Tag: The Mint

TEN QUESTIONS FOR… The Cerny Brothers

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Robert and Scott Cerny are the core of folk-rolk quartet THE CERNY BROTHERS.  Prior to tonight’s show at LA’s The Mint (where they’ll open for JOY KILLS SORROW), we asked the band a few personal questions…

What are the origins of the band?

My brother and I have been playing music basically since we could talk to one another. In junior high we recorded 8 minute long piano songs and alternative rock songs as a cassette EP that we sold to our classmates for $5. The music wasn’t great. We were honestly just trying to imitate what we thought was good, but the music we thought was good probably wasn’t that good. We were 13. We also screamed a lot and were part of a larger angsty hardcore scene in the Midwest at the time. You know, barns out in the middle of nowhere filled with hardcore kids screaming and thrashing. It was wild. We used to stretch and do jumping-jacks before shows to get the heart rate going. When we went to college together in Dekalb, IL, we secluded ourselves one summer and recorded an electronica album in the room we grew up in. It might work for Skrillex, but after a while, having a drum machine as a bandmate got old. We moved to Los Angeles after college and found drummer Cody Fontes, who is actually a real person (and quite handsome too). His playing has become an integral part to The Cerny Brothers sound. We also met Gabe Joseph Davis, who filled out the band with his upright bass. We all happened to move to LA for music around the same time. And that’s The Cerny Brothers.

What are your biggest influences?

We were really inspired by the Avett Brothers around the time they released their “Emotionalism” record. We’re sort of minimalists at heart, and we’ve been affected by that whole movement quite a bit. Sufjan Stevens, Bob Dylan, Bon Iver. Death Cab for a Cutie, Jimmy Eat World, Mutemath, and James Jamerson all influenced us as individual musicians and a band.

How would you describe your sound?

We call ourselves a folk rock band, and at the core of what we do that’s true. But we have a lot of different elements that make that up, such as a heavier drum sound that really propels the music’s edge. It makes us a heavier rock band at times, where as the banjo, acoustic guitar, and upright bass lend that folkier sound. Then you have the songs, which lend themselves more to a Springsteen era which definitely comes from a dancier rock feel. Sometimes we have electric guitar, paired with a banjo, with the drums wailing in the back. I don’t know exactly what you’d call that, but we call it The Cerny Brothers.

If you weren’t based in Southern California, where would you live?

Robert: No idea, usually I grow tired of a place after a year or so. It’s all the same.

Scott: Growing up in Illinois, I’ve always kind of felt an inclination to head out west. I suppose I would live right on the ocean if I could. That’s the dream.

What is your favorite venue in Los Angeles?

No comment.

What is your favorite music store in LA?

We like Doug at McCabe’s. He probably doesn’t even know our band is real.

What artist or album can you not stop listening to lately?

Robert: Sufjan Stevens

Scott: Joe Pug

Cody: Travis

What is your favorite drink?

To be honest, there’s nothing better than ice cold milk at 3 in the morning after a plate of perfectly baked chocolate chip cookies.

If you could live in any decade, when would it be?

Robert: Whatever date that Perotin premiered “Viderunt omnes” to the Church and introduced four-part harmony for the first time. Not to be a pretentious prick or anything.

Scott: Probably the decade right after World War II.

Cody: I have no idea. 1940’s? They seem like a bunch of badasses back then.

Gabe: 1970’s.

What would be your last meal in Los Angeles?

Robert: This Spanish restaurant I ate at one time but I can’t remember the name of…

Scott: I would probably go to the Reel Inn in Malibu.

What’s next for the band?

We are thinking about going back to our roots and putting out a hardcore album… In all seriousness though, we would love to do a show in LA where we just cover the entire Blue Album by Weezer.

You can learn more about The Cerny Brothers and download their new self-titled album by visiting thecernybrothers.com.  Tickets for tonight’s show with Joy Kills Sorrow are available at THE MINT website.

