rubin proves equally capable of feathering the brakes when necessary, letting Diognardi and Terranova craft an intoxicating groove for him to coast on with some wiry guitar lines.

Meanwhile, the track is rendered in a sleek sheen thanks to production from Marshall Altman (Citizen Cope, Matt Nathanson) and mixing from engineer and producer Mark Needham (The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Fleetwood Mac). Most of all though, the band delivers the fresh energy and effortless style of their touchstones, capturing an elusive balance of sharp hooks and tight musicianship.

For the accompanying video, the band even got to take the titular car out on the road. As Rubin explains, “I got to drive this beauty with no brakes, no plates, and a flat tire—everybody, including the cops, waved as I cruised this spaceship around the neighborhood. It broke down twice while we were filming, and we had to push that two-and-a-half ton beast uphill on a gravel road. I now have a chronic injury from doing that – as a reminder of an experience I will never forget. We were able to mix in some cool animation to enhance the storyline of the video, we hope everyone enjoys it!”

Check out the song and video below, out everywhere now. Under the Radar also caught up with the band following their live showcase performance at The Gathering. You can read our accompanying Q&A below to find out more about the band’s story, their influences, and their new single.

How was the reception after your performance at The Gathering showcase?

Michael Rubin: You know, it’s a little bit of a different kind of show cause most of the crowd was industry people. So it’s not like your typical 17-year-old concertgoer who got in with a fake ID and is ready to like, tear the roof down. But I think you can always tell when you look out into the crowd. There are two types of good crowds. One is the first one I mentioned, where everybody’s going nuts. And the second is when everybody just shuts up and watches. If you look out in the crowd and everybody’s on their phone and they’re talking, you’re not killing it. If you look out in the crowd and everybody’s just looking at you, and not talking or doing anything else, that’s a good show.

You’ve said you’re a car guy, right?

Rubin: Yes, and our song “Cadillac” that just came out, that’s where that comes from. The car in the video is actually my best friend’s car and it’s the car that the song is about. So that’s kind of cool as well.

Is that the dream car?

Rubin: I have many dream cars. Many. It is one of them. [Laughs] He’s had that car for a long time. And he never drives it. It’s not even registered, it doesn’t have plates on it. The plate that’s in the video is a Russian plate…So I went over one day and we got the thing started. Here we are now, riding dirty with no plates, no inspection, old tires, the brakes don’t really work.

But it’s a 19-foot-long bright red Cadillac with fins on it. You’re like the coolest thing in the whole world when you drive by, everybody looks at you. Even more than if you had a Lamborghini or anything like that. So as I’m driving the car, I’m thinking about the fact that it’s a shame that he owns this car and he doesn’t drive it. I should be the one that owns this car.

So I was like, well, I have to steal it from him. And the song is kind of the whole fantasy of stealing it and getting chased by the cops. Obviously, we couldn’t film that, so we had to make it animated, and that’s how the video happened.

So, how did the animated concept come about?

Rubin: I saw a cartoon or like a tattoo or somethingーvery 1960sーof this big angry crocodile, alligator thing…He’s driving this big hot rod with these big rear tires, the engine’s coming out, and there’s smoke everywhere. And I was like, that’s totally the vibe of the song. So I sent that to my friend who’s an animator, and I said, ‘Here’s the song, and here’s this. You just put those two together and let me know when you’re done.’ And 800 hours later, it was done.

Tom Diognardi: There are live shots in the music video too, so it was a little tricky because you needed to have a vision for how the whole video was gonna turn out…The animator Alexis, she was there, and she would say, ‘Oh, in this shot, you’re gonna be doing this, and I’m gonna animate this, so can you do it more like this?’

The amount of planning was insane. And also on, on top of that, we recorded the music video before we recorded the final version of the song, which is super backward. But we just had so much confidence in the demo and that it wasn’t gonna change that we just committed to it.

But the song itself is older, right?

Diognardi: Yeah, it’s cool to finally have it out. These ideas, you work on them for a long time. You write them, then you bring the drums in, then you’re filming the music video, and you listen to it 700 times when you’re filming the music video.

Rubin: It’s a little bit like cooking sometimes. You spend seven hours cooking something, and then you set the table and everybody eats in like five minutes. So we’ve been working on this song and the video for two years, and it hasn’t even come out yet.

So for us, we’re already working on the next record. But yeah, it’s cool that everybody finally gets to see the fruits of our labor, cause that was really the most ambitious video we’ve ever done.

When I listen to that track, I definitely hear a lot of classic rock influences. I think when people listen, they’ll definitely get that vibe, but what are some of your guys’ influences that people wouldn’t expect?

Rubin: I think all of our answers will surprise you.

