Friends @ Kung Fu Necktie on Wednesday.

They’ve got it going—a record deal, world tours, big time shows, media cred, music videos, a booming fan base. Yet the bandmates from Friends are all dirt broke.

Making it big isn’t what it used to be. But they’re not complaining. In fact, they’re having the time of their lives. Competition is fierce in the digital age and getting a band seriously organized and on the road to making things happen, more than ever, takes pure love and literally dedicating your life to it. Matthew Molnar, multi-instrumentalist of the Brooklyn-based band, talks to our Brittany Thomas just prior to the band’s first Philly appearance ever.

You guys have been featured on some pretty major music sites lately, but you’re still relatively unknown. It’s impressive, you’re obviously incredibly talented and major music critics are noticing. You’ve been featured on sites like Stereogum and Spin, yet you’re still playing corner bars and cafes with bands that really no one has heard about. Is this just an awkward stage? Are you trying to make it big?

I definitely wouldn’t say we’re trying to make it big, I think we just want to do what we want to do how we do it. We’re not above playing with bands that aren’t known on the national scene. If things come around that seem a little bit more glamorous we’ll do it, but we’re definitely not looking to be something huge. So we’re not showing up at these little places like, ‘urgh we’re too good for this.’

We’re more of that kind of a band that’s looking to be just hanging out with cool people, playing with awesome bands, and just being in cool scenes all around the country where they’re really happening.

Which is awesome. I’m sure you’ve seen the snobby bands who’ll lethargically play their set and split right after.

Yeah, I just don’t understand why people, like if you think you’re that good, why even bother playing music. There are so many stages up the ladder people are trying to climb. Don’t get me wrong, we want to build up and eventually make a living off this and not work other jobs so it’s not like we’re against having success, but it’s not like we’re trying to reach some unnatural sort of success where off the bat we’re expecting to bring in hundreds and hundreds of people and make tons of money. That comes over time, for some it comes quicker than others.

But it does bum me out to see people like that. There’s a lot of talented people out there. And there’s going to be some shows that aren’t as glamorous as others and some that have back stages bigger than the venues we’ve played in other towns. It’s all a part of the process.

So when did you guys have your first sort of big break when you began to see the potential of where you could possibly go?

You know, honestly this may sound weird but I had that before we even really started much of anything. I’ll be honest, with the U.K. label that puts us out from overseas, they came on board pretty quickly. Like we were a band for two, maybe three months before they wanted to put out a seven inch and we even knew that they would want more. Which they did, they admitted to it after a process.

But I felt about a week or two into practicing, not that I thought we would get what we have gotten, but I did feel pretty confident that people would be into it because I’m pretty into it and I’m pretty picky.

Even our same group of friends coming out to every single show, to me, was pretty encouraging. You know like with any new band, you play your first show and all your friends show up. Then you play the second show and about a quarter of them show up. Then you play the next show and none of them show up and they don’t come back for months. But all of our friends would come out for show after show and then their friends who hadn’t yet seen us would come out.

That was just really encouraging to have people hounding us about when we were playing next. So even just after those few weeks I was so happy with what we were doing and felt really confident about it. It wasn’t a big break, but an equivalent for me anyway. I don’t even know if big breaks in today’s music society even exist. It’s more like a hundred little things. It’s not like the old days where you’d get one video that goes to MTV and you get huge or you get one song on the radio or open for one band and it opens a million doors. I think today more than ever it’s just a lot of small opportunities piling up into something. But all that support from our friends just led us to see that we were onto something, that we were doing something right.

I don’t think it’s the end all be all. I think you get on StereoGum or whatnot, like we had SPIN post our video and even Pitchfork have featured us now. And it all helps but I don’t look at it as a big break. I feel like there’s always at least enough things going on that are keeping things sustaining themselves that without them we’d still be okay. Having a bunch of those things together is great but there’s not just one indispensible thing that if we didn’t have it we wouldn’t have anything else.

Are you guys still having to work other jobs at this point?

I’m the last one standing with a job and that’s only going to be for about another week and then I can’t anymore. We’re going to be touring a whole bunch. We have enough money but once the band’s money runs out after the tour it gets down to the nitty gritty of how we’re all going to survive (laughs). So yeah most of the band has been living pretty terribly. Our drummer’s been living with me because I’ve had a job but most of us just kind of live with friends. No one works because we don’t really have time to work.

What were you guys doing before you starting getting serious about the band?

Well to be honest we were all pretty serious from day one. We started rehearsing like six days a week, so it was pretty nonstop from the beginning with playing shows and what not. All of us were in bands before except for our lead singer, Sam, so we all had friends that booked shows. I had just been in a band and was on my way and me and Sam had talked about doing a band for quite a while but she was in Berlin all last summer so we talked back and forth about ideas but by last September we finally played our first show. Before the band Leslie, who does bass, keyboard and back vocals and Oliver, the drummer, she and Oliver had a band together and I was in another band.

What are some highlights from touring? Good memories? Awful scenarios?

Well, let’s see. Our first tour we went on we were about two weeks in, out in Wyoming and our van caught fire. Yeah, that was pretty crazy. We didn’t lose any gear, luckily. I just remember being on the side of the road with the whole back of the van on fire thinking I was about to lose all of my stuff. It sucked, it was Wyoming in January, there was snow on the ground, I didn’t even have a jacket and the police just pulled us over and told us to get out of the van.

Shit. So it just burst into flames while you were driving?

Yeah. Something with the back break. Something was sparking for apparently a really long time. Police were getting calls for over an hour they said. I think it was for the last twenty minutes of it that it was turning into an actual flame.

So you guys were just jammin’ out and had no idea?

Yeah we had no clue. And I was actually sitting in the very back.

So you would have been the first casualty.

Yeah, if it would have blown up I would have been dead or at least burnt to a crisp while we were driving.

Wow. I’m sorry I’m laughing. That would be the most tragic Friends story ever.

(Laughs) I know imagine a whole band on tour trapped in their flaming van. But no there was definitely this tragic moment of being freezing cold on the side of the road in wet sneakers watching the whole back of the van burning thinking all of my clothes, instruments and everything would be gone forever. But the beer even survived. The biggest expense was the van but we got it fixed up and managed to finish the tour. That was a pretty crazy strange tour experience.

Well props for pushing through! But so has your whole band dynamic as friends changed at all along the way?

I wouldn’t say too much because right from the get go we were kind of demanding a lot of each other, rehearsing a lot and playing a lot of shows making no money. Everyone knew from the beginning that we were planning on working hard. We’ve always taken it pretty seriously and put a lot of time into it and as people’s interest has gotten more serious so have we. Having those people take us seriously is a plus. And I think we’ve pretty much stayed the same since the beginning. So hopefully it stays.

Hope so, too. It sounds like it will. What’s going on with you guys right now?

We’re going on tour. Going to Amsterdam and then we’re doing the US. There’s a fest there[Amsterdam] called London calling, we’re just going one day there for some interviews and two days of shows, then literally the day we get back we’re doing D.C. and starting a three and a half week tour. It should be fun.

Do you have people that you’re hooked up with for crashing and stuff over in Amsterdam or are you just winging it?

I think the fest takes care of us, but I’m not sure. I think we’re getting hotels through the festival or something. If not, we’ll figure something out. We always do.

So are you guys psyched to play Philly?

You know Friends hasn’t ever played Philly. We had a show booked last winter but we had to pass on a couple dates because Sam lost her voice. So yeah this will be our first time playing Philly. We’re pretty excited for it.

Friends will play at Kung Fu Necktie, alongside Ganglians, on Wednesday, November 16th at 8 p.m. Find ticket info here.