BROTHERS PAST at the FOX THEATRE MARCH 31!
Philadelphia’s Brothers Past have built a national following the old-fashioned way: writing good songs, making great records and touring. Since 2000, the band has been refining its unique sound, blending aspects of electronic music with rock songwriting. Their 2005 release, This Feeling’s Called Goodbye, on Sci-Fidelity Records, saw the band receive national praise, from critics and fans alike.A Chat with Tommy & Clay of Brothers Past
by whitperson on Mar 25, 10 www.livemusicblog.com
LMB: Right, exactly. So talk to me about the new album. Is it done?
TH: No. We are about seven songs in. We have seven tunes that are written and a good amount already recorded. We have another three or four tunes in the pipeline that we’re fleshing out.
LMB: Is this a totally new batch of songs? Like, none of these have been played live?
TH: Yeah. Well, New Year’s Eve 2009-2010, we did three sets and in our second set we did five songs from this forthcoming record.
LMB: And those are?
TH/CP: “Who’s Gonna Love Me Now”
“Deer in the Headlights”
“Staring at the Sun”
“One Day I’ll Disappear” (which may change to “A Serious Man”)
“Charity Starts at Home
TH: Yeah, ya know, it’s cool. It’s different. Besides “Charity Starts at Home,” we wrote everything as we were recording it. So we had to learn how to play all this shit for New Year’s and apparently, we’re kind of writing like a proggy type of record. It’s very out. It’s definitely very different than the last record (This Feeling’s Called Goodbye). It’s not another electro-pop record.
LMB: That was going to be my question. Ok, so A Wonderful Day was a concept album, and This Feeling’s Called Goodbye was a thematic album…would you call it that? You’d call it a pop record; electro-pop?
CP: Yeah, it was singles-oriented.
TH: Yeah, we were looking at how long songs were.
CP: We were trying to deliver what we were doing a little more concisely that time…
LMB: Well, it worked. I mean, I remember a lot of accolades on that one…
TH: That record did a lot good for us man. And it’s a damn good album. We figured out a lot about who we were in the studio because of that album. Our roles became defined. Our way of recording just became clearer…
CP: The shit we learned how to do there, Tommy and I are building on now. We’re engineering this new record, which is cool because we’re able to try all the shit we were kinda thinking about on the last two records but had somebody else kinda calling the shots or…
TH: Yeah, now we get to call the shots.
LMB: So this is all you guys?
TH: Yeah, we’re producing it. It’s all us. Which is fun. I mean, This Feelings Calles Goodbye was a reaction to A Wonderful Day. A Wonderful Day was this long, drawn-out concept record. And we said “well fuck that, what’s the opposite of that?” That would be a record full of short pop songs. With a producer; a slick sound. So this record is a reaction to This Feeling’s called Goodbye. It’s definitely weird. We’re doing it all ourselves…
LMB: Well there’s weird shit happening in pop music….I mean, we’re here in Williamsburg. This is the home of….you know this is like “Hipster Haven” right here.
TH: Well, this definitely isn’t a record full of hooks. It’s full of….
CP: ….full of vibes.
TH: Yeah, vibes. It’s an onion, a lot of layers.
LMB: Interesting. What does that mean sonically? Any comparisons?
TH: No. It just sounds like us.
LMB: So it’s pretty much you and Mckee are doing all the writing?
TH: Yeah, so me and Tom (McKee) are doing most of the writing. A lot of the process is me and Tom going through ideas and then me and Clay recording it.
LMB: Any influences? Anything that you’re listening to now that is shaping this? Any current artists?
CP: All sorts of shit. On some level, I mean, it’s not an influence. But its funny, you said “prog,” and I think this would probably go down as our Genesis-ish record. And I mean early Genesis. Well, don’t quote me on that. Well, I guess you’re going to quote me, that’s why we’re here. That’s the point of this but….
LMB: Actually, that’s intriguing.
TH: Personally, this is the first Brothers Past record where I don’t have anything in mind. Like making A Wonderful Day, I was way into Radiohead and Pink Floyd, and making This Feeling’s Called Goodbye, I was way into the Flaming Lips and…. Radiohead. This record, personally, on my end of the writing…I’m just like whatever. I just want to be very abstract.
CP: We’re kinda letting it go where it goes.
LMB: So talked to me about touring for the next year or so? Are you guys going to really go hard?
CP: Yeah, we’re going harder than last year. About three times as many shows as last year.
TH: Which still isn’t that much.
LMB: Little mini runs kind of like you’re doing now?
TH: Yeah. There are a lot things on the old chalkboard as far as releases go. We’re talking about doing a lot of things…releasing a lot of music towards the end of the year. And that’s when — like I was saying in the beginning — that’s when the purpose of touring comes into play. A lot of it is going to depend on that, ya know, how quickly that stuff comes together.
LMB: Is that geared up to the point where you’ll get a new management team and set-up a whole new world for BP? Are you guys still with SCI Fidelity (Records)?
TH: Yeah, well we can. We don’t know what we’re going to do with this record. SCI Fidelity definitely is a possibility to put it out again, but….
LMB: It’s a new world out there.
TH: Well, yeah, I mean I’m starting a new record label to put out some Babies stuff. If that goes well, I’m sure we all wouldn’t mind having complete control over putting out our record.
LMB: Yeah, the DIY thing is slowly but surely the way to go…
TH: Yeah, it’s just easy to get distribution now. It’s easy to get distribution digitally and in retail. There’s not a lot of overhead now because we have free studio time. It’s pretty feasible to make that type of shit happen now…
LMB: Yeah, so you basically just need booking and management…
TH: Right, well, we have a booking agent. Yeah, we just need the infrastructure to run it. What I’m doing right now on the other side of my creative stuff…with the Babies. I’m putting that together. Hopefully…I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’s going to work out and be a feasible thing. I would love to be able…for us to be able to say “hey we want to put something out, and this when we’re going to do it, and this is how we’re going to do it.” You work with label — especially nowadays since people are losing their shirts — you don’t who’s doing what, people don’t have their eye on the ball, you don’t know who’s doing the job and who isn’t. You don’t find that out until a year after your record came out, and it didn’t do shit.
LMB: My take is you need you need a good manager, a good agent, and a good developer, maybe a designer…
TH: …a publicist. You know get people on the blogs and get people talking about it. So doing it yourself, having your own label, having your own infrastructure, makes it easier to know who’s doing the job; making sure people are doing their fucking job. So we don’t know what’s going on. There are a lot of great ideas. We have a pretty hefty archive of every show we’ve ever played. So who knows what we’ll do with that. It’s probably getting close to that time. We’ve never put a live record out really, maybe that’s an idea. There’s all sorts of cool things that we’re thinking about so I think 2010 is going to be a really fun year for us. The end of this year is going to be our 10 year anniversary. We’re definitely going to do some really fucking amazing shit for that, so you’ll hear about that soon as that comes together.
LMB: Do you think you guys will hit any festivals this year?
TH: Ah, I don’t know. It really depends on the album situation. A lot of festivals…
LMB: …they kind of already have their lineups.
TH: Well, there’s definitely the lower spots….All the festivals still have a few slots open. But festivals like it when bands are on tour supporting a record, that’s why we got a Bonnaroo or…
LMB: Right, when there’s some buzz. Well, fuck it, do your own thing….
TH: If it happens right now, it happens. If not, we’re not going to….we can go either way about it. Hold on a second (opens window, listens for opening band). We should probably head in. Just ’cause I don’t want to fuck these guys over…. (Tommy sat in with the opening band, Jounce, for a few songs)