HAPPY WEEKEND + TICKET GIVEAWAY

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Happy Weekend, Situation Readers! We made it to August, and we have some exciting shows on the horizon. The Belle Brigade play downtown’s California Plaza and Beachwood Sparks rock The Echo, but one particular show has gotten us super excited. So excited, in fact, that we have a double ticket giveaway for THE NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS DUO!

The blues rockin’ brothers from the south are back at The Mint for two special nights, August 3 and 4. Cody and Luther Dickinson have shared stages with such artists as Robert Plant and Gov’t Mule and have released some outstanding blues records over the last decade. The duo’s recent Live in the Hills album showcases some of the brothers’ best work. It’s hot, sweaty, standing-room only kind of rock, and we ask you to join the party!

The best part??  The Sitch has got A PAIR OF TICKETS to giveaway for BOTH SHOWS.  For your chance to win, email [email protected], and tell us why you love the band and what night you’d like to attend. The North Mississippi Allstars Duo take the stage at 9 pm this Friday and Saturday at The Mint (6010 West Pico Blvd, LA).

WEEKEND PREVIEW

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Situation Readers, it’s Friday once again, and we have another awesome trio of shows high on our list for this evening:

CHATHAM COUNTY LINE, The Situation’s ARTIST OF THE MONTH, perform at the intimate McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica at 8 pm.  Check out our interview with them and enjoy tracks from their newest album, Sight & Sound.

 

 

Can’t get tickets for McCabe’s or just want a longer show?  No problem!  The spirit of Jerry Garcia will be celebrated as Melvin Seals & JGB Band goes on at 10 pm at The Mint.  Seals, the mighty organist and longtime fixture with The Jerry Garcia Band, will be rocking the keys to some classic Dead and Garcia originals.  This will be a packed house, so arrive early and be ready to dance.

 

 

And lastly, despite our roots being in Los Angeles, The Situation would be crazy not to plug a special festival happening on the other coast where bluegrass is alive and well.  LA’s very own The Get Down Boys and our good friend Frank Fairfield play GREY FOX BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL in Oak Hill, New York.  Located in the beautiful Catskill Mountains, Grey Fox includes performances by Hot Rize, David Grisman, Punch Brothers, Infamous Stringdusters, and many more.  Next week, Della Mae’s champion fiddler Kimber Ludiker gives us the scoop from the weekend back east.

 

From coast to coast, we wish you a happy Friday!

CONVERSATIONS WITH… Greensky Bluegrass

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Sure, that Halloween hangover may last a few days but we have a good cure for you: Michigan’s roving bluegrass-rock outfit Greensky Bluegrass will be in town for a rare appearance at The Mint this Friday, November 2 in a Sitch co-sponsored performance!

When these guys say they are one of the hardest working roots bands on the circuit, they ain’t foolin’ – after playing nearly two hundred shows a year for the last decade and change, this scruffy, down home gang has burnished and warm sound that appeals to lovers of classic alt-country, southern rock and picky bluegrass aficionados alike. With a growing national fanbase and subtly socially-conscious lyrics, they join local folksters (the also excellent) The Cerny Brothers for what should be a true treat of an evening.

The Sitch’s Z.N. Lupetin caught up with Paul Hoffman, mandolinist and co-composer in Greensky, for a few pre-show questions concerning firearms, tour life, the budget crisis, and who might be the fastest picker of them all…

Want to quickly touch on the title track of your last album “Handguns”. I especially was drawn to that melancholy chord change over ‘handguns make less mistakes without love’. Do you think that through roots music you can talk about social issues like gun ownership and the fragile human condition in a way that people will somehow understand and contemplate more deeply?

PAUL: The idea… ‘I’m gonna buy a handgun and make less mistakes’ just came to me one day and it seemed like this awesome image of responsibility and power.  It evolved into ‘handguns make less mistakes without love’ when I wrote the song but the idea is about the same.  In no way is a commentary on gun control or anything.  (subsequently I think handguns are fun to shoot…)  All kinds of music is great place to cover concepts such as this.  I am a writer of music tho so my opinion is thus very biased.  It’s a sad song.  If we love we will make mistakes.  Love drives us to make decisions that could otherwise be avoided.

