A Dirty Dozen with LUCAS WARD from SILVER SNAILS – September 2025

Photo credit: Jasmine Ward

According to a recent press release: “More than 10 years in the making, The Silver Snails sophomore album, Speed of Light, seeks to embody the band’s slogan, ‘The world’s finest pop rock for a global audience’. The Silver Snails are an independent pop rock music project based in the medieval wine country of Romagna, Italy, with strong ties to the West Coast (USA). Anchored by the husband-and-wife duo of Lucas Ward and Elisa Fantini, their mission is to open human hearts through song. Describing themselves as a glam rock space pop family band, The Silver Snails draw from a diverse palette of musical influences including classic rock, pop, folk, electronica, Irish, jazz, Nigerian, Qawwali, Asian folk music, and more. The couple’s 3 children, Jasmine, Celeste and Elias participate actively in live performances, videos, and in the recording studio, having grown up ‘in the band’. The project is supported by a large community of family, friends, fans, artists, musicians and supporters.” We get Lucas to discuss new music, influences, and more…

1. Tell us a little about your latest release.  What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through?  Are there any hidden nuggets you put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

We set out on a quest which ended up being 12 years long to make the world’s finest pop rock album. Speed of Light is the result. It’s 9 originals and one cover song (“Video Killed the Radio Star”). Close listeners will notice some stylistic carryover from The 7 Melodies, in particular the approach to keyboards and guitars. I tend to favor certain keyboard tones and re-use them as part of a sonic signature. I like acoustic rhythm guitar and medium gain lead electric guitar. Fans will be familiar with our official music video for Dancing with the Stars in which we see The Silver Snails as a glam rock family of space troubadours who come to earth on a flying piano to retrieve their kids. In our official music video for “Video Killed the Radio Star,” we present a sequel in the same ‘universe’, only the entire video takes place in The Silver Snails’ spaceship as it flies through the solar system. Thus, we hear a few strains of Dancing with the Stars on the ship radio before “Video Killed the Radio Star” begins. Followers will also notice our kids are bigger in the latest video, and of course bigger still in our recent concerts.

2. What got you into music, and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

From age 1 and through my early years, my favorite activity was to sing along with my Dad as he played me Dylan songs on the guitar. At age 4, I would play intuitive patterns on the piano and space out. At age 10, I saw someone playing ‘greensleeves’ at a summer camp and promptly asked for piano lessons (first song: greensleeves). I felt my heart soar listening to St Pepper’s at age 11, and was thereafter hooked on recorded music. I used to save my allowance to buy vinyls of Pink Floyd in High School and listen to them every day after school. Also in High School I befriended Steven Smith, who later became Elliott Smith. I was strongly moved and affected by his early demos and home recordings. I later poured myself into many musical situations and much study on multiple instruments. In my late 30’s, then in Italy and playing jazz keyboards around town, I had an epiphany – what I really wanted to do in music was to be a singer song-writer in the mold of Elliott. I decided writing good songs was the best legacy I could leave, and The Silver Snails was born that moment and I invited my wife to collaborate.

3. Building on that, is there a specific song, album, performer, or live show that guided your musical taste?

I have collected so many influences, from classic rock and folk, to 80’s pop, to classical, jazz, salsa, samba, African, Chinese, Indonesian, Irish, Flamenco, Qawwali, Toureg, and others. I started my study of song-writing with The Beatles, and have covered a number of other artists. Probably the most important single album or influence would be Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, by the Flaming Lips, circa 1999. For me The Flaming Lips is a progressive take on classic rock, so they show how artists can move the pop rock genre forward creatively and create absolutely beautiful songs in the process.

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be, and why?

The Flaming Lips. They are the ones that I admire the most as recording and live artists and who have inspired The Silver Snails the most. They are also highly collaborative.

5. What is your favorite activity when out of the studio and/or not on tour?  What do you like to do to unwind?

I favor gardening and landscaping. We live out in the country on 6 acres in Italian wine country. I find that working outside and listening to music gives me a great natural ‘high’ which frequently surprises me. I usually do it in 1-2 hour chunks, as an exercise choice.

6. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before? What is the one comparison a reviewer or fan has made that made you cringe or you disagreed with?

The Silver Snails is contemporary Indie Pop / Alternative Rock firmly rooted in classic rock such as the Beatles and Pink Floyd, but with flashes of International flavor, including some lyrics in Italian, as the group is based in Italy. Good reference bands would be The Flaming Lips, Bon Iver, The Beatles, David Bowie, Elliott Smith. Cringey comparisons? In Italy we have been compared to the Rockets, a French space rock band which relocated to Italy in the late 70’s. Basically they have bald spacemen in their videos, but I find them super-cheesy, and the music doesn’t hook me.

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7. When your band is hanging out together, who cooks, who gets the drinks in, and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

We have a ‘front family’, meaning myself, my wife, and all of my 3 kids are sometimes singing lead. So obviously we have a lot of time as a family and try to do karaoke at least once a week, including some of our material but also singer’s choice. This is a blast. We have an Italy band and a Portland band in and both are low-key professionals that focus on the music. We will frequently have a drink together after practices and gigs.

8. When was the last time you were starstruck and who was it?

They say you should never meet your heroes… When I was 15 my girlfriend got us tickets and backstage passes to the Steve Winwood concert in Portland. It was a great concert and I had never been that close to a major celebrity. He was very mellow but somehow his presence made me feel euphoric. I remember the feeling lasted for 3 days.

9. What is the best part of being a musician? If you could no longer be a musician for whatever reason, what would be your dream job?

The best part about being a musician is the freedom to bring your vision into being. Nobody really tells a musical creator what to write, etc. Taking music off the table, my dream job would be to be an institutional investor, e.g. a fund manager.

10. What is one question you have always wanted an interviewer to ask – and what is the answer? Conversely, what question are you tired of answering?

I think a great question would be ‘why’? I.e., why pour so much energy into music? For me, the answer is that I feel an internal calling to do it. In addition, I believe that music does have the capacity to do good by ‘raising people’s frequencies’, what I call heart-opening. I feel that the late Beatles music that I heard as a kid has this capacity. Finally, there is the question: what do we want to leave the world. Music ticks that box. Another question that is on my mind which never gets asked is, ‘how do you deal with the disappointment as an artist’? Also, ‘what are your expectations for the project?’ I believe many of us at this are hoping to scale our audiences to a point where we can eventually monetize. Yet most of us will find that goal elusive. In the face of falling short of our goals, how do we renew our commitment and make sense of what we are doing? Partly, we can argue that creating high quality art has value for its own sake. We can also say we are doing good by example. Finally, by continuing to commit, we make future breakthroughs possible. I sometimes ask myself, ‘what would my life be like without The Silver Snails’?  I also have to consider what I am giving up by continuing to pursue The Silver Snails… RE annoying questions, I feel insecure when asked why it took so long to come out with our 2nd LP. Of course there are reasons, but I feel squeamish about the outcome, and now it’s a moot point…

11. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over,” even if it didn’t change your current situation?

Early on I spent too much on social media advertising. I instinctively knew social media was important, but I was running ads on facebook myself without experience, a clear objective or funnel. This was a waste of resources that I would not repeat.

12. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

It’s a tough choice between The Beatles, The Flaming Lips, and Pink Floyd, but I guess I would pick The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This is a very interesting and experimental record and it was done in 1967, well before cracks in the group began to form. By choosing the Beatles, I would be going to the very source of pop rock lexicon, and I would have not 1 but 4 amazing artists to learn from and be inspired by. George Harrison played the sitar and other Indian instruments on this one. Also, they were at times extremely funny and collegial.

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Category: Interviews