Late last year, Seattle’s the Briefs released their fourth album on BYO Records, Steal Yer Heart. It’s a pogo-punk masterpiece that fills the the genre gap between the Buzzcocks and the Damned. All you want to do is dance around and possibly overthrow the goverment… but mostly dance around.
This spring, on their tour with the Horrorpops and Left Alone, drummer Chris Brief sat down in the green room at the Bottleneck in Lawrence, Kansas, and talked with me about their tour, album, and makin’ videos. The rest of the band was AWOL at interview time, but gradually drifted upstairs to join us.
Nick- For the record, state your name, and what you do in the band.
Chris- I’m Chris Brief, and I play drums. And I sing some songs. So, you got the drummer today. Joke’s on you.
Nick- So, you guys are at the halfway point in the tour. It’s kind of an interesting thing, ’cause it’s two Hellcat bands and one BYO band.
Chris- Yeah, I guess so.
Nick- I think you guys fit together.
Chris- Yeah, they’re both indie punk bands, so that works. And the Left Alone guys are fuckin’ cool as shit. They’re nice guys. Same with the Horrorpops, y’know, so it’s a lot of fun. We like both those bands, so it’s all good.
Nick- Did somebody put it together, or was it just like all the bands got together and decided that it would be an awesome tour?
Chris- Left Alone and the Horrorpops seem to tour together a lot, and we met the Horrorpops about two years ago when we were on tour with Lars Frederickson & the Bastards, and we got along good with them, so- there he is- *we are joined by bassist Stevie Kicks* when they asked us, we played with them since then a few times, so when they asked us to do this tour, we were like, ‘fuck yeah!’ It’s a lot of fun. We like the band, you know? We like the people.
Nick- Is it a full cross-country tour?
Chris- Yeeeah… well, kind of. Yeah, it is. We’re not doing the South.
Nick- Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Chris- The South is the South. Now, it’s probably… we like the South. Florida’s a little weird sometimes.
Kicks- Texas is cool.
Chris- Texas is great. It’s weird that people are obsessed with growing beards in Florida. That’s something I will never, ever figure out. It’s fuckin’ hot down there. Here, Kicks, say your name, man.
Kicks- I’m Kicks, how’s it goin’?
Chris- So, you got the rhythm section now.
Nick- You guys have done two videos for this new album?
Chris- Yeah. It’s’cause we’re too indecisive. We can’t pick a song, and we can’t pick one idea. And, y’know… we like to do shit like that. It’s fun.
Nick- Are you gonna pull a Beck and do a video for every song on the album?
Chris- No. I know there are some friends who are doing some videos that we’re not even involved in. They’re workin’ on ’em.
*Dan wanders in and begins tuning and playing his guitar*
Kicks- I think the two videos are cool. They turned out really well.
Chris- I still haven’t seen them at all. Done, y’know. It was fun to do ’em.
Nick- Where’d you end up doing them?
Chris- We did it in the city that has the highest murder rate in the country.
Nick- Which one was that?
Chris- I think it was Richmond. Was it Richland or Richmond, California?
Kicks- Richmond.
Chris- Richmond, California. It’s kind of right by Oakland. It’s pretty dangerous. But we did it at this squat called Burnt Ramen.
Nick- It had a really cool look to it.
Chris- It’s a cool place. It’s got a lot of history- lot of great bands. A lot more bands on sort of the East Bay crusty punk scene, but you know… it’s a cool place run by cool people who were nice enough to let us do our video there.
Nick- Have you guys noticed any sort of different reception to this album than the last couple? Or are you just stedaily building a fan base?
Chris- I don’t know. I’m oblivious to that kind of shit most of the time.
Nick- Just happy that there are people at shows?
Chris- Yeah, pretty much.
Kicks- Here we are in Lawrence, which is cool.
Dan- It’s pretty weird if you start to read the reviews and live and die by them. ‘Cause I think we get a fair amount of decent press. The thing is, if you start to read and believe everything about your music, it starts to pervert the whole thing. I think it’s just better to fuckin’ do it.
Chris- We’re joined by Daniel J. Travanti.
Dan- I was waiting for my cousin, but she’s not here.
Nick- I suppose we should probably wrap this up before the band starts playing.
Dan- Here’s a bit of trivia: I went to Pinckney Elementary.
Pinckney is loated in lovely Lawrence, Kansas, about two blocks from my house. With that bit of trivia, Left Alone started playing downstairs, and I couldn’t hear shit on the tape. That’s unfortunate, because we had a wonderful discussion about the band’s music being played on college radio, and they shared a lot of really embarassing detail about their tours with the Riverboat Gamblers, who were playing Lawrence the very next week.
Left Alone started playing even louder, so we wrapped up the interview, and I went downstairs to watch Left Alone’s set, which was damn good. Kinda sorry I missed them at Warped Tour last year, because they have this whole ska / pop / punk / mod vibe. After that, the Briefs came out and rocked it. They played “Destroy the USA”, “Gettin’ Hit On at the Bank” and “Orange Alert” back-to-back-to-back. “Stuck On You” was in the set, too. Insane amounts of energy, kids pogoing like nuts, and all I could think of was the fact that I still had to walk home and be up for work at 4am. Buzzkill, to say the least.
Much love to the band for their patience with the interview. You should go see them, buy tons of merch and records, and give ’em love.
Go check out this post for tons of mp3s.
You’ve got great insights about work at home online, keep up the good work!