You seem to like mixing in occasional electric or amplified instrumentation (and horns too) into your overall sound. Do you feel like it’s a slippery slope when the word bluegrass is right there in the name? Sometimes purists get huffy. 

PAUL: There is this idea that the purist get huffy and I don’t think the same debate translates to any other genre outside of Bluegrass. It almost seems like a myth to me.  Something people discuss more than they really care about. Like balancing the budget. ‘Real Bluegrass’ is just rhetoric. Truly we are not a ‘Real Bluegrass’ band all the time and it is in our name. Kinda tricky. It’s just our name though. We love bluegrass music. We all play bluegrass instruments but we are better described as a rock & roll band… probably.

Where is the most unexpected hotbed for acoustic music right now? You guys really see a lot of the road. Best off the beaten-path venue we don’t know about?

PAUL:  Alaska? Hawaii? Tough question sorta. But seriously we played in the 49th and 50th state this year I was shocked how well we were received. I knew the shows would go well a and we would have a blast but I didn’t expect to be received so graciously. They thanked us as if we had traveled some awful journey to a place no one would go. In reality we were stoked to be there so it was really our pleasure. It’s a great thing when the feeling is mutual.

You have been to LA a few times already. Impressions? Are the crowds weird?

PAUL: LA crowds have been great. I remember being kinda of scared the first time. We’ve had a couple real high-energy shows in the city. It seems like bluegrass might not fit but really… it fits everywhere.  Something I’ve learned about being a part of specific genre is that it takes some fish out of the pond. Then puts you in a smaller pond. People who are into bluegrass music (or whatever we are/aren’t) know how to seek it out. Goes for everywhere.

On your perfect tour – who would share the stage/bus with you?

PAUL: We just had the honor of bringing a Michigan colleague named Joshua Davis on tour with us for a few shows.  He has been playing with a band named Steppin’ In It for years and has recently started focusing on a solo career.  He has been a huge influence on my writing and he’s a great dude. It was an honor to have him on tour and to hear so many of our fans get excited.

Who has the fastest fingers in the band? Gotta lean towards Anders on that dobro.

PAUL: Hmm….I don’t think it’s Anders….

Can you describe how new songs come together for you guys? I like that in your bio that you stress ‘continuity’. 

PAUL: Usually the writer brings the song to the group and all arrange it from a skeleton. Often I’ll have these vague concepts of things we can achieve with the feel of the song. Something we haven’t done before or something we do well but don’t have many applications for. I’m always hearing these textures and song ideas in other music that I want to achieve with our band.  So I write a song and we try it.

What’s next? Rest for a bit after tour? 

PAUL: We are taking quite a bit of time off this holiday season.  In January we are going to start a new record.  Probably be writing a lot of new material until then and working on putting together what we have.  It’s been a great year but definitely looking forward to some time down at home.

CONVERSATIONS WITH… The Brothers Comatose

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THE BROTHERS COMATOSE is a San Francisco-born band with a lifetime lineage of music and a “have-a-good-time” approach to playing live. Founding brother, singer and guitarist Ben Morrison took time out before their upcoming LA show at The Mint (appearing Friday, March 1) to share thoughts about chopsticks as percussion instruments, playing music while hanging upside down from trees and paying musical homage to a cherished touring van.

Your bio says The Brothers Comatose is an extension of the house parties that happened in your family home when you and your brother, Alex, were kids.

Ben: My Mom was in a band back in the day and they would rehearse at our house. We’d have these parties every once in awhile where all their musician friends would come over and just pass songs around, shouting out the chord changes, jamming and having a good time.

Alex and I learned a whole lot from that. Before we could play, we learned from sitting around and experiencing the music. Later, when we started to play, we learned a ton from joining in. It was pretty amazing.

You and your brother and your bassist, Gio Benedetti, got into punk rock before landing back in bluegrass. Why is it you’re not still thrashing out three chords like you were when you were kids?

Ben: (Laughs) We got sick of carrying around amps and all that kind of stuff!

Actually, there were always acoustic instruments around. Alex always had a banjo hanging around the house and we always played different styles of music. We eventually settled into what we’re doing because it felt natural.

