Interview: John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting

I chatted with Ondrasik for the Princess Anne Independent News. The link to that piece is below, but this is the unexpurgated version of that conversation.

John Henry Doucette has been a supporter of mine since his days as a writer for The Virginian-Pilot. I, in turn, have been a supporter of his as well, but particularly so in recent years, as he’s kept local journalism alive in Hampton Roads as the man behind The Princess Anne Independent News. Whenever I see his name pop up on my phone, I know he’s got a story that he thinks would be right up my alley, and this held true a few weeks ago when he called to see if I’d be up for a chat with John Ondrasik, the man behind Five for Fighting, in advance of his show in Virginia Beach.

I was indeed up for it, and you can read the resulting piece by clicking right here. But there was more to the conversation than I was ever going to be able to use for the size piece John needed, and John - being the nice guy that he is - has been kind enough to let me run the unexpurgated interview as part of my newsletter.

I became a fan of Five for Fighting at about the same time most people did, i.e. when their song “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” became a hit, but I knew at least a little bit about them prior to that. By this, I mean that I remembered that they’d put out an album, but not much else. Of course, I played catch-up over time, and they’ve never left my radar, so I was definitely jazzed to talk to Ondrasik, and he did not disappoint. He’s a swell fella, the kind of guy who knows that the average listener only knows the band’s hits and doesn’t mind playing them, but he’s not just sitting around and coasting on past successes.

In fact, there’s been quite a lot going on with Five for Fighting over the past couple of years, as you’ll discover if you read on…

So how's the road going for you so far?

Good! We're kind of just kicking it off, but it's always fun, and you get to see your second family and play rock star for a few days. 

And I understand that you guys are going to be doing shows with a string quartet for a portion of this tour.

Yeah, we've got the rock band out for a few weeks, then I have a symphony show, and then the string quartet will be out in September and October, so...we're covering all the Five for Fighting permutations. [Laughs.] The symphonic shows are kind of what led to the string quartet. I was doing symphony shows, and it was just so much fun. I was able to play different songs with certain string arrangements that I wouldn't play with the rock band. So we kind of reduced those symphony arrangements to string quartet so we could take those to smaller venues and smaller markets. But playing with the orchestra? There's nothing like it. It just gives you chills. I don't do too many of 'em, but every time we do one, I find myself a little reborn because it's so thrilling.

Was it enjoyable for you to work up the new arrangements for the songs? 

Yeah, one of my favorite things is arranging strings. I kind of mock up my ideas and then I give 'em to professionals to put the bells and whistles on. [Laughs.] But, yeah, it's one of my favorite things to do: arranging background vocals and arranging strings. It's so much fun. And I've also worked with some great composers, and some of them, we just take their arrangements and reduce them. But, yeah, it's a lot of fun.

Alas, when you're here, it'll be a full band show rather than the string quartet.

Yep. The rock band!

And you clearly still enjoy that aspect as well. The "rocking out," as it were.

You know, I've kind of fallen into this really cool pattern where we do the string quartet in the spring and the fall, the more intimate shows, and then during the summer we'll put the rock band out. Either we'll do a headline tour or we'll open for an act. We were with the Barenaked Ladies last year, which was just a blast. That was adult rock star summer camp with those guys. [Laughs.] It was so much fun. So, yeah, you get the best of both worlds. It keeps it fresh. You play different songs, and they're different shows. The quartet shows are much more intimate behind the music, where you can hear a pin drop, and the rock shows are more rock shows, where you kind of turn it up and let Pete Thorn go crazy on guitar. [Laughs.] Stuff like that.

I know the unfortunate source of inspiration behind your single "OK (We Are Not OK)" - the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel - but what spurred you to actually sit down and pen the song?

So I've written three songs in the last few years about world events, and the first two came pretty quickly. The first one was "Blood on My Hands," about Afghanistan. That was just something that I had no plan on doing and was kind of a visceral reaction, and I put it out and it had an impact that I couldn't have imagined. And then I wrote "Can One Man Save the World" about Ukraine, went to Ukraine, and had that experience, which was surreal.

I really wasn't planning on anything, but after October 7, the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, gave a speech basically saying, "Something's really broken when we have thousands of people celebrating these atrocities in Times Square." And that kind of stuck with me, but I still wasn't looking to write something. But in the months following October 7, I think we saw so many collapses of moral institutions, some of our media became Hamas propagandists, our college campuses - as everybody knows - have run amuck with anti-Semitism and Marxism, and even members of Congress were spouting Hamas propaganda. So that really made me think about that sentiment of, "Yeah, something's really broken in the culture." It's not just America. It's the world. Look at the UN: they could not even bring themselves to vote to condemn Hamas. So I thought about writing something, and the lyric came very quickly, but the music... I wanted to make sure it had the right tone. So I went back and listened to some classical funeral marches, some Jewish music, and...that took awhile. It took a couple of months for me to get that right. And then when we made the video to "OK," I think that was even more important, to really lay out why with just clips. Not my opinion, just, "This is what happened." Certainly, when Israel shared the video, the whole thing went to another level. But, yeah, it was a bit of an effort to write it, and very hard to sing. [Laughs.] Every time I sing it, it kind of puts my voice back a little bit. But it should be hard to sing. And it should be anguished, and it should be painful. And the fact that it's resonated as it has is actually pretty humbling.

