Interview: Broken Girls From Affluent Backgrounds
Last week I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with the guys from Broken Girls From Affluent Backgrounds at The Little Woody in Phoenix. A dark bar with various rooms of games and kitchy decorations harkening back to years past. We discussed their two EP's, Aggregate and Fiction Will See Us Through, and their experiences in the Phoenix music scene. Below are some written excerpts from the interview. You can also hear the full interview here*.
*This was my first in-person, recorded interview. If you listen to the recording, I apologize in advance for my excessive use of the words awesome and cool instead of saying more intelligent comments - nerves. Also, due to a technical glitch I hadn't previously realized, my introduction was partially cut off.
1. Can you guys give me a little bit of background on how you guys got together and started playing?
Travis: "We kind of formed the band together as a group. Chris and I were writing partners for the better part of a decade on and off and we had been trading some music that we wanted to see if we could get done together. When I got back in town we started playing that. I kind of always put in the caveat that I wanted to play out live, but we put it on the back burner until we got some songs structured. That was about 4 1/2 or 5 years ago. As things came together and we got more serious, we started trying to recruit people we knew and find people we could put on a live show with. We asked our buddy Mike to play bass and we held auditions for drums to find someone that was into the type of music we were into and wanted to be serious about getting out there and playing and rehearsing. We have a grueling rehearsal schedule at times where we want to meet 2 or 3 times a week to bang this stuff out for a couple hours. Through those experiences we found Shawn and we played our first gig at The Rogue in December of 2014."
2. What are your influences? What band made you want to start playing music?
Chris: "It’s hard, because there’s plenty and if we go back far enough, I was a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan when I was a kid. Obviously, there’s some of that influence in the way I write but it’s probably not as noticeable as it was. Now, I think we’re really influenced by bands like Dredg, and older Circa Survive, when that first came out it kind of woke me up a little bit as a guitar player because I don’t really like super-shreddy or super-showy guitar and it was two effective lead guitar players but it was in no way showboaty or anything. It was well structured and very wide, even though both of them were giving it hell."
Travis: "I could juxtapose that. I was always kind of influenced by a wide variety growing up from Frank Zappa to Recovering the Satellites, that Counting Crows album as played as that got but with Adam Duritz’s voice getting kind of old as he got through those years, but that songwriting is still legit and you know hearing even older Pablo Honey and The Bends from Radiohead before OK Computer came out and just split everyone’s head open. I was into that before OK Computer came out and started shredding, I thought this is how music is made."
Shawn: "I was just always into older punk that you’d go to at The Knights of Columbus hall. I grew up in the Bay Area so we’d go see Green Day before they were anything important, or Dead Kennedys, that kind of stuff. It was fun because it was much more intimate. The stages weren’t stages they were still on the ground, so it was fun."
3. You guys have written and recorded two EP’s in the last 7 months. Was all that material created at the same time, or were they two completely different processes?
Chris: "Yes and no, some of the music on Aggregate we had for a very long time, it was some of the stuff Travis and I had previously worked on. We had been experimenting switching off writing different things and it worked but it wasn’t fulfilling, which is why we started this band. Some of the music we had chambered and then we wrote some coming into it. I think "Bones" was the first song Shawn wrote with us. Our process before was that Travis and I would sit down, come up with a rough idea, and a friend of ours, Aaron Starrs, a great producer, would help us with developing the song and recording it. As time progressed and we got more into our own groove, the process changed in that I would come in with a rough idea and we’d just jam on it. I feel like it’s become a much better product out of the stuff that we have. Three songs on Fiction were brand new. Do we want to call 'Blindspot' new?"
Travis: "The only thing we chambered was the outro tapping part, but everything else was new."
Chris: "That’s true. So 'Long Lost', 'Bridges' and 'Blindspot' were all new for that EP specifically. 'Ghost Of Self' and 'Exit Sign' we had."
Travis: "We structured 'Ghost of Self' into something that was more conducive to the new EP to go with the new songs. We wanted to get that energy there so that they match up."
Chris: "So it was a very different process and even taking our old material through that process gave it new life. We would write and Travis and I would end up developing something that was really long, probably longer than it needs to be, like 'Careless Whisper', that song wears out its welcome. Being able to take the songs we’d already written and completed and then push it through this filter again I think really distilled it down to what mattered. That was kind of the point of Aggregate being called Aggregate. The culmination of all stuff that we had written previously, let’s lump it together and push it out, and for Fiction, let’s write something on purpose. The recording processes were completely different. Aggregate, we recorded ourselves. We had someone help us, a friend of ours, Phil Bolander. We tracked it ourselves and then sent it off to get mixed by Dave Rideu."