And there are no amps to lug around.

Ben: Exactly. And we don’t have to rent an extra van just to carry the drum kit.

From which era – the rock era or the acoustic era — did you get the name The Brothers Comatose?

Ben: It popped into my head one morning. It’s funny: whenever Alex really gets into playing the banjo, his eyes roll into the back of his head, like he’s in some sort of musical coma. I guess that’s where it came from, like was always in the back of my mind. And it’s stuck ever since.

‘The Van Song’ starts a little like the ‘Theme from Deliverance,’ with a traditional call and response at the beginning. The next thing you know you’re singing a love song to your van.

Ben: We have a semi-scary obsession with our touring van. It’s on the cover of our album, we wrote a song about it, we talk about it all the time. It has such great character to it. It’s a 1988 Chevy G20 conversion van. It’s red. It’s got a magnetic mustache on the front and it’s awesome. We all fit it in perfectly, with all our gear, no trailers, nothing extra. And it’s a super-comfortable ride. We joke a lot about it but we felt we needed to pay homage to our touring vessel.

Your bio talks a lot about maintaining an intimate relationship with your fans. That comes across in the video for ‘The Van Song’ but how do you do that on a big festival stage?

Ben:  When we started we were playing to just our friends, like, in a living room or at some dive bar. It was really easy because they were right up in our faces; it was almost like a punk rock show with them there clapping and stomping and everything.

I think we’re still learning how to keep that vibe as we transition to bigger venues. We do some goofy stuff at our shows, like handing out chopsticks toward the end of the set so the crowd can play percussion; you know, banging on glasses and all that. It’s great, though. Once they get into it, we get a pretty nice groove going. It’s another reason why we don’t need a drummer!

I have two questions about the video for “The Scout.” First, is that your fiddle player hanging upside down from a tree?

Ben: (Laughs) That is our fiddle player hanging upside down from a tree, yes.

Is there a story you’d like to share or should I move on to the next question?

Ben: Well, there isn’t much of a story, really. A friend of ours shot it for us. We thought up a couple of locations and rolled a bunch of video. Phil said, ‘Hey, I’m going to climb up in the tree and play upside down.’ It’s pretty hilarious that it made it into the video.

And those cats hanging around, listening to the music at the end of the video, look an awful lot like the hippie kids I knew growing up in the 70s. Is there some Laurel Canyon connection in your gene pool?

Ben:  I wouldn’t say we’re well connected with that scene but I guess there’s an aspect of it in what we do. And now that you mention it, there are a lot of similarities between the folk revival today and the music of the late 60s and 70s. You know, Old And In The Way and Jerry Garcia and all that.

“The Scout” came out of a songwriting collective, right?

Ben: These dudes from the band Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit put together this thing called “The 52-Week Club.” They send out a theme a week, a word or a phrase; you can use to inspire a song then you can share it on their website, if you want. It was the first one I did as part of that.

Your song with Nicki Bluhm, ‘Morning Time,’ is fabulous. Your voices match beautifully. How did that come about?

Ben: We were playing the High Sierra Festival up in Northern California. We could hear the music on the main stage from where we were camped out. I heard this band playing and the singing was amazing. Turns out it was Nicki Bluhm.

I had written “Morning Time” and was looking around for someone to sing it with me. I thought it would be awesome to sing with her but I didn’t know her. Then I found out my neighbor is friends with her.

He introduced us, I sent her a rough demo and she was into it. So we went down to her husband (Mother Hips member Tim Bluhm’s) studio and recorded it. We’ve toured with her recently so it’s been really cool to be able to play the song live.

You have some California dates going on, festival season is on the way. Any other plans besides just having a good time?

Ben: We’re going to try for a new album this year; we’ll be doing a bunch of dates on the East Coast; we have a lot of festivals lined up. Lots going on, lots of places to explore.

 

 

THE BROTHERS COMATOSE play The Mint in Los Angeles with The Ben Miller Band on Friday, March 1 for our next ‘The Bluegrass Situation Presents…’ show.  Tickets available here.  You can learn more about the band at their website TheBrothersComatose.com