In this interview spotlight, I chat with Alabama based rockers The Brewaves about their newest project, motivations, challenges and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)
From ole Alabama. As far as style, I honestly try to avoid certain style because I feel like it sets boundaries in your mind musically if you limit yourself to a genre. Just like everyone else my style comes from my influences which range from classical music, rock, country, rap, blues, grunge… Did I leave anything off haha. The songs on the album were my attempt to get what I hear in my head, which I think was one of the most gratifying and frustrating experiences. So to answer question I try not to make a specific style of music because I think each song is written in its own unique way by the writer and interpreted its own unique way by the listener.
What have you been up to recently?
Just got home from backpacking Australia. It was always a dream to go there and finally had time to go.
How was it?
It was sick! Honestly can’t wait to go back someday. We only got to hit the east coast Sydney, Whitsundays, Great Barrier Reef, and Melbourne. Don’t ask me my favorite because it was all awesome but I will say the people down under were awesome. Everywhere we went they were just really helpful and nice.
Back to music. What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?
I don’t think anything led me to music because music always seems to find you, you know. Somehow or another it’s always there. Like I said I enjoy classical and if you’ve ever studied philosophy, particularly Arthur Schopenhauer or Friedrich Nietzsche, they discuss of all the art forms music has the most power to influence our emotions. As a writer myself I try to write my music in a way the captures the emotion of the subject or myself. I don’t like discussing the meaning of each song because I don’t think it’s fair to the listener. We all interpret songs our own way so why set boundaries on how your music can be interpreted.
Were you trying to accomplish anything specific with this album?
I’d be lying if I said no. I think it was multiple reasons and I think some of the reasons have changed from when it was started to when it was finished. The first reason was are we actually capable of recording an album with all these songs. I’ve never produced or been in charge of a production so there were a lot of learning curves along the way. Like everyone when you first start to record your own music your mindset is “yeah I’m gonna be a star. This song is going to top the charts.” And all the bs you tell yourself. But when we started it became more about just enjoying what we were doing and getting “caught up in the music”. Even though we had enough songs for the album I wrote 2 or 3 while we were recording and added them to the album. The only reason we had 8 songs though was we ran out of money to record anymore haha. So honestly we were hoping this album would give us the opportunity to hit the studio again because we feel like we have some even better songs.
So are you wanting to get signed by a record label?
I mean yes and no. It would give us the ability to work in a studio without worrying about how much money were spending. What worries me is I don’t want anyone to tell us what a song should sound like or add their influence to the music because then it’s not really our music. It’s the corporation’s music. Is anyone really their own artists anymore? So to answer your question yes, under the right circumstances which mostly has to do with musical control.
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
It’s like we all have our guitars plugged into an amp. Some amps are a lot bigger than other so they can turn up a lot louder to be heard. At the same time the smaller musicians now have platforms to put their music out there and make money. So if your goal is to become rich and famous you better go find someone who will let you plug into the big amp. If your goal is just to record and publish your art you can do that too. Even though The Brewaves are plugged into a small amp we’re at least plugged into an amp. I don’t think that was possible in the past.
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
That’s a good question. I think you can tell that nobody in our group has a marketing degree cause we are currently only on Instagram haha. The music can be found on most platforms iTunes, Spotify, etc… Maybe you could help us haha.
Anything else before we sign off?
Yeah, Joshua we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and glad you enjoyed the first album. We really appreciate MTM listening to us smaller amps and allowing our artistic voices to be heard. This is only the beginning we can’t wait to let everyone hear some more music and catch up with you again further down the road.