Travis: "The story of Aggregate is that it took some time. Chris and I worked on those songs beforehand and then went through an entire recording process that didn’t come out the way we wanted it to. The masters were not where we wanted them and we decided to nix it instead of putting out an inferior product. We just weren’t feeling it so we tried doing the home recording ourselves, which was a slog. For all our prowess one of the things we don’t focus on that much is recording ourselves, so we decided to take control of it and Aggregate was probably the best product we could put out as a home recording band with some help. It was pretty good, but the difference between Aggregate and Fiction Will See Us Through is light years in recording quality."
Chris: "Cory Spotts produced Fiction and he was amazing. The fact that we found him and met with him and went over what we were looking for and he was into it was huge for me. Him being enthusiastic about it and getting what we were trying to do was huge for me to be willing to say 'ok you’re in charge of this.'"
4. Speaking of Fiction Will See Us Through, I kind of get a little bit of a feel, and I don’t like using the word, but almost like a concept EP to a certain extent. It feels that way because of the way the songs are written and the lyrics and the track listing, it feels like it has a flow. Is that purposeful?
Travis: "It is deliberate, I wouldn’t go as far as concept."
I know that’s a stretch.
Travis: "It wouldn’t be outside of the realm of some shit we would do, but, in this case it was more like a well decorated interior. It has some threads that pull everything together. The restructure of 'Ghost of Self' and some of the more aggressive parts of 'Exit Sign', that was to really dress those for the more assertive tone of 'Blindspot', 'Long Lost', and 'Bridges'. That’s a much more assertive tone for Broken Girls than we’d pulled off before."
I was going to ask, Exit Sign sounds different than the rest of the songs on Fiction Will See Us Through. Was there a reason for that? Was it deliberate? You sing a little differently on it was well.
Travis: "Yea, we did want to showcase the direction we were going. If you look at our Spotify we released stuff that was older demo stuff, like 'Secondhand Screenplay' and 'Flickr,' that was stuff me and Chris banged out years ago. We put out Aggregate so you could see growth from that, it was our best effort. Then in the stopgap between Aggregate and Fiction Will See Us Through we put out 'Asynchronous Pulse,' which shows just another little step further. Then with Fiction we tried to showcase at least those three brand new songs to show the direction we’re looking to go."
Chris: 'Exit Sign' was written in the time frame of our old workflow. So, it used to be that I’d write a song, I’d write the music and then Travis would write the vocal or Travis would write something and bring it. Now it’s much more collaborative and you can hear it in the writing.
Like I said I found you guys when I randomly found the show you were playing at the Rebel Lounge a couple of weeks ago. It’s refreshing for me because I come from a background of really liking live local bands and it’s hard to find good live, local music.
Chris: "The worst thing about that is there is so much good live local music and it’s so hard to find."
6. So you made a music video for "Bridges". Can you tell me why you chose that song and little bit about how you came up with the concept?
Travis: "I think we picked 'Bridges' because it feels like it’s the most concise and accessible song. Like Chris referenced earlier, in our workflow, we like to jam, we like to play together. We try to work out these new songs together so a lot of times these songs will end up being 7 ½ minutes long, you know, it’s more prog-rock than what we’re doing. That’s not quite as accessible, especially when I vocally try to stay in a more pop rock type of range, where it gets a little catchy and a little ear wormy. I felt like 'Bridges' was probably the best, most condensed, little serving of Broken Girls that we wanted to put forward. It has that intro that comes in heavy, the big wall of sound, because we’re all about making a lot of noise, so the big wall of sound chorus, and then these more intimate little verses and then a big outro that changes."
I think the juxtapose of that is really cool though because it comes across even in your live show, which I think is really hard to do and I think you’ve guys mastered that pretty well.
7. Are you planning to make any other videos?
Chris: "So the concept of that video, at first we thought we’d like to do everything, but you can’t. We want to take the people that are really talented individuals at what they do and let them have reign of our product. So for 'Bridges' we went to Taylor Ouellette and said ‘hey man, here’s the song, whatever you want, whatever this makes you think, let’s do that.'"
Travis: "I think as well as Taylor pulled that off we’re going to stay with him and at this point just hand him the EP and say 'what song do you want to do next?'"
'Blindspot,' 'Blindspot.'
Travis: "I mean that one is just long."
Chris: "I really want to do 'Blindspot.' 'Blindspot’s' my baby."
Travis: "It builds and builds and builds, and a lot of times I’ll ask how did it sound up there? And people will say well it sounded pretty good, 'Blindspot' got a little screechy and I’ll say perfect, that’s what we want."
I don’t think you really hear stuff like that anymore, it’s still got a bit of an edge, but it’s still polished.
Travis: "What did Cory say about that? Didn’t he say something about that? He said ‘you guys make some really beautiful, really noisy, ugly music.’"
Chris: "Beautiful, awful noise."
Travis: "He said ‘I want to make the noisy ugly, aggressive parts as loud as possible and disturbing as possible on your album, and then make those intimate parts as fragile and accessible as you can because that’s what you’re looking for in something you’re going to repeatedly listen to. The big peaks and the low valleys."
8. Speaking of your live shows. If I was someone who had never heard you guys live, what would you tell me to expect from your live show?
