When you’re talking about a group like Brazil, it’s very easy to lose sight of the big picture – there’s such a barrage of sonic and lyrical references that go into their music that you almost have to feel it out when explaining them to someone else, section by section, like a blind man fondling an elephant. Six piece. Keyboards. High ranged singer. Sorta like Yes/Queen/At The Drive-In/Rush/Whoever. Hailed from the mean streets of… Muncie, Indiana?
That’s right, Indiana – world famous for automobile racing, awesome popcorn, and housing death row inmates, but not so much on the whole rock music thing. Of course, my friends and I all thought of Tennessee as a hellish backwater until we spent some time there – then we were surprised to see how varied and vibrant that state was musically. So when I got the chance to talk to Brazil frontman Jon Newby, I first asked if there was more to Indiana from a touring and musical perspective than the average person might expect, and whether it was harder to make career advancements from Muncie, as opposed to a place on the coasts.
“‘I’ve discovered,” he says, “there’s at least one place in every state that has some sort of hidden cultural grotto. Bloomington has Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar, who’ve put out Antony and the Johnsons records, Black Mountain records, et al. And then you have Omaha Nebraska, home to Saddle Creek. And Polyvinyl, buried somewhere out in the wilds of Illinois. Us flyover-staters are doing fine without having to live in Brooklyn lofts. Much thanks, yes, due to the Internet.”
Despite the ambitious sound of the band, Brazil’s story out of the studio has always been grounded in reality. Even as they worked on material and threw themselves into the playing/promoting grind, real life carried on – Newby worked as a student in their first years, getting his degree in journalism at Ball State which he put to wonderful use doing… odd jobs like… temp stuff organizing files for the Ball Memorial Hospital Urology Clinic. “I learned more about genital warts”, Newby would later write, “than anyone should ever know.” And after the band’s original vocalist left, he stepped into the role of vocalist despite a few growing pains – drummers seem to always be hardest to find, and Brazil was no exception. The band bounced back and forth between drummers for the next year, usually playing instrumental when there weren’t any drummers around at the time (because Jon had plenty of trouble adjusting to being frontman without having to play and sing at the same time ala Grant Hart), but about a year with rotating drummers, the group settled on Jersey-area veteran James Sefchek. Within a couple months, they were in the studio, working on A Hostage and the Meaning of Life.
The end result was badass, and one of the most underappreciated records of the aughts. Hostage managed to place a coherent theme in the record without being cheesy or obnoxious and ranged from compact pop (Escape) to sprawling, epic progressive rock (Metropol) that, even with all of the musical flourishes, always seemed to run with a finish line somewhere in sight. Topped off with Alex Newport’s typically flawless production, this record secured Brazil a small but diehard fanbase. The band went straight to the road to support it, and spent almost a year and a half on the road.
“Having a relationship with your fans outside of the label is crucial,” Newby writes, “and it is a lesson I didn’t learn until sometime after Hostage came out. It means the difference between your fans admiring you from afar, like a media circus curiosity, or having them admire you as if you were an extension of themselves. Clay Aikan (sic) is an example of one, Neil Young is an example of the other. Figure out which.”
Once this realization sunk in, the band became one of the most techsavvy major label groups around, boosted by prodigious timing – just as social networks were blowing up, Brazil was fully utilizing them, spreading the word in advance of shows and bringing people out, keeping fans updated on the daily grind, taking questions and nurturing a small official forum. For a group like Brazil, that usually found itself playing shows with emo/screamo/punk/metal bands that weren’t quite on the same page as they were, the interweb and strong word of mouth proved to be an invaluable tool. When they found themselves without a label after the Hostage tour wound down, this likely eased the path onto LA area Immortal Records. The record that came afterward, The Philosophy of Velocity, wasn’t as aggressive as Hostage, but did everything a great second record should do, expanding on the bands strengths while turning a page creatively.
“Where ‘Hostage’ was more like an Asimov story, [Velocity] was like a Tesla/H.G. Wells steampunk epic,” Newby says, and while musically, Hostage could be seen as an unblinking look into the future, a great deal of Velocity felt vintage – 1920’s typewriters introduced an album about 1800’s-era ghosts and machines with 1970’s backmasking that the band really, really wanted to record to 8-track. But soon enough, Brazil was back on the road supporting Velocity – they’d been playing together for almost seven years, and while they started as young and determined, they had their own families and responsibilities, and it was getting harder and harder to play for the love of the game. After almost a year pushing the record without the breakthrough success they’d hoped for, Brazil was in its waning days, and after touring the country over and over (and over, and over) again, the shows were beginning to feel even more like a job.
“We were so ground down that it was just a haze. I always thought that I’d like to see our breakup involve some sort of dinner, handshakes, cigars, maybe a slideshow with a Boys II Men soundtrack. But really, it came down to the realization that, while we could justify continuing without making any money but still having fun, we weren’t even having fun anymore. So in that case we decided we might as well work a joe job, because at least we wouldn’t be broke all the time anymore. I still feel pretty bad that we didn’t break up the way I envisioned. I don’t hate or dislike any of the other guys. We just weren’t having fun.”
