BGS 5+5: The Bros. Landreth

Artist: The Bros. Landreth
Hometown: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Latest Album: Come Morning

Answers provided by Joey Landreth

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

The answer to this question is different for Dave than it is for me. Dave came to music when he was a little bit older. Myself on the the other hand, I knew that I wanted to play music from a very early age. I remember telling my kindergarten teacher that I was going to be a keyboard player in a band when I grew up.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

I struggle with writing a lot. I am very proud of our catalog of songs but I find songwriting to be the hardest thing about being an artist. Dave and I both got our starts in music as for-hire musicians. Side people. As such, I think we are more fluent expressing ourselves musically through our instruments and performing than through writing. So, I guess the short answer is the toughest time writing is every time writing!

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

We always do vocal warm ups. It’s something we started doing pre-show back in 2014 and have kept going since. Sometimes we’ll warm up for 15 minutes or sometimes for 45 minutes but we always do a little warming up.

What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?

The best advice I ever got was from one of my mentors, Steve Bell. He said to me in the early days, “Don’t worry about making music for a particular person in mind. Make music for yourself first and then put your energy into finding likeminded folks.”

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

Not that often actually, though I do understand the impulse to do that! I write almost exclusively from the first person. As I mentioned before, writing songs is not my first language and I feel like telling stories about my own experiences or slight dramatizations of my own experiences to be far easier to tap into than stories that exist outside of myself. Or at least that’s how it feels for me!

Photo Credit: BnB Studios