I love finding a great band who is so in sync with their music, their presentation, and their performance. And when you get to know a band like that to find they are also genuine and appreciative of their fans, it makes meeting them that much better. So when I had the opportunity to interview a band I’ve known over the past two years, it was an absolute pleasure to help introduce them to more people. That band is GFM.
GFM is from Jacksonville, FL and consists of CJ Sanders English (guitar, vocals), Magdalene “Maggie” Rose English (bass, vocals), and Evie “LuLu” Louise English (drums, background vocals). But, the part that blew me away is when I learned how old they all were. Currently, CJ is 20, Maggie is 19, and LuLu is 15. Yet, if you’ve seen them perform, they sound like they’ve been doing this for years on stage. Their parents made them pick up an instrument to learn to play at a very young age and told them to stick with it and if they didn’t like it after a few years they could stop their lessons. CJ started to learn guitar, LuLu decided on drums, but Maggie was learning piano. When they decided to form the band, Maggie decided to pick up the bass, since it was the core instrument they were missing. And they’ve been playing together for over 10 years. “We started at a super young age,” CJ said, “and we’re really grateful our parents gave us that opportunity and that suggested that we do that because it has given us extra time, I guess, to make our name in the music industry.”
And when you hear how mature they sound and see how well they perform together, it’s mind-blowing. “…being that young it just freaks people out that we can play as good as we have just because we’ve played for a long time.” GFM was playing at local bars and venues while they were still underage. And while most of the venues had no issues with the band being underage, there was always that one exception as GFM explained, “There was only one show where we weren’t allowed to sell merch in the venue. Everyone else was totally cool with it. Everyone had their eyes on us and we had the wristbands and Xs on our hands so everybody knew we were underage. But, there was only one venue that said ‘This is the rule we have you have to sell merch outside if you’re gonna sell merch. You can come in and play the show and after that you have to get out.'” Overall, GFM has always been treated with respect whenever they play.
GFM first released an EP known as Death of Giants in 2015. The immediately followed that with their first studio album titled Identity Crisis that was released in 2016. When I asked about their writing style for those albums Maggie said, “When we first started writing Identity Crisis we had a lot of help and we were depending on a lot of people for the input and their influence saying, ‘Hey you should write like this’, ‘You should write songs like this’, ‘Your music should sound like this’. So we were going in all these different directions and listening to all these people.” Then in 2019 the band released another EP titled Oh, The Horror!. When asked what was the difference from this recent EP and their other albums they said, “We’re more confident in who we are, more confident in writing, and so we knew what we wanted to sound like. We obviously were still looking to others to see what they had to say, we had cool writers, and we’re very collaborative and that sort of thing. But, we knew what we wanted to sound like. So, we were directing it more. Saying ‘Hey we want to write like this’, ‘This is the stuff we want to talk about’, ‘Let’s go in this direction’ instead of people telling us what direction to go in.” Working together for so long, the sisters work collaboratively well together bringing each other ideas on both music and lyrics. CJ added, “I feel like sometimes we’re scatterbrained a lot and it helps us with writing as we’re constantly throwing stuff out ‘Hey about this? How about this?’ So it’s important to have cool writers and we’ve used them before so they all make sure we’re on the same wavelength as us because we’ve been with others before and we just confused them.” We all had a good laugh over that.
Check out the video “Stuck in My Suicide” from Identity Crisis below:
Producer Eric Varnell and Billy Decker who both worked on Oh, The Horror! really understood GFM‘s vision. “They completely got it right away. And Eric is completely the same as us. We had so many ideas we want on there and so many emotions we want to portray and he really does a great job at making sure we portray those in the right way and making sure we put those thoughts and those emotions to music and he knows exactly how to do that. And how to make us feel comfortable while doing that…He makes it a very relaxed situation.” They also went on to explain Eric always allowed them to take their time with the songs as they recorded and never chastised them for making mistakes.