Late 2007 saw the end of Brazil, but as the group moved on to other things, they still felt like there was a lot of half-completed Brazil material lying around. None of them wanted to let the songs float into the ether, but with the members consumed with their own affairs and spread out across the country – New Jersey, Indiana, Louisville – they’d have to get creative, networking across the country to collaborate on one more release.
“Basically, it was a scenario where I still held all the band debt on personal credit cards. So I said, ‘look, let’s put out this last record, but because I’ve already assumed all the financial risk, I will be the record label and I will make all the decisions for this release.’ And that was the birth of Elefant & Haus Records, a company that so far is essentially one (1) master recording and some letterheads.”
After about nine months of work. Ere I Am J.H. is a very nice bookend to Brazil’s catalog : it’s got a lot of reinterpretations of older Brazil songs (Crime and The Antique Solution, one of the most explosive tracks on Velocity, is reimagined as a silky cabaret number) as well as some new material that’s further afield than what a fan would expect, like Go On, a stripped down acoustic track that recalls a 1960’s pop single and moved Bryan Wyrick to call the track “beautiful”. Given the acoustic changes, there were a few challenges along the way:
“The only one that was a little scary was ‘Subscience’. Aaron programmed all the basic tracks and emailed them to me. I was like, “how the hell am I going to make something Brazil-y out of this?” But after I started layering all the analog synths and vocals on top, I was pretty happy with it, although I think Aaron was disappointed in the end product. He always liked things to be simple. I like highly orchestrated layers and flourishes and wankery. Such is/was the creative tension of Brazil.”
Ere I Am J.H. seems to have completed Brazil’s journey – the record was independently recorded, produced, and distributed and found a slot at every online music retailer of note. But the record doesn’t mark the end of anyone’s creative output – Jon’s already resolved to put out an album a year from now until he… y’know… kicks the bucket? Surprisingly, Newby confessed that playing solo was “much easier” than working with a full band.
“Less drawn-out committee decisions. Lately it has been hard dedicating time to write, but that’s because I’m putting a lot of energy into laying groundwork for a long term Output Scenario…i.e. buying studio gear, instruments, writing website code, making designs…because ultimately once those things are set, I’ll just turn on the faucets and get back to being Prolific Hermit Guy.”
With so much new material still in the wings, we wanted to get a little bit more out of one of the most tech-savvy guys in independent music. After writing so much material that focused on the conflict between technology and humanity (that thankfully doesn’t delve into technophobic Outer Limits cliche), we decided to throw out a few questions in that general area in the hopes that he’d settle a certain long running debate on our site. We weren’t disappointed:
Zeitgeist: What do you think about Twitter?
Newby: I used to think it was a ridiculous way to broadcast the details of your boring life to all your friends and acquaintances who could care less, but the latest round of hostage-taking and hotel attacks have kind of brought a new perspective on its you-are-there journalistic potential.
Zeitgeist: Do you think the western world’s current lifestyle is sustainable? Are we jumping off some biological cliff, or will we always have the technology to adapt to a changing world?
Newby: I think we are making a habit of taking one step forward, and two backward. For every new windfarm, a billion new babies get born. And those babies grow up to be eaters and breathers and drivers and drinkers who make billions of newer babies. We’re going to run out of room, thanks to the double-edged sword of scientific advancements.
Zeitgeist: Does genetically engineered food solve more problems than it creates? What about human engineering?
Newby: I’m all for human engineering. On a related note, I’m looking forward to The Singularity. If robots can get smart enough to replicate themselves and I can have my own Number Six, I’ll be one happy nerdling.
[Ed Note: I briefly wondered why self aware artificial intelligence with the ability to turn thought into reality would waste precious robo-time telling random Hoosiers to, I dunno, Save the Cheerleader Save the World or whatever, but decided this didn't really merit a followup.]
Zeitgeist: Is humanity overall helped or hindered by the influence of religion?
Newby: I will start by saying that people who use it quietly and peacefully to bring a measure of balance and tranquility to their life tend to be the exception rather than the rule. You said “overall,” in which context I think religion (and I’m talking primarily about The Big Three) has done more to hinder the progress of the species with superstition, fear of change, fear of science, and an illogical yet tenacious grip on the Fallacy of the Innocent Past. I think all religions could be distilled down to a few major tenets that would help us all get along much better and would be literally identical across all faiths, but we primates can’t seem to shake this extra Levitical deadweight. Straining at gnats and swallowing camels, I say.
And you never want to lose sight of the big picture.
Typically, we end these articles with places to find the subject on the web – and for a technically defunct group, Brazil is all over the tubes. There’s a MySpace that’s still occasionally updated (with a free LP of Brazil demos and rarities if you look hard enough), a Last.fm account, an official website where you can buy records straight from the band (which I highly recommend – it’s cheaper than Amazon/iTunes, better quality, goes straight to em, and your stuff won’t explode in the mail), and Jonathon Christmas’ blog, 500 Days Of Night, an exhaustive (and still incomplete!) tour journal retelling 7 years in the trenches. It’s wonderfully written and essential for fans of Brazil.. or people who like good music… or people who can read.
Tags: A Hostage and the Meaning of Life, Brazil, Jonathon Christmas, The Philosophy Of Velocity
Thanks for the shout out!
-Brian