There are a lot of people in the music world who are politically involved, of course, but certainly not everyone is. Do you feel an actual obligation to be out there and be involved like that?

You know, it's interesting, because I've never been one who stands on my soapbox and lectures people. Certainly in my songs... There's a lot of songs about freedom and about our troops. "Two Lights." "Freedom Never Cries." I write about freedom a lot. I frankly have a certain disdain for celebrities who lecture us about politics. But to me, these are really moral messages. They're not political ones in my mind. I know everything's political, but Afghanistan, you don't abandon your allies to terrorists. And Ukraine, well, I'll pick the good guy over the bad guy! And the same with October 7: when people commit these atrocities, if that's not evil, if you have to qualify that, then I think something is very wrong. So to me they're not political.

But I do feel a bit of an obligation, especially because nobody's saying anything in the arts. I look at the music industry and the arts as having a tradition of standing up for the right thing, and human rights, and Live Aid and Sun City and the Concert for New York, all these things. But for some reason the music industry has lost their soul. And the fact that they can't condemn things that are easily condemnable... And something as simple as "release the hostages," is that hard to say? [Laughs.] We have five American hostages. Is it hard to say, "Release our hostages"? And sadly, for so many, including many who were at the Concert for New York when I played, they are paralyzed. So again, I hope I never have to write another one of these. I've listened to the music of the '60s and the protest songs, and they had an impact, and artists were writing about the world around them. Certainly there's many artists taking the other side of this argument, the Macklemores of the world, saying, "Israel's an evil oppressor." And that's fine. It's America. You can write what you feel. But the fact that so many who know better have been afraid to speak up, I think, goes to the song, that we are not okay.

As far as the Concert for New York goes, I was curious about something. "Superman (It's Not Easy)" got played quite a bit during that period. Were you surprised at the momentum of the song at the time?

Yeah, I mean, of course. "Shocked" is another word. "Superman" was becoming this international hit, and I was in England, actually, on 9/11, about to start promoting over there, when the airplanes hit the towers. I didn't realize until I got back to the States that many of the news organizations were using it to recognize the firefighters who ran into those buildings. And then, of course, to be able to play the Concert for New York... Any other day of my life it would've been a dream come true - every living icon, singing "Let It Be" with Paul McCartney and talking to [Pete] Townshend and Billy Joel - but, of course, that night it wasn't about that. But I do think that night kind of reframed my outlook on what music is and what it can be, and how it can transcend, and how it can provide solace, and how it can cut through noise. And perhaps that lesson was in the back of my mind when I've put out some of these more recent songs.

Regarding those recent songs, the music industry has obviously changed considerably since you started, but do you have an eye toward doing an actual full-length album? Or are you still happy releasing singles as you go?

For the first time in a long time, I'm really thinking about doing an album. I miss the process. It certainly takes a lot time. The nice thing about releasing the singles for these current events is that they're timely, right? I can't, like, write a song about Afghanistan and then put it out two years later. But I'd really like to write some songs that are not so depressing. [Laughs.] And so pointed about really scary things! So I have thought about doing that. And I'm still in love with the album. I'm in love with the record. I'm in love with eleven songs, and I'm in love with the seventh song that'll never be on the radio. Not that my songs could be on the radio anymore anyway! But you know, that evolution of putting on something for an hour and listening to it. It's kind of a lost medium, which guys of our generation I think lament. But, yeah, long story short, I am starting to put some things together, and maybe next year there'll be Five For Fighting album #7. 

When you look back at the existing six albums, some have been more popular than others. Do you have one that you consider the underrated one of the bunch?

I don't know if it'd be underrated, but I think if I had to pick one, it'd be The Battle for Everything. I had the dream of going to the middle of nowhere in northern California, having a budget and bringing the band with me, and spending three months by the ocean and writing and recording and making a record in real time. I think that one, for me. And also with "100 Years" on it, which kind of came late because I didn't have a single. But on every album there's something that's special. I even go back to Message for Albert, the one that came and went on EMI Records and nobody ever knew. There are a couple of songs on that record, like "Love Song," which I think is one of my best songs, and some of the arrangements on that record. And even the last one, Bookmarks. There are a couple of songs on that one, too. The last song, "The Day I Died," I talked to a guy the other day, I couldn't believe he even knew that song, but the song had a big impact on his life. So, yeah, they're all my kids, but if I had to take one to an island...which I wouldn't, I'd take Abbey Road. [Laughs.] But if I did, it'd be The Battle for Everything.