Oh, The Horror! was also a very personal EP for GFM. They explained, “We were able to write about things we [had] overcome and the happiness we had found and we wanted to share that with people and share that story with others, so they could hopefully learn from it and be able to reach that same point in happiness, that same point of self-acceptance that we did.”
Check out the video “On The Inside” from the EP Oh, The Horror! below:
GFM is currently working on a new project and we’ve already got to see a taste of the new work. The band released a single titled “I Don’t Need Your Fantasy”. The single will appear on their upcoming new project and produced by Joey Sturgis. “We felt it’s such a strong point to lead from because it embodies what the new EP is about, what the new project is about, because we have dealt with heavy topics in the past. Just struggling with your identity, not knowing who you are, constantly comparing yourself to other people, but then at the end of that coming to a conclusion of you accept yourself now and you’re happy with who you are and learning to love yourself. This EP is just kind of embodying that whole thing where we’re confident in ourselves now. We’re here and we’re going to take over. And there’s no one who can get in our way. And no one who can stop us because we know what our goal is.” The song was written to tell people “you don’t need to listen to the stereotype that society has placed on us. You don’t have to live that cookie-cutter life. You can live the way you want to. You don’t have to live the perfect way. You don’t have to have the perfect social media status to be happy. In the end it doesn’t matter. It’s social media, it’s not real.” GFM says they feel the music compared to prior songs is more complex and they’re pushing themselves to be even better than before. You can check out their video of “I Don’t Need Your Fantasy” below.
One thing I do love about this band directly relates to their full name of Gold Frankincense & Myrrh. Their faith. “We are all Christians. We’re a faith-based band. With our music we always want to create that positive outlook for people and that safe community for people to listen to let go of their problems and feel better about themselves after listening to our music. And we do deal with heavy topics like depression and suicide and mental health…but it always comes out in the end with a positive outlook like you can get help and it will be OK. It’s very important to us to let people know that there is hope, there is a way out, there is recovery.” And just because they’re a Christian band doesn’t mean they don’t know how to rock out, trust me they do. They don’t change their music based on the venue. “On stage, we say a small message on what we believe in, but we never want to force it down anybody’s throat. We never want to force our beliefs on anybody. We say our piece and then continue playing music.”
The ladies in GFM are very family-oriented and make time to go to dinner together, see movies, or even just go to the park. When they’re not on tour or working on new music they love playing video games. They are big XBox and Nintendo Switch fans. LuLu loves Apex Legends and Dead By Daylight. Maggie is a fan of Call of Duty and likes to let loose with a hail of bullets because “I have terrible aim” and is bound to hit something with more bullets than less. And CJ loves Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. All great selections!
GFM left us with these parting words:
Maggie – “I’m very excited about this new music and being able to put out new projects and new ideas. And kind of make those come to life with music videos and being able to talk to our fans about them. Cause I feel like once you put out music everyone listens to it for a little bit and then says ‘When’s the next one?’. So we’re excited about being able to give them another one so recently. Because we had gone a couple of years after releasing an album. It was like two or three years and then we put out the EP. And now it’s been a year and we’re going to put out another project. That’s what’s exciting for me.”
LuLu – “I’m excited for just the shows because playing shows is one of my favorite things of all time. And just getting that rush before we go on, hyping each other up, and coming off stage and talking to fans, and encouraging them, and seeing them smile and hugging them it’s really great. So I can’t wait to do that for weeks and weeks in a row.”
CJ – “Definitely seeing people and hearing people’s stories and getting that physical connection to actually see people and see people that are supporting you. That’s what I definitely love when touring.”
At the time of the interview, GFM was planning to go on tour. Unfortunately, those plans had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I look forward to seeing GFM back out on the road again entertaining the fans. For those who’ve never seen them live, they bring an energy to the stage that is unparalleled to most live bands. Expect to be bouncing, jumping, and singing along because GFM loves to get the fans involved in their show.
Please check out all their social media links below to keep up with the band. And for those who support their Patreon you get to see sneak peeks of new music, videos, and behind the scenes! GFM is an amazing band with such wonderful and powerful music, so check them out. I hope you love them as much as I do!
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