Bands in Lockdown: Brooders

In today's bands in Lockdown interview, Mark Glenister catches up with Adam from Brooders. 

Firstly, how are you? How are the rest of the band as well?

Hi Mark, we’re all doing ok thanks for asking! Myself (Adam (singer/guitar) and Speare (Bass) live together so we’ve been spending a lot of time chilling out and actually having some down time from the usual chaos that usually ensues life. Sadly though as I work as a freelance sound engineer/show rep/teacher/studio engineer a lot of my work has dried up as of lately which is a shame, but we’re remaining optimistic in the house and spending a lot of time playing board games, working on new music and drinking red wine which is passing the time nicely. Speare is a barista, and with the hospitality industry in snooze mode he’s out of work at the moment too. Liam (drummer) is a lorry driver outside of his musical sphere, and still works back in Derby so we’ve been missing our weekly visits, but we are looking forward to making loud noises with him again very soon.

Do you have a daily routine, are you learning anything new as everyone else seems to be?

For the first five weeks or so we had a pretty steady routine of waking up early and convening in the kitchen for waffles or some form of hideously unhealthy breakfast. But we’ve slowly descended into a bit more of a lackadaisical lifestyle over the last fortnight. We all have played a lot of monopoly together though and found ourselves doing that almost routinely together for a while, no table flips so far too, so I’m calling that a success. 

In terms of learning new things though, I’ve been messing around with a few new projects and teaching myself to play drums a bit more seriously and Speare has spent a fair bit more time honing his guitar skills. He’s moving between DIIV sort of style stuff all the way to King Krule. Whereas I’ve been writing music that strays somewhere between My Bloody Valentine, Tool and QOTSA. Liam has been spending time doing more with covers too and posting things online. Us two are a little more shy about that sort of approach, but we’ll show people one day what we’ve been up to I’m sure!

Are you seeing this lockdown as a time to be creative? And has it changed the way you view the industry?

I would say that its changed my view on the industry in a few ways. We’ve seen such a positive community response come from the industry for struggling musicians/venues/professionals and its been a very wholesome effort from all involved. Companies like HMUK, The Musicians Union and even the national Lottery have been banding together to support freelancers like myself and business owners all around the UK. With things such as #Saveourvenues surfacing over the last few weeks too its been amazing to see a collective effort to pull together in times like these. Theres often a lot of rivalry and intense competitiveness in some walks of the music industry and its been amazing to see everyone just pushing this aside for a greater good. The only way I think we can all see our industry surviving is by jumping on the same wagon and supporting however we can.

However on the other side of that we’re also seeing some incredibly creative things stem from all of this. People doing online gigs/fundraisers, compilation albums ('Songs For The National Health Service' and 'Come Stay With Me' being our personal favourites), collaborations left right and centre and so much more going on. Its amazing to see so many people coming together with such a wholesome message of support and positivity in such dire circumstances. When this is all over we’ll raise a glass together and celebrate the wonderful things that people have done, but until then we’ll raise our glass from isolation.

As a band are you doing anything for the fans? A lot of online gigs and Q&As seem to be the norm for a lot of bands, how easy or difficult is that for you as a group? How has this impacted your side projects?

At the moment we’ve been looking into the idea of getting something developed to support charities that we’re really fond of first and foremost as they are the ones who will be providing the biggest blanket of support for the creatives/scene around us. 

We do however want to support upcoming artists on the scene whilst also looking at the bigger picture. We’re trying to pull something together so keep your eyes peeled. 

We would have been getting involved with the Come Stay With Me compilation too, but sadly with Liam being back home throughout the lockdown it was seeming to be more and more difficult to sort from our end to much success. However I had the pleasure of recording the Dense track that will be on there, so I like to think I've played small part at least for now. 

We are currently looking at putting a collaborated effort (between myself and Sam from Dense) onto a different compilation that our friend Max from Bloodhound has been working on at the moment in support of a charitable cause. So hopefully that will come to fruition very soon!