James Terranova: I mean for me, I’m a huge ska guy. Like a lot of Streetlight Manifesto, Less Than Jake, Reel Big Fish, things like that. Just amazing. I started playing on saxophone first, that was my first instrument. And then I played drums and bass and I just wanted to combine them. So ska was right there.

Diognardi: For me, it’s metal. Metal and hard rock is kind of where I feel like my home base is. When I first got into music, it was like bands like Iron Maiden and Avenged Sevenfold, and then I’m also into some dorky, progressive stuff like Periphery and stuff like that. So that’s kind of what gets me jazzed. I like everything though. I think we can all say that too. I like a little bit of pop and pop punk.

Rubin: Yeah, I think for me getting started, the two main food groups were Pink Floyd and Steely Dan. And that’s kind of it. But recently, it’s been a lot of hip hop man. I love MF Doom, just Killer Rapper. We have one song where I ripped a huge idea lyrically from an MF Doom song, which you’d never know.

I also wanted to dig into your beginnings a bit. You got your start at The School of Rock right?

Rubin: When I was a kid, I was a School of Rock student, and then I started my first band when I was like 15. And James and I were together in a band originally. So here’s what’s interesting. James originally used to be the drummer. We had another band together called The Inoculated Canaries, which is a mouthful. And then we started King Falcon after a bunch of years at the Canaries.

He was originally the drummer, but we wanted to make the band a three-piece. It helps expand the sound, looks cooler on stage. Plus we’re a band, you know? We’re not like 21 pilots. It’s about the live band show. And we couldn’t find a bass player but we found a drummer, who we knew very well and is very good at drums.

So James was like, ‘Screw it, I’ll play bass.’ And now Tom plays drums. And I think James is more than happy to play bass, cause now he gets to play with all the engineering stuff that he likes to do, and not have to worry about carrying drums.

And on top and on top of that, James is a lefty. So whenever we went anywhere, we couldn’t even borrow a drum set cause we had to flip it.

Terranova: Just imagine being the lefty drummer in the middle of a three-band bill. It’s righty, lefty, righty. Sound, guys hate you.

And Tom, if I remember correctly, you first learned on Guitar Hero, right?

Diognardi: Yeah, Guitar Hero started it all and I don’t know if I’d be here otherwise.

Rubin: Honestly, me too dude. I start with Guitar Hero and I heard my dad say ‘Just stop playing that and pick up a real guitar.’

Terranova: For me, it was Rock Band cause it had drums.

What was your song on Guitar Hero or Rock Band?

Diognardi: “Bark at the Moon” by Ozzy was a good one on Guitar Hero One, I think. There were so many. I found “Beast and the Harlot” from Avenged Sevenfold in Guitar Hero 2. So many bands came outta that for me.

Terranova: I had Green Day Rock Band. They were my favorite growing up, so I have literally everything from their catalog.

Rubin: Maybe “Cliffs of Dover” for me, just as a guitar player. Cause that’s like the guitar piece, you know?

I think Guitar Hero made a lot of people into guitar players truly.

You guys also have more stuff coming out soon right?

Rubin: So we have a whole record recorded. Our first album’s done. Mixed, mastered. We’ve heard it. We dig it. But it’s not out yet. It’ll probably be out by the end of the year.

How would you describe the record? How do you see the album and the songs? What’s the unifying theme for you guys?

Rubin: I think a big unifying theme on the album is that we all had to find our way to be able to get to the point of where we are now. Where we’re kind of settled in who we are, and what we’re doing, and what our path is.

But it was a journey getting here and I think the songs are about that, about our experiences along the way, and just about the same kind of shit that everybody deals with, you know? I think a lot of the songs are really relatable, especially “Everybody’s Down.” It’s just about being the outcast. And I think that’s something that a lot of people can understand in their own way.

Diognardi: Musically, it represents us finding our sound. Cause it wasn’t like we just wrote 10 or 11 songs for the album and called it a day.

There were like 25 we wrote with different producers. You realize with this producer, we write this kind of song, with this one we write this…So you end up with this amalgamation of songs that are just the best of your best.

And then it’s like, oh, I guess we have an album. We have a sound here. But you have to go through a lot of different people and experimentation to find it. So for me, that’s what it represents.

Rubin: It’s funny, if you heard some of the unreleased stuff, we have some stuff that’s just like a little bit heavier. More into the active rock thing, which we tried on for a while, but it didn’t really feel super genuine. You gotta try stuff, and you gotta learn, and then you’re like, no, that’s not for us. We have one song, it’s kind of funky, which maybe we’ll revisit at some point.

But it’s just a lot of experimenting. Our ultimate thing is really super melodic. Tight songwriting, tight upbeat songs with guitar. No nonsense rock and roll. That’s really it.