For Lack of a Term

For Lack of a Term is an alternative rock band from Yonkers, New York. It's current members include: Chris Beairsto (drums), Neil Stafford (guitar), Arthur Wernham (bass) and Ryan Dempsey (vocals).

At first glance Ryan looks like your average 27 year old. Maybe you’d crossed paths with him before and didn’t realize. Maybe you sat behind him in English class at the City College or maybe he was your server at the Alamo Drafthouse. He’s usually introverted until he’s comfortable. However, when Ryan is on stage, he's anything but a background character. The stage is his element, where he’s at home. He takes pride in his art, and calculates every detail of his performance for growth and improvement, whether it's music, acting and most recently, comedy.

Jamie Arcelay: Tell me about the moment you felt you had a connection to music

Ryan Dempsey: Music wasn’t a really big part of my life, up until high school. There was this girl who I had a crush on and she was into all kinds of music. All I had on my ipod were, like 50 video game theme songs, so I didn’t really listen to bands or anything like that. She really liked the Red Hot Chili Peppers and I totally lied and I was like “I love the Red Hot Chili Peppers!” Even though I had never bothered to listen to them before. Then I actually did listen them so I could talk to her about music and whatever. I realized I had heard a couple of their songs on the radio. That’s when I started to listen to more music in my attempts to impress her. We ended up dating for two years, so I guess it worked. The first time I had actually wanted to play music was after I had seen the Foo Fighters play. They were the first band I had ever seen in concert. So, there was the moment that I started to like music and the moment that I started to want to play music.

Did you start with keyboard?

No, I hadn’t started with that until a year ago and I have a long way to go. When I got the idea, I had never played an instrument, so I thought, why not just be a singer? Because you don’t have to know how to play an instrument. Little did I know, your voice is your instrument and there is a proper way to use it. But I felt like it was the easiest to tackle and I was actually quite terrible. I didn’t start learning guitar until my senior year of high school. I try to practice for at least an hour a day on things that I could improve on.

Were you in any bands before FLOAT?

The way it started was I saw Foo Fighters with my friend from college, Frank. Afterwards I felt passionate about starting a band. He knew how to play guitar and there were a couple of guys who knew how to play instruments that I knew. So, I asked if they wanted to start something and they did. For the most part, it was me and this kid Xavier who knew Chris and a couple of different guitar players filtered in and out. Then we hit a wall where we weren’t really doing anything and it sort of ended. But me and Chris were still really passionate about playing music. We met up and jammed and decided we wanted to keep playing. So we found this new line up. We met this kid, Greg who we’re still close with but he’s not in the band anymore. He’s in this new band named Akari.

How did you guys come up with the name FLOAT?

It's really difficult to come up with a name that everyone will be comfortable with. The first name that we thought of with Xavier was called KoolSneak. We hated that name and we wanted to change it. Then one day I was taking the Police Exam. They had practice without me and they decided to dump the name KoolSneak and called ourselves For Lack of a Better Term, which I thought sounded cool. But it was a long name so we changed it to For Lack of a Term. Since the anagram for that is FLOAT we used that name. But there’s a lot of bands called FLOAT and we wanted to make it easier for people to find us so we changed it back to For Lack of a Term.

How would you describe your sound?

It’s definitely among the realm of alternative rock. But I don’t want to limit us to one genre. We have some stuff that sounds like Foo Fighters and we just wrote a new song that sounds like Arctic Monkeys to me. There’s a couple songs I used a tambourine on and I also have a synthesizer to add a new layer. It’s a blend of a lot of different things like a petri dish of sounds.

What’s the song writing process like for you guys?

I think it varies. For the most part I feel like the song ideas come from lyrics that I’ve written. When I think of lyrics I already know how I’m going to sing it. I could envision how the guitar and bass would sound and how the tempo and the groove of the song would work because I would have a melody in mind. There’s been songs where Neil would come up with the guitar part and jam on that. Then I would record what he jammed on and add lyrics to it. Those are primarily the two ways. I love working on new stuff. There’s always this moment of discovery and euphoria that comes with writing a new song.

Where does your inspiration come from?

Most of my lyrics are about my love life, which I’m trying to avoid.

Really? I feel like you guys have a good mix.

I’ve been trying to have a good mix. We’re going to begin recording in August. Out of the five songs we have, four are about my love life and one is about getting fired from the Alamo. I’m just trying to have a variety of topics. Right now I’m working on one about identity because I go through a lot of periods where I’m unsure of what I’m doing. Sometimes I feel really stuck so now I’ve been trying to tackle topics that deal with identity and feeling lost. I’m also experimenting with writing songs from other people’s point of views and things that they’re going through. I’m just trying to as far as topics be open to new things. As far as established figures, I’m inspired by Childish Gambino. He’s successful at everything. Aside from being Childish Gambino, he’s also Donald Glover, an A-list actor, writer and director and showrunner for Atlanta. He’s also got about 10 stand-up comedy specials on Netflix. I actually just started doing stand-up a month or two ago. I have a show coming up. But that’s not enough. People think I’m doing a lot more than I actually am doing…

I think you’re being a little hard on yourself. You keep yourself busy. You also did a lot of projects in school. Have you graduated yet?

I haven’t I’m still trying to get my B.A. in Theatre. I mean, I have a variety of dreams, maybe starting my own theatre company or production company. I also have a lot of sketch comedy ideas that I want to film. I want to be a musician, actor, writer, filmmaker and a comedian. I want to be all these things and it takes a lot of focus and sometimes it’s a little overwhelming.

You were working on a show with Glenis Hunter, right?

Yeah, Glenis is a wonderfully talented actress. A story about her is that there was an open call for a television network either ABC or NBC and they were looking for a Latino actor or actress and Glenis was chosen out of everybody in NYC. She started a web series called Woke: the Series about her experiences as a black and latino actress and she asked me to be apart of it. It’s funny I got to escape my day job as a waiter by playing a waiter. It was a lot of fun to work on! And it was a massive production she did some crowdfunding and was able to raise quite a bit of money. The production value was very professional. She had a full crew-- It looked like an HBO production! I’m so confident in the fact that it’ll get picked up and she’ll blow up. So, stay tuned for that.

You were in a music video, called “Bucket List,” for the band, Behind the Facade…since you’re friends with other bands, do you have any other plans to collaborate?

There’s another musician, named Sean Dowering in this a band called Synapses Firing. He was also in Behind the Facade’s video. I had never met him before that day and we kind of hit it off because we have a lot of the same interests. Well, his band was also shooting a video and I wanted to be in it. So, we did that and hopefully that will be the start of many more collaborations to come.

You have a new single, which you released a video for called “Chronic Overthinker,” is there a story behind it?

There was a period before Emily and I were together...where we were hooking up on and off. She told me she had no interest in taking it any further, but she would say things that would make me think otherwise. So, I’d be overthinking her mixed signals all the time. The chorus of that song is about me telling myself, “When I say I’m done, I’ve got to be done,” meaning I have to stop overthinking everything.

Are you guys touring again this summer?

No, we’re not touring this summer because we’re going to be recording. I don’t think there is anything wrong in taking a step back as long as you’re using that step back to reassess and recalibrate. One of the songs on the new EP is called “Recalibrate” and it’s about taking a second to just adjust yourself to be better. That’s what I’d like to do at this point, polish up our songs, make sure things are tighter, add more vocal harmonies, that way next time we’re on tour, we’re ready to be on tour.