FAMOUS STRANGERS

Famous Strangers began as what Amanda Kiernan calls the perfect mistake, and that accidental beginning still seems to define much of the band’s character.
Their self titled debut moves freely through Heavy Metal, Grunge, Punk, Blues and Heavy Rock, combining ideas that have existed for more than a decade with material that continued changing only days before entering the studio.
Rather than smoothing out those differences, the Canadian female fronted Heavy Metal force have allowed them to become part of an identity that values instinct, imperfection and the freedom to follow a song wherever it wants to go.
For Kiernan, that freedom has also been deeply personal.
After twenty years of working within the habits and expectations of another band, Famous Strangers required her to unlearn self doubt and discover what could happen when the musicians around her encouraged exploration rather than limitation.
That freedom can be heard in a voice that moves from whispers and vulnerable melodies to aggression, and in lyrics that expose experiences she sometimes has to emotionally revisit every time she steps onto a stage.
In this interview by Fok ‘bs‘, Amanda Kiernan, vocals at Canadian female fronted Heavy Metal band Famous Strangers, talks about creative freedom, vulnerability, imperfection, being misunderstood, refusing genre limitations, and the importance of remaining authentic as the band discovers what it is capable of becoming.
You have described Famous Strangers as ‘the perfect mistake‘, something that was never meant to be but became exactly what it needed to be.
Now that the debut album exists, can you still hear that accidental quality in the music, or has the band developed into something much more deliberate than you originally imagined?
“I feel like it’s both, because we’re still so open to trying anything, we’re open to adventure, and in doing so you make mistakes. Sometimes parts of a song literally come out of a mistake, someone might hit a wrong note, or I might make one, and then all of a sudden it’s like, oh, that actually sounds better than what we originally had. So definitely both. And we’ve been finding our sound more too, which is really cool. It’s cool to hear the FS sound, even though it is kind of all over the place. We’re starting to have a good routine and structure.”
Some of Jeff’s riffs existed for more than a decade before finally finding a home on this album, while ‘Ghosts of Men’ was written only three days before you entered the studio.
When you listen to the finished record, can you actually hear the difference between ideas that had years to mature and those that arrived almost instinctively?
“It’s pretty cool to watch the boys experience all these songs and all the different phases, because they’ve been listening to some of them for decades, even with a different vocalist and different players. ‘Ghosts of Men’ was written a long time ago, it was actually called ‘Hollywood’. The instruments were written and put in the vault for ten years or longer, but lyrically, and a couple changes, that happened three days before the studio. We did that because we were opening for Danko Jones and wanted one more rocker for the set. That’s what I love about this band, we want to be able to play with any artist at any festival, genre-wise, so whoever we’re opening for, we adjust our set to that. On the finished record, we can hear the difference, and it has matured, but there will always be that old style in there too, because that’s where we come from. We’ve all evolved, but we’re always going to keep our roots in the music. So it’s both, we can hear the differences between an old song and a new one, but they have similarities too, and they’re also very different.”
Most debut albums document musicians who are still learning how to be a band, but Famous Strangers began with members who already had considerable experience elsewhere.
What did you consciously have to unlearn from your previous bands before Famous Strangers could develop an identity of its own?
“I think all of us have a way of doing things, and when you come from something, that’s all you know. So there have been challenges with this new band, where you might do something one way and then realize that’s just not how we do it now. We’ve all come a long way, there are a lot of good things we’ve put into this band, but there’s also a bunch we’ve had to unlearn. For me, there’s so many things, because I was with Order of Chaos for twenty years and we did things one way. It’s hard to have those habits from two decades and then come into a brand new band, and I have to remind myself, this is a new band, this is not how this is going to be done. For me it was more the self doubt and self sabotage, because I never really had that creative freedom before. These boys are really good to me, they let me do whatever I want, and of course they’ll let me know if they’re not into something, but for the longest time I didn’t believe them when they kept saying, that’s great, that’s great. I was like, no, it’s not good. A lot of these songs exist only because these boys supported me and told me it was good, a lot of them would have been a crumpled up piece of paper on the ground otherwise, until they gave me the love and support I needed to move forward. Each of us has had to unlearn a lot, there are a lot of dynamics with different bands and different people you work with, a lot of challenges, but we’re working through it. I’d also never dealt with the business side of a band before, which is silly since I’ve had twenty plus years to learn about it, but I never did. So it’s a big change for me, and it’s almost overtaking the writing and playing at times, because there’s so much to do. It’s honestly crazy, but that’s running a business, right?”