Just as a sidebar, I actually do remember Message for Albert, because it came out just as I was doing a lot of music reviews for the local alt-weekly at the time. I'd argue that that one's a little... "Artsier" might not be the right word for it, but it's not necessarily as polished, which might actually be the reason I liked it even more.

No, totally! Look, "Bella's Birthday Cake," right? It really wasn't aiming... [Hesitates.] I don't know, I wasn't not aiming for a single, but it was my first swing, and the president of the label produced it, so there wasn't a lot of pressure to find one, to go, "What's gonna be the song?" And I was a rocker, y'know? I'm still a rocker! If you listen to the whole thing, I'm a rocker with ballads. It just happens that the ballads are the songs that everybody knows. But, yeah, there was an edge to that, and I think in a way these latest songs - particularly "Blood on My Hands" and "OK" - would fit much more on Message for Albert than America Town or The Battle for Everything. They have a sparseness, they have an edge, they have a vocal quality, and they're just taking swings without thought. And a lot of Message for Albert was just, like, "I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just writing what I feel." [Laughs.]

Normally I have a stock question that I ask everyone - "Who was the first person that you met where you had to keep from going full fanboy?" - but I'd guess that the Concert for New York had several examples of that.

Yeah, of course. My first concert ever was Billy Joel at the Forum, the Glass Houses tour, so meeting Billy backstage at that concert... Of course! And Townshend... I had Tommy in my CD player for 20 years, and [The Who] blew the roof off the Garden that night. To me, they kind of owned that night, and credit to them. And of course meeting McCartney. He's a deity. I tend to not freak out so much about musicians. I'm more of a sports freak. Meeting Wayne Gretzky to me was... I was much more quivering in my shoes than when meeting some singers. Maybe if I'd met Freddie Mercury I'd pee in my pants. [Laughs] But, yeah, to meet those folks, and to meet folks along the way, to meet James Taylor and folks like that, just to say, "Thank you," that's the nice thing about meeting these folks. You can say, "Hey, thank you. You're part of the reason I'm living my dream." And that night... I mean, go down the list! It was surreal. 

It's also interesting that you've been able to work with so many artists who aren't necessarily in the same musical wheelhouse as yours. For instance, you've worked with Tom Morello. 

Yeah, on the Afghanistan song ["God Help Us Now"]! I actually met Tom a long time ago, and I've always been a fan of his. We have a different world view, but I've always been a fan of his, and to work on the Afghanistan song through some other folks was great. And working with Stephen Schwartz, the Broadway writer, to me that was just a blessing. He's such a master songwriter, so to write a couple of songs with him and become friends with him has been one of the highlights of my career. And then I wrote a country song with Kix Brooks, so I could check my "Country" box. [Laughs.] I haven't done a ton of collaborations. It's one of my regrets, actually. I wish I had done more. And maybe there'll be more to come. But, yeah, I've worked with some grand masters, no doubt.

As far as your set lists go, fans obviously come in expecting the hits, but how do you go about selecting the other songs? Do you try to mix it up and include a little bit from each album, or do you try to focus predominantly on the albums that were the most popular? 

Well, you've got to play "100 Years" and "Superman" and "Chances" and "The Riddle." I think it's frankly rude not to do that. [Laughs.] But talking about Message for Albert, we play "Bella's Birthday Cake." We always do a song for our troops. Whether it's "Two Lights" or "Freedom Never Cries," we always do a song to recognize our veterans. We always throw a few surprises in there. You might hear a little Queen, you might hear a little Elton John. And I also let the band do their thing. I try to feature Pete Thorn. He's such an incredible player, so we try to do some songs that feature Pete.

But I'm at this stage of my career where I'll basically ask the audience what they want to hear. And if they say something and...it sounds strange, but if we know it... [Laughs.] I should know all my songs, but I don't know all 70 songs, and the band doesn't know all 70. But we'll sometimes let the audience guide the set list. Of course, we have the anchors. But we always have a lot of fun. I like keeping it loose, so it's not the same thing every night, so everybody's on their toes and every show's different.

We have a little Grateful Dead thing going - there's some people who'll come to five or six shows, so I have an obligation, I think, to mix it up, so they don't hear the same thing every night as well. But it's just great, and as I say, I play with these incredible musicians, so listening to them every night keeps it fresh for me as well.