Brother & Bones

I realise I said I would be doing a few things on the blog which I happen to not have actually done. It's really not the best work ethic I've got going on with the Guide, but I'm afraid to say that this year school work takes priority. And when I say work, I mean work. I should probably be doing school stuff right now in fact, but I figured that a little blog post might help chill me out a bit.

So, as promised, here is the long awaited Brother & Bones interview. The reason it's taken me so long to get this up on the blog is mainly due to the fact that the phone line was so bad while I was interviewing the lead singer (Rich Thomas) that half of my questions now don't have answers. I tried getting in contact with the band again via email, but I've had no luck. I'm going to put this down to them being busy on tour...

I was pretty nervous about interviewing Rich at the start, though I really needn't have been. What I should have been worrying about was how long it would actually take to get the interview done and dusted. It took three attempts before I managed to get all my questions answered. Why? Well, the first time I phoned, the tour manager had been left in the dark about the whole interview arrangement so I was asked to call back later. When I did call back, the phone line was so bad I ended up rescheduling in the hope that the signal would be better once the band had reached Dundee (where they were to be performing that evening). Unfortunately, as I later realised, it wasn't actually the signal that was mucking up the sound quality of the phone. All the crackling and cutting out was down to the fact that my house phone is a bit of a diva when it comes to loudspeaker.

That said, I did have a lot of fun doing the whole interview and I got some pretty good stuff out of it. So, without further ado, here it is:

When I saw your gig in Manchester, you were playing in quite a small venue, but you’ve played for large festivals too. Do you find you have to change the way you perform for festivals as opposed to smaller venues?

“Yes. On small stages in small venues, in terms of space, you don’t have the same kind of freedom as you would at a big festival. Just by definition it’s different. We have to find a way for our music to come across as best it can. In a small venue you can’t have the guys playing on their drums as loud as they possibly can, but on a big festival stage, you have that freedom and you can get away with it. In a small venue you’ve got to allow room – in terms of volume – for other stuff to come through. As long as we don’t have to compromise on delivering our songs the way they should be played, that’s fine. Obviously every band has to be able to play smaller venues and we love both for different reasons.” 

Do you find yourself missing family and friends when you’re on tour?

“Yeah, I suppose it’s a bit of a double edged sword in that way. We have people we’re missing back home like girlfriends and family but the fact that the band is pretty much a family makes up for that. That sounded cheesy, but it makes sense. You’re going to be working away from home a lot of the time, like most musicians do, so you need that. We do get to be at home, but we go on the road as well, and that’s just the way it is. It’s the lifestyle we chose and we chose it for a reason – because we love music. It’s not for everyone and people’s ideas of being on the road are probably slightly different to the reality. It’s hard work. We do a lot of driving and lugging gear around and eating a lot of shit food. We’re quite used to staying up until 2 in the morning and then getting up and 10. That’s our lifestyle. A lot of people couldn’t handle that and having to perform every night.”

How did you guys meet?

(couldn’t make out much of this)

“I met Rob ages ago in Cornwall. We’ve just played music together forever really. We all met through the London music scene and we started jamming and it just worked out.”

What influences your music?

(same with this one)

“That’s quite a broad question really, but in general, from my point of view, it’s kind of hard not to be influenced by everything and every day. That sounds pretty cheesy as well. I grew up listening to a lot of older music – my mum used to listen to Motown stuff. I’m used to my family sitting down together and playing guitars, so that’s my background.  We all love a bit of modern music as well, but it’s a collective thing.”

Are you working on any new material?

“We’ve got loads of new ideas and I’ve been writing some stuff on my own as well. There are loads of ideas floating around but none are 100% finished. I just need to get a few loose ends tied up and show them to the band and hopefully some of it will end up on the new album.There’s loads and loads of ideas, I just need to make sense of it all. I find it a lot harder to write lyrics than I do music. I’ve got a lot of ideas for melodies and for some of them everything is there but the lyrics.”

Brother and Bones

The one thing I don't understand about Brother and Bones is how they can be so good and yet not be hugely well-known! One thing is true though, their fans are definitely a dedicated bunch.

I'm happy to say that I fall into this category, just behind two of my friends. And how exactly can we judge that we are in the 'dedicated fan category'? Well, by travelling for five hours down to Manchester to see a Brother and Bones gig that took place on Monday (13th) night of course!

We arrived in Manchester on Friday evening and spent Saturday and Sunday shopping and sightseeing...and watching seemingly endless episodes of Friends. By the time Monday evening rolled round, we were thoroughly rested from our everyday lives and ready for a bit of music.