The album repeatedly returns to self worth, vulnerability and breaking free from things that hold us back.
Did writing these songs actually change the way any of you understood the experiences behind them, or does songwriting reveal things about yourself only after the song is finished?
“I think it’s both. Once you listen to something over and over, after a while you hear it differently, I think you don’t hear a song the same way twice, as a musician or even as a listener. It’s like a movie, you watch it enough times and start recognizing things you didn’t notice before. So we definitely understood the experiences behind them going in, but they reveal things afterwards too. When I was writing, I was writing from personal experience, so I understood exactly what I was trying to say and the message I was putting out. But even after I write my own words, I can go back and listen to them from a completely different phase of my life than when I wrote them, so it’s almost like listening to a different version of me singing those lyrics. It changes depending on the day, and what emotion I’m feeling. If I’m listening sad or listening happy, it’s completely different. It definitely reveals all sorts of things, and I feel like the boys would say the same.”
Amanda, your voice can move from clean melodic passages to something considerably more aggressive.
When a song reaches an emotional extreme, how do you decide whether that emotion needs to be sung beautifully or allowed to become ugly?
“It’s hard to say, because sometimes a jam is just so good, band practice is so good, we put the space lights on and vibe out, and when it’s really good I feel like I black out while freestyling, and then wake up and there’s a song in front of me, like I forget what I did. So I think it’s a balance, and I don’t plan it, I don’t decide okay, this part’s going to be clean and this part’s going to be a scream, it just happens that way while I’m writing. Sometimes I end up screaming something live and recording it clean, and vice versa. Usually you can tell, I guess from writing for so long you can kind of predict when you want to get extreme with it and when you want to stay chill. But this is the first band where I’ve been really adventurous, going outside the box the way I’ve always wanted to. It’s cool to play around and see where my voice can go. This is the first time I’ve been quiet and sung the way I sing on the beginning of ‘L.S.C.’, I’d never sung like that before, and it took a little time to learn, to not yell everything. I’m still learning and exploring, talk-singing, barely singing, whispering, and it’s so fun to do. I love having a band where I can explore all the options and try anything and everything.”
Your music moves through grunge, punk, blues, classic metal and modern heavy rock without committing completely to any one of them.
Have you ever written something that made you wonder whether you had finally gone too far outside what Famous Strangers are supposed to sound like, and if so, did that make you abandon the idea or become even more interested in it?
“Definitely more interested in it. I think because Famous Strangers was a mistake to begin with, we don’t get put into one genre. We’re going to keep our metal roots, but a lot of metalheads say we’re heavy rock, that we’re not even metal. It’s neat to see where we go, and that’s who we are, we’re not in a box, we want to genre bend and play around and do unpredictable things and have fun. In a lot of bands it’s easy to stick to a structure, and that’s fine too, but I’ve just never been in a band before where everybody has complete creative freedom to say, let’s try this, let’s try that, we don’t like that, let’s do this instead. We go wherever we want to go. I don’t think Famous Strangers will ever go too far, because we’re going to go wherever we want to go anyway. Artistically, I know I’ve gone too far with some ideas, maybe not the music itself but music video stuff, but that’s part of art. You watch these artists grow from the start, and you grow up with them. I’ve made so many mistakes in the twenty plus years I’ve been a musician. That’s the whole point, sometimes mistakes are a good thing, imperfections can absolutely be beautiful.”