Travis: "Sweat."
Chris: "Sorry about the SPL."
Travis: "Yea, it’s going to be loud, and it’s going to be sweaty. That’s a guarantee."
Mike: "It’s a splash zone."
Chris: "Shamu."
Travis: "The longer we have to play the more like a Gallagher session it is. You’ve got to wear a parka."
Mike: "Usually a half hour set."
Travis: "A half hour set is where it gets before total saturation occurs and it’s just a deluge from stage to face."
Are you the sweater? Is that why they’re saying all that?
Travis: "Oh no, me and Mike are."
Chris: "We call him Wet Mike for a reason."
Travis: "We sweat. The main thing is how we play. In our experience, we’ve been told to turn down a few times, we are loud. There was a time where we played a show and within the first few songs from the old EP, Silhouettes, we got told to turn down three different times mid- song by some agitated patron of the place."
I remember shows when I used to leave and think to myself 'I think I might be deaf tomorrow, but that’s ok.'
Travis: "That was our big thing, we’re loud, these songs are loud and that was the main thing. People saying you’ve got to turn down."
I think with your music, it’s an experience and I think being loud is part of how your music is constructed. There’s that build and then I feel like you need that aggression because it’s giving you that experience.
Chris: "Yea we’re trying to convey feelings of being overwhelmed, feelings of anxiety, and that’s raw SPL but that’s what creates dynamics."
Travis: "The dissonance goes into that too. That’s kind of the craft, we want to be loud, but it also needs to make you feel uneasy. Chris and I make dissonance so that the notes catch you off and make you wish it would resolve to a major or minor but it doesn’t."
And you guys have complex time signatures in your music too, which is why I said the night I met you I could tell you were a really technical band, that is hard to do.
Travis: "Especially live."
Yea, and you guys kept time. There were some other bands that played that night that were not on time with each other. It was basically three people playing on the same stage. The fact that you guys can a) do that, and b) do that with the complex song structure and time signatures, I think it’s really impressive.
Shawn: "We rehearse our set at least twice a week, whether we have a show or not."
Travis: "Yea, to click and all together. Shawn has in-ears with click and we play to metronome constantly, probably 10 hours a week over the course of two days."
9. Do you have a song that you’re most proud of?
Travis: "I mean, 'Blindspot' is pretty good."
Chris: "For me it’s 'Blindspot.'"
10. How did that song come about?
Chris: "The outro was something that I wrote on my own. The stuff I usually write on my own is usually more ambient, post-rocky, All the guitar parts ended up on top of each other in the original rendition of the song. So, we took the time to chop that out and make it not so saturated with guitars."
Travis: "I know it’s probably not our most accessible song for people that like just general music, but I feel that beginning to end it has the most change. We push pretty hard with changing the time and the feel of it. The way it come out recorded is probably the most impressive."
Shawn: "With everything we do, we want to make sure that it can be done live, without having to have a small man playing the keyboard or hiding behind something."
Chris: "People talk about us having synths in our music there’s actually none. It’s all guitar and we can do it live, using loopers and such."
10. So, what’s next? Any tour planned?
Travis: "Japan."
Chris: "We have material chambered, the EP concept was more financial. We have material we want to record. In the short term, we want to do more videos, probably 'Long Lost,' and I do plan on doing one for 'Blindspot.' We’re trying to put together some out of town dates."
Is it hard to get into venues here?
Chris: "It is. Rebel Lounge is fantastic, they’ve been supportive and professional. Other venues, in general are hard to get into."
Mike: "I’ve been playing in the Phoenix area off and on and I think that goes with what you said earlier that there’s not a lot of professional bands in Phoenix. Venues are dealing with that every night."
Travis: "It’s been work. Three years ago we would have clawed someone’s eyes out to get into Rebel and that’s a jewel compared to some of the other places we’ve played. To be able to go see one of your favorite bands play there one night, and then play on the same stage the next is rad. We’d love to be able to go to Colorado for a weekend and play a few shows, but getting into those venues is like ‘who the hell are you?’"
11. Are you friends with any other local musicians?
Chris: "Locally, yea. We’re friends with El West, Celebration Guns, Panic Baby, Sun System."
Travis: "Those guys are all great. That’s how we started clawing our way out. We’d come across these bands that were doing the work up to the show, posting, flyering, coming out of pocket, because this is not a money-making game, it’s an investment. When you find another band that’s doing the work, you try to make this musician network."
12. Any last words of wisdom?
Chris: "I will say there are tons of great local Phoenix bands, I’ll point you at some of them that are really underappreciated, but they are so good. Bands like Celebration Guns, Holy Fawn, El West."
Travis: "Holy Fawn, listening to Foal off their last EP, we were debating whether or not we should try the music scene and I hear that and said ‘we have to,’ that’s such a good song."
Chris: "There’s a lot out there that flies under the radar. The bands that do get noticed are probably more mass appeal, but personally I like that stuff better."