Hey y'all, we've got some new blood here at r3vrb in the form of scenestress Whitney Sides. Some of you may know Whitney as my replacement as music aficionado over at bhamterminal.com. She has graciously agreed to lend us her talents as well, and has provided a great interview with David Hickox of local band The Broken Letters to boot. So, without further ado, here's she is:
WHITNEY: How did Broken Letters begin? Is it the sum of many other local bands?
D.H.: Well, Brad (the drummer) and I grew up together. We played in a band in high school and sort of learned our instruments together. We split up when Brad went off to college, but a few years later we ended up in the same band again. It was called Plate Six and was loud, complicated rock music with a lot of yelling over it. A punk band, if you could call it that. Plate Six lasted for about 10 years. We put out 2 records, a few 7"s, and toured a bit. There came a point where I had exhausted what I could say within that context and I had stumbled across some things I wanted to say and do that seemed to demand a new context. I started the BL as a solo thing and an excuse to play with different people. But pretty soon I gravitated back to Brad. He and I write and record together and we assemble different bands to play live.
WHITNEY: What is your favorite venue (in B'ham or regionwide) to play at so far?
D.H.: Bottletree is heaven, no doubt. That it exists in this town is unfathomable and probably the single greatest reason that I still live here. But I must say, Asbury Lanes in Asbury Park, NJ is a great place to play. The stage is in the middle of the center lanes in a bowling alley. There's nothing like playing slow dirges to a backing track of pin crashes.
WHITNEY: How did the idea for the BBC sessions come about and where were they recorded?
D.H.: We had assembled a band for our last tour that I was really proud of. A friend from Brooklyn flew down and played pedal steel with us. Everything just had this new and different life. We had a day off on the tour and I decided to book a few hours in a studio in Austin. Our full-length was recorded in my attic, and Plate Six did a lot of the recording ourselves, so going into the studio is still this crazy novelty to me. I had also been interested in trying to do live vocals on a recording, the way they did things up until the 70s. There's a certain way that the vocal directs the music live that just isn't there when you record music first and then overdub vocals. And the time constraints of trying to do 5 songs in 4 hours forced our hand in that direction. So we approached the recording as if it were a live radio broadcast. We figured BBC sessions lets someone know from the start that it is a live, unedited studio recording.
WHITNEY: How do you and Brad relate to all the positive coverage of Broken Letters and the Sing the Burning Alphabet LP in the blogosphere?
D.H.: Its very flattering. Neither of us is really interested in being famous or approaching music as a job. We approach it as art and have the luxury of working at the pace the art demands. So to us, its just sort of what we do naturally. Like waking up and brushing our teeth. Something it seems odd to get commendation for. But of course, it is nice to hear. We've sold records through our website to people all over the world. A disproportionate number of Germans, for some reason. And every time we get some weird foreign order I'm like 'how does someone in Germany want to buy our record?!?" It just seems weird.
WHITNEY: What are the plans for the immediate future for the band?
D.H.: We kept things kind of quiet during the summer, but now we're back in gear. We're working on new songs now and hope to record a new record this winter. And play most anywhere that people will have us. We'll be playing a few new songs at our upcoming shows and I'm really excited at the direction things are taking.
No comments:
Post a Comment