The venue was only a ten minute walk away from where we were staying - and can only be described as quirky; featuring Good Dolly/Bad Dolly wall paper in the ladies as well as a disappointing lack of hand soap. I'm going to take the opportunity now to point out something I probably should have put in at the start of this post - the tickets for the gig were cheaper than the fare for the Megabus which took us back to bonnie Scotland, totalling at only 8 each! 

The support act for the evening was a man (whose name escapes me unfortunately) in a farmer's jacket and a trilby, producing a melancholy acoustic sound which began to sound a bit 'samey' after a while. Though, that's not to say I didn't appreciate the lyricism of some of his songs - one line (I wish I could call memorable, but I can't recall exactly what it was) went something like "I wish the b***h had died". I think there was a "f**k in there somewhere. At the time it made me laugh so I'm pretty gutted I can't remember it correctly.

The man with the hat...

Then, what everyone had been waiting for happened: Brother and Bones took to the stage in all their three-guitarists-one-percussionist-plus-a-drummer glory.

The band in full swing

I had been told a few times beforehand that the band were a lot better live than they were on CD, so I was ready to have my mind hole blown because (in my opinion) Brother and Bones sound next to awesome on CD. And I'm glad to say they didn't disappoint, plus my mind hole was indeed blown.








Brother and Bones opened with the five tracks from their new EP To Be Alive which, although in keeping with their sound, clearly are progressive pieces. The most notable being the track after which the EP was named. Here's the YouTube video so you guys can check it for yourselves.  

The rest of the gig comprised of older songs, all equally, stunningly performed, led by Richard Thomas's soulful vocals.

I have to say though that the band member who really stole the show for me was the percussionist Robin Howell-Sprent (what a name!), who rocked his socks off and looked as though he was having almost as much fun as the audience!

The audience was fairly small (around thirty maybe?), but what we lacked in numbers we made up for in sheer enthusiasm for the brilliant music being played on stage. Every song was loudly applauded and every beat bobbed along to. I think it's fair to say that Brother and Bones are great performers but their audience are damn good supporters!



This was made even more apparent by the encore the band received and the way my friends and I had to fight our way through the crowd to the table selling band merchandise. That was where I bought Brother and Bones's new EP for a fiver and got it signed by all five members of the band!!! I don't know if it's hard to tell, but this made me very happy.

Then came the cherry on top of the cake. We managed to get our photo taken with Brother and Bones. This made me even happier.

I suppose that's another upside (for fans at least) when a musical act like a band isn't hugely well known (despite being mind-hole-blowingly amazing); they can connect with their audience. For example, Yiannis Sachinis (drummer for Brother and Bones) is following my friend on Instagram, and after the gig, the band stayed for drinks with the audience. You won't get that at a Sabbath concert, that's for sure.

Brother and Bones

Hey guys! I thought I should just put up a quick post about a band that I've been fairly recently introduced to. If you've been following any of the post I put up on www.bookunderbed.blogspot.com you'll probably be able to guess what I'm about to say next. Brother and Bones are less well known band and that's probably one of the things that makes them so great. Their music isn't popish and is in general brilliant. I think having a smaller fan base than a lot of bands means that their sound hasn't sold out to some of the rubbish that gets put out on the charts nowadays. I'm not here to tell you that pop music is awful because that's not true as you do find a few good tracks out there now and again. I'm here just to inform a bit of the world about Brother and Bones because I think that their music deserves to be listened to! Also, I just want to clarify that I'm not the sort of person who gets into just one sort of niche in music, I will listen to it all. I might not necessarily like what I'm listening to but I try to be open minded. I think I've only got one of the Brother and Bones albums - I'm not sure because my friend who introduced me to them gave me a mixed CD. In fact, I'm not even sure that all the songs are from the same album. As you can probably tell, I'm not really a music fanatic, I'll just listen to whatever and if I like it I'll put it on my iPod! I don't even know that much about Brother and Bones to be honest but I don't really think that matters. If you like the music that's all that really has to be said. So..without further ado here's a video of one of them performing and if you like them, you can investigate a bit more. Speaking of which, I really hope you like them!

 

I just got the video off youtube and it doesn't play the full song and there's a bit of background noise so just try to ignore all of that if you can. Thanks for watching the video! And just in case you can't be bothered looking up anything about the band I've added in the link to their website:

 

Brother and Bones

 

That's all for today :)