Aside from that we’ve just finished a sale on our store where we’ll be using the money to get going with the next set of recordings once the lockdown is finished which we can’t wait for. We may end up doing a Q&A at some point too if we have enough folks with questions. 

To be honest though we’ve often considered doing online shows, but with our style of music its really tricky to articulate the energy that we really want to deliver, so as a result we’ve held off for now. We did discuss the possibility of doing something just before lockdown, but sadly it was not to be. Its a bit suckish as we all miss making music together, but the day will come again soon. It has allowed our side projects and efforts to flourish though to some degree. With our setup at home we can record a full band setup, but without a drummer to the standard of Liam we’ve struggled to get the quality we’d like. So its been fun finding folks who have their own setups at home and are keen on writing music together through the miracle that is dropbox. 

With the lockdown being extended, does that effect plans for tours, singles, albums?

To be honest its affected all that it can for now I think. We should have been out and touring at this current time, but we’ve put that on the back burner for now. We had recently just released our new single Drone too with a music video so we were excited to tour with that for a bit at least before we move onto the next chapter. With 2019 being primarily recording and releasing singles we were looking forward to getting into the swing of playing live once again, but we’ll just have to wait that one out for now I guess! Bigger things in play at the moment as far as the health of the world is concerned so we aren’t letting it get to us. As far as singles and albums is concerned though we’ll be back into the swing of that once we can jump into the studio and finish writing again. We were working on something exciting, so that will have its time yet!

As a fan I know how much I miss going to gigs, for the music and for the social aspect, is this something that you miss as well?

Absolutely. I can’t stress enough how much I miss gigs at the moment. I worked in a live music environment 3/4 days a week in my job and loved all the elements of live music in all departments. The socialising especially is a big factor of what I miss, but i feel like that will have its time again when all is safer and better in the world, and hopefully live music will see a sharp resurgence when people feel comfortable enough to attend shows again. There's such an amazing community of people that usually attend our gigs though and we miss them dearly, but its been so appreciated the support that a number of them have provided since this lockdown started. Whether it be buying merch, checking in on us or just liking and sharing our posts. It all helps!

How important are your fans at this time, I know and I speak from experience, a lot of merch is being purchased to help bands, and I know you have a great connection with fans generally so are they an important aspect of getting through this?

MASSIVELY important. What is a band without people there to listen in, enjoy their music. The merch purchases are a HUGE financial support for us as a band, but just to know that people are whacking our music on at home and enjoying themselves is fantastic in itself and we appreciate it all massively. The amount of fans that become friends over time though is ace, as we really do try and connect with people who have taken an interest in what we do. And more importantly, folks who have enjoyed our music often have a million band recommendations of their own and its always good to talk new music and find out what’s on the rise, its how I’ve discovered amazing bands like Crows, Calva Louise, Strange Bones, Squid, Black Peaks, All Them Witches, God Damn and a number more in the past.

Despite horrors of this pandemic, the lockdown seems to have a created a lot of really positive community action, and for once social media is being used mainly I a positive manner – Do you want life to return to normal once this is over, or would you like people to be using this time to evaluate their lives and start be part of communities and positive social change?

If I’m being honest, I think the old normal is dead. I think we’ll find our feet with a new way of life for a while and we’ll have to adapt to that accordingly. People will be more socially inclined to make an effort with other people, I think folks will generally be making an active effort to show a huge amount of positivity on the other side of all of this too. Its important that this change takes place though. As a nation and a world I feel that we’ve all become too cynical and stand off-ish with one another and I like to think that once this all settles down the community around the world will be closer together as we’ve all suffered together. However dreadful this time has been we’ve seen kindness from all stretches of the globe and hope for a brighter day from everyone we’ve encountered. That's got to mean more than all of this, and I hope people will follow suit. 

Our next interview with Frauds will be published tomorrow.