Wednesday, September 12, 2007

New Interview: Little Brian

By Justin Smith

Sam Damask, Seldon Tual, and Butch Smith of Little Brian, a thrash funk band out of Austin (originally from Denton), took some time out to speak with Pegasus News. The band will be releasing their CD, aptly titled Thrash Funk (review coming soon), on September 29th at the Boiler Room in Denton with Bat Castle and Urizen. They will also be playing at the Moon Bar in Fort Worth on Saturday with Keite Young.

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Pegasus News: Alright, I am with Sam, Butch, and Seldon of Little Brian. How are you guys doing today?

Little Brian

Sam: Hey dude, it's Sam, Seldon, and Butch.

PN: Sam, Seldon, and Butch. Ok. Is that the order?

Sam: Butch, Seldon, Sam. Or Seldon comes first. It doesn’t matter. (laughter)

PN: Alright. So my first question is: Who is Little Brian?

Sam: (pause) Little Brian is a mystical evil character that haunts our dreams.

PN: Is he immortal?

Sam: Is evil immortal?

PN: No, is he immortal?

Sam: Is evil immortal?

PN: No, is HE immortal?

Sam: (laughter) Is EVIL immortal?

PN: Oh. Right. A little slow on the uptake. So, how does Little Brian the character play into your music?

Sam: Anybody?

Butch: Man, I just drum….

Sam: Dude, there’s constant evil in this world and Little Brian encompasses that evil and Little Brian the band has dedicated its life to fighting it.

PN: I have heard that Little Brian sometimes makes an actual appearance at your shows.

Sam: Yeah, we actually can't stop him. He tends to inhabit the soul of any shredder that lives within a hundred miles of any of our shows. And whether we like it or not, he gets up on our stage and goes insane.

PN: So your shows tend to be a pitch battle between evil and good and it all gets played out at your shows.

Sam: Constantly.

PN: I have here a copy of your new CD, Thrash Funk, that y’all have just put out. The first thing that I want to ask about is the novel that appears is supposed to be a compendium to you CD. Can you talk about that?

Sam: Yeah, the novel is a stream of consciousness novel taking the basic good and evil concepts and expanding them into a full book. The story essentially is a metaphor for the path that the band is taking in its music and its fight of good against evil.

PN: Who wrote the novel?

Sam: Tarah Damask. Its title is also Little Brian. The book will be released soon. It’s about two weeks away from being fully pressed. It will be released at our CD release Party on September 29th in Denton at The Boiler Room. It might be out by the Fort Worth show at the Moon Bar next week on the 15th. We’re trying.

PN: When I listened to the album this morning, I found that the music is very difficult to categorize, define, or hell, even explain. In Little Brian’s own words, what does your music sound like?

Sam: The title of the album sums it up best, Thrash Funk. And really that’s not saying that all the songs are thrash (metal) and funk. What that’s just saying is that the extremes of music we reach, all the way to thrash and all the way to funk and everything in between. We try to put everything that we play into a solid groove so that you can move to it and bang your head to it at the same time. At the shows, half the crowd dances and half the crowd moshes.

PN: On the album, can you talk about the sound?

Sam: Well, I guess you could call it through composed. Everything we play is written from start to finish with the exception of solos that are all improvised. Sometimes what we are trying to do is pack as much in there as possible. But at the same time we have some songs on there like the first track, "Slow Greasy," where there is not much going on, just a simple melody, good groove. It really runs the gamut. Some of it is really tight orchestration, some of it's thick, and some of it we just let it go wide open and just breathe. We’re definitely not just sitting back and saying, “Let’s write songs and pack as much in as possible.” It's just whatever fits in for that moment.

PN: I noticed that the mix is very metal.

Butch, Sam, Seldon: YES!

Sam: Just give it up to Goran. Goran Finnberg mastered the album. He works with all the big metal bands out of Europe. He’s done Opeth, The Haunted.

Butch: Yeah, huge names.

Sam: All the big names in European metal.

PN: So how did you hook up with him?

Sam: Well, I was talking to the guy who mixed the album (Chris Bell at Luminous Sound) and he said, "Just listen to your favorite albums and find out who mastered them and contact them." So I looked in my copy of Black Water Park by Opeth and I saw it had been mastered by Goran Finnberg. So I found him on the internet and we talked and he agreed to do it. Also, Chris Bell had alot to do with it in the mixing process.

Little Brian's altogether nightmare inducing logo.

PN: Now, you guys are currently in the midst of a move from Denton to Austin. Can you talk about that for a little bit.

Sam: Yeah. Denton was great. We love Denton. We have a lot of fans there, but it was just time for a change. So the core of the band, both guitars, Matt and Seldon, Butch on Drums and I moved here and we are trying to retool the horn section, get a new keyboardist, and then just spread out and take over Austin.

Butch: And kick some ass.

PN: So are you going to pick up a whole new horn section, or maybe thin it out…

Sam: Really what we want to do is get as many horn players as we can every where in the world, have the charts out in the public so anybody can play them and just get as many horn players as possible. So we have a good base of horn players in Denton, then build up a bunch a horn players in Austin and just keep going out from there.

PN: So what on the album translates from your live shows? Is it the same live as it is on the album?

Butch: Hell yeah.

Sam: No, it's better. The music will be different. Some parts, the solo sections, we like to extend to help the songs breathe a little better. But in terms of what is actually being played, a couple of the parts in the studio were overdubbed, but for the most part, what you hear on the album, we can and do play live. It's just louder and more intense on stage.

PN: For people who haven’t seen a Little Brian show, what is that experience like?

Sam: It's your worst nightmare set to a groove. It gets totally out of control. We have been known to sacrifice animals onstage. We all wear jumpsuits covered in blood.

PN: Well, my head is still reeling from my first listen of the album this morning. I do want to ask Seldon about the final track on the album.

All: (laughter)

PN: I think you know where I’m going with this.

Seldon: I don’t know it was just me sitting around a bunch of boxes and effects toys and manuscript paper.

PN: Was that bagpipes I heard in there?

Seldon: No, but sure sounds like it doesn’t it?

PN: So who are your influences?

Seldon: Prince.

Sam: It's important to note that with all the stuff you hear going on in there, there isn’t a single overdub, and he did all that in one take, and it was totally improvised.

Check out the CD review of Little Brian's debut album here.

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