‘Fire Inside’ has already developed a life beyond its recorded version, including you improvising dinosaur themed lyrics during the show in Drumheller.
How important is it that your songs remain flexible enough for unexpected moments like that, rather than becoming compositions that have to be reproduced exactly every night?
“I’ve watched a lot of eighties live music, and what I love about it is that you go to a concert and you’re not just listening to the album front to back. A great example is the Live Aid show with Freddie Mercury and Queen, they didn’t play the whole song, they played bits, a whole set of little pieces of every different song meshed into one another. I think it’s so important to be different, I want people to come to our show and experience something new every time. I don’t think the boys would have played ‘Fire Inside’ at Drumheller if the instruments weren’t completely done, because I know how it feels when something’s not ready, that’s totally understandable. But they had that part pretty much down, it was just me struggling with the lyrics. That was the one song where, for so long, I’d sit at my favourite coffee shop, Stopgap Coffee here in Edmonton, staring at a blank page for weeks and weeks. So I’m really honoured that these boys were open enough to let me freestyle it that night, since I know that on a good day, feeling relaxed and creative, I can freestyle anything. It was really cool that they allowed that, because now that dinosaur song, no one’s ever going to hear it again, and what a cool moment that was. I think it’s honestly really important to stay flexible and keep things different.”
The title ‘Famous Strangers’ creates an interesting contradiction, especially for a debut album.
Does the name also describe something about the relationship between musicians themselves, people who can become incredibly close creatively while parts of their lives remain completely unknown to one another?
“That’s the beautiful part of it, I love how everybody has different opinions and perspectives on music, lyrics, song names, and titles, that’s a really cool way to think of it. Jeff talks about this too, how when he came up with the name Famous Strangers, it’s about how the four of us are famous within our own scene, since we’ve done so much in the metal community, but we’re strangers coming together. You can take that and run with it however you want, and whatever you think up is correct, because it’s art, it goes anywhere. That is a really cool way to think about it, becoming incredibly close creatively while parts of your lives remain completely unknown to each other. Because you put on a show, and not in a negative way, but you put on a mask, you go out to a show or a party, you wear that mask, and then you go home and take it off, and there’s this stranger underneath. That’s a really cool concept.”
‘I’ll See You In The Stars’ showed a particularly haunting and vulnerable side of the band, while other material can become much more aggressive.
Do you think vulnerability can sometimes feel more dangerous to perform in front of an audience than anger?
“One hundred percent. Especially when it’s a personal experience, you’re literally laying your heart and soul, your blood, sweat, and tears out for the whole world to see. It seems to get easier the more we write and record and play, but the funny thing is, no matter how healed I feel now, because writing that song was emotional, I bawled my eyes out all over the paper, then bawled my eyes out again recording it. After it was released I felt like I healed from what I wrote about, but now every time I sing it, I’m put right back into that moment, those feelings. I have to remember the balance, this isn’t happening anymore, I’m just singing about it now, it’s like reliving it over and over. Even the aggressive stuff is personal for me lyrically, so either way I’m just pouring it all out onto the stage, I don’t know how to do it any other way. I completely let go of everything up there, and I don’t have control over it either, it’s just what happens the second my foot hits the stage. I guess in a way it’s easier to be aggressive, because I’m so used to everything being fast and loud behind me. The slower stuff is more challenging, because you can hear every little thing.”
You spent roughly three years writing, rewriting and experimenting before completing only seven tracks.
Was there a moment when improving the album started becoming more dangerous than simply finishing it, because endless refinement can eventually remove the instinct that made a song work in the first place?
