that record turned out, but we didn’t want to go through another big budget/big stress recording project.
Originally we were going to record two 5 song EPs — one called Side One and the other Side Two — as a sort of homage to the old LP days. We recorded the drums to the first 5 songs to Side One at Luna Studios with our friend George Nardo.
We had recorded our Bleed EP with George back in 2006. In order to save on cost, we decided to do whatever we could at our own studio… which we have in downtown Tucson. Steve has become quite the recording engineer, working on his own solo material to the band’s benefit. What we couldn’t do ourselves we did with our good friend George Nardo at Luna recording studio in Tucson. Because we were learning via trial and error, we decided to focus on 1 song at a time. This also gave us the opportunity to make each song’s release an “event”!
The first song we finished, was a song called Broken Man. It turned out well so we used that as a model for the rest of the songs. After we finished the five we decided to record the drums ourselves as well using Matt’s electronic kit. They really sound fantastic and are much easier to work with then mic’d drums.
We are now at a place where there isn’t really anything we can’t do ourselves in the recording process. It’s just a matter of coming up with solid material, and finding the time in our busy lives to record/release them which is the real the challenge for BR.
What are some of the biggest hurdles that you feel you've faced as in independent artist?
We have had some reasonable success getting our music out there. We have tried to use social media, indie radio, and indie music mags/blogs to reach our audience, and build a following.
Our biggest challenge is finding the time and resources to make the band work, as I alluded to in the previous question. We are all Dads and husbands, and we all have demanding full time jobs to pay the bills. Because of that we can’t tour which is the way most working bands connect and build their audience. We used to do “mini tours” playing in Southern California, Nevada, and New Mexico on long weekends but that was getting too expensive for us.
At this point we figured our best avenue to reach people was to release quality music as much as we possibly can. We have also had some success getting our music placed in show’s like Cinemax’s “Banshee”. We would really like to try and get our music placed in movies, commercial’s, etc.
You have quite a presence on social media with nearly 18k Twitter followers and more than 8k Facebook "likes" on your band page. Do you find that you have more success promoting your music with one medium or the other, or are there other social media outlets that you use that you've found to be more beneficial?
Twitter has probably been the best medium for us. Facebook is good to although it seems to be getting harder and harder with the new algorithms Facebook uses to determine who see’s what on their feeds. Instagram is also great for showing Gig pix, recording pix, etc..
We're now 6 albums/EPs into BR. I know this is like asking you which one of your kids you love more, but do you have a favorite album/EP?
It really depends on my mood. I would say that Desperation Daze was our most cohesive record as the songs were all written in a relatively short time span, and the recording was done in a few weeks. I also really dig some of the material on Side One including the new one we are finishing up.
I suppose when everything is said and done with BR I can look back on our catalog and decide on a favorite. Right now it’s too fluid.
Looking ahead from Something Good, what are your future plan/goals for BR?
Well we have one last song to record to close the Side One album called What Are You Thinking?. We’ll start on that one immediately after Something Good. After that we’ll need to sit down as a band and decide what goals we want to set if any. I would hope that we will proceed with plans to write and record Side Two. If we do go that route then I would imagine we would focus on writing some new songs. Once we get a few under our belt we can start recording and release the new material as we did on Side One.
I know the band also wants to start playing out again. It’s been too long..time to kick the dust off of the amplifiers!