“Oh yeah, that’s a whole thing, a lot of artists do that, have stuff in the vault for twenty years that never gets released. Release your stuff, the world needs your heart. So I think it can get dangerous, but we weren’t just working with seven songs, we’ve actually recorded twenty already, we just had to choose seven out of the twenty, and there’s more to come. I think a smart thing to do is, once you feel like it’s finished, book the studio date, because you can go around in a circle for so long that you end up back where you started. Especially with me and Beej, our drummer, we work really well under pressure. Once you book that session, you don’t have a choice anymore, you need to figure it out and have it finished. Of course, don’t book it before you’re ready, but also don’t be so repetitive with it that you’re going insane trying to make it perfect, because a lot of the magic happens in the studio anyway. Be prepared and practiced, but not to the point where it’s five years down the road and you’re still writing the same song. Booking the studio date is like booking a flight, once it’s booked you don’t have a choice, you’ve got to save the money, you’ve got to be ready, you’ve got to have the song ready. It’s a great way to get everybody’s ass into gear. I do that to my stepfather, Rob, a lot, because he tends to work on a song a little too long. The only reason one of his songs is out is because I booked him studio time as a Christmas present and told him to get his shit together, because it’s happening.”
You have said that some listeners may not immediately understand what Famous Strangers are trying to do.
Is being misunderstood musically something that frustrates you, or can it actually be reassuring because it suggests that the band has not become easy to categorise?
“I feel like we feel the same way honestly. When we started we weren’t even sure what we were doing, one day we’d be jamming heavy metal, the next day funk and blues and jazz, we weren’t even sure how to categorize ourselves. But after a while, now that we’re finding our sound, we’re realizing we’re very misunderstood. Since I’ve been put in a box for a really long time, I actually like being misunderstood, I want people to be intrigued and a little confused. People are either going to hate it or love it, but that’s art, not everybody’s going to like the music, and that’s totally fine. Being misunderstood doesn’t frustrate me, because I’ve been misunderstood my whole life, so it’s a natural feeling for me, and it makes sense that it would come through in our music too. As for not being able to categorize us at times we all really love this and enjoy not being pigeon holed. Again art and music is a expression of emotion and that emotion constantly changes.”
Your debut was created largely from personal experiences, yet once those songs are released, listeners begin attaching their own memories and meanings to them.
Has anyone ever interpreted one of your songs in a way that was completely different from what you intended, but somehow made you see your own song differently?
“Yes, and this goes back to what I was saying in the last question, art is art, and people are going to hate it or love it, and that’s totally okay, you’re not supposed to be everybody’s cup of tea. I love it when people tell me their side, their perspective, because that’s what it’s about, whatever meaning you take from the lyrics is correct, because it’s your experience listening to it. It was really cool when someone messaged me after we released ‘I’ll See You In The Stars’, it was actually pretty emotional. He said, ‘I’ll see you in the stars, that’s the last thing I said to my brother before he passed’. How beautiful is that. I didn’t write it about that, even though it’s a predictable thing to connect it to, I wrote it more as a love song, a romance thing. But what a beautiful thing, that someone else attached the same phrase to something so much more emotional and intense, a family member passing. That’s so sad but also so poetic and beautiful, and I really love how he connected to it. That’s all I ever want for people, to spread a message and have someone interpret it their own way and have it help them. So yes, I love how it makes me see my own songs differently, and I think it’s really important as an artist to stay open to everybody’s feedback and perception, because you’ll always end up thinking, oh, I didn’t think of it that way.”
The first album establishes what Famous Strangers are, but perhaps more importantly it also establishes what you are allowed to become.
After making a record with so few stylistic boundaries, is there anything you now know you never want Famous Strangers to become?
“I feel like we just want to be authentic and raw the whole way through, and that’s very challenging these days, especially with technology and everything, it’s a little scary that a lot of the time these days is content and posting, and there hasn’t been as much time to just create. But that’s all we know, back in the day you just played. I really hope we stay outside the box, keep being authentic, and stay true to our art, doing everything as honestly as we can. I just don’t want to lose myself. It’s easy after a while to become cynical, or have the business side bog you down. You see so many documentaries about artists going through that, so I’m a little nervous about it. I hope we just keep the balance, keep communicating with each other, and stay on our own curvy path of just being Famous Strangers.”
The debut album may establish the sound of Famous Strangers, but Amanda Kiernan seems far more interested in what it allows the band to become next.
Old habits are being discarded, musical boundaries remain deliberately loose, songs are allowed to change on stage, and even mistakes can become the moment that takes an idea somewhere unexpected.
After years of working within more familiar structures, Kiernan is discovering new possibilities in her voice, her writing and the creative trust she shares with her bandmates.
There is vulnerability behind that freedom.
Songs can return Kiernan to experiences she thought she had already healed from, while listeners can take those same words and attach entirely different lives and memories to them.
Famous Strangers therefore seem strongest when neither the musicians nor their audience are told exactly where the boundaries lie.
The challenge now is not to define those boundaries more clearly, but to preserve the honesty, curiosity and mutual support that allowed the band to find its identity in the first place.
For Kiernan, remaining open to mistakes, change and misunderstanding may be precisely what keeps Famous Strangers recognisably themselves.
by Fok ‘bs’

track-list:​
Fire Inside
Ghosts of Men
Please Her
As Your Leader
Desires
Far Away from Home
Rain

produced by Jeff Kittlitz, Phil Anderson, and Famous Strangers
mixed by Joel Wanasek
mastered by Maor Applebaum

DeadRhetoric:
“Serendipity and synchronicity are two key factors in securing the best factors for successful chemistry in any musical outfit. That’s the case for sure in the Canadian heavy rock outfit Famous Strangers. Veterans of the metal scene, they’ve come together at this point in their career to create an energetic heavy music platform surging with this emotional intensity from all angles that’s impossible to ignore. Their debut self-titled album contains all the ideal components to make a strong impact locally and abroad.”
Metal Epidemic:
“‘Famous Strangers’ is an absolute belter of a debut album so don’t be a stranger, check it out! Very Highly Recommended. (5/5)”
​​Heavy Music HQ​:
​”It’s great to hear a modern hard rock band unafraid to get aggressive, from a vocalist that can unleash a scream as well as she can hit a crisp high note to the abundance of shredding guitar solos.”

The wait is finally over, as Alberta heavy rock band Famous Strangers have officially released their self titled debut album, a seven track collection that brings together heavy riffs, grungy textures, melodic passages and atmospheric moments.
Built around themes of self worth, personal growth, vulnerability and breaking free from what holds you back, the album delivers an emotional journey that refuses to settle into a single stylistic formula.
The record is the result of approximately three years of writing, rewriting and experimentation.
Some of guitarist Jeff Kittlitz’s riffs had been waiting on his hard drive for more than a decade before finding their place, while other ideas emerged almost spontaneously during the band’s regular jam sessions.
‘Ghosts of Men‘, for example, was written only three days before the band entered the studio, yet quickly developed into one of the album’s key tracks.
Musically, ‘Famous Strangers‘ moves freely between grunge, punk, blues, classic metal and modern heavy rock, combining explosive passages with more restrained and atmospheric sections.
Rather than following a strict formula, the band allow each song to develop naturally, resulting in a record that feels varied without losing its emotional connection.
Lyrically, the album focuses largely on personal experiences and the idea of recognising your own value.
The band describe the record as a journey designed to evoke different emotions, while encouraging listeners to look inward and emerge feeling stronger and more confident.
“We feel like this debut album will take fans on a journey, feeling many different emotions. Some may not understand what we are trying to do, but by the end hoping that they are surprised, refreshed, and feeling inspired.”
To mark the release, Famous Strangers have also shared a new rehearsal video for ‘Fire Inside‘, offering a glimpse into the band’s live energy and creative process.
The song itself has already developed an entertaining history onstage, including an improvised performance in Drumheller, Alberta, where vocalist Amanda Kiernan incorporated dinosaur themed lyrics suggested by the audience.
With Famous Strangers, the Alberta quartet have now brought together years of ideas, experimentation and personal experiences into their first full length statement.
It is a debut that leaves plenty of room for the band to develop further, while providing a strong foundation for whatever comes next.