SHOW ME THE LIGHT, the second full-length album by Blake Brown and The American Dust Choir, was, in the main, written during the pandemic when Brown, his wife and their young daughter were holed up in Nashville, having moved to that city just before the arrival of Covid to start a new life there. The uncertainty of those times is reflected in the guitar-driven material on the album. Produced by Grammy-nominated Chris Frenchie Smith (Meat Puppets, The Toadies, Lost Bayou Ramblers), it embraces the 80s and 90s music that stimulated Brown as a music lover and set him on his professional artistic career. Currently living in his home state of Texas, Blake recently spoke with us about his early career, the move to Nashville and the factors that brought about his latest project.
Early musical influences?
The Beatles are, to this day, my favourite band. I love The Beach Boys and music like that out of California. I'm a child of the late '80s and '90s, so Nirvana would be very much up there, and The Cure would be one of my favourite bands of all time, Elliott Smith and The Clash, too. I also really love big and heavy productions, and I have really come to appreciate the art in that. Every month, I try to decide on my five favourite records of all time, and it always seems to shift, but U2's JOSHUA TREE is always in there.
What was your artistic background prior to starting your current band?
I grew up in West Texas and moved two States north to Colorado. I was learning to play the guitar, and with that came forming my early bands. There were a lot of punk rock influences and teen angst in those early days but as my palate started to open up, I became more interested in the softer side of things and more indie-oriented bands more so than straight forward punk rock. In the early 2000s, bands like The Strokes, Spoon, and Queens of The Stone Age influenced me. I was living in New York City at the time and writing these stripped-down and pretty intimate songs, but I always had a larger vision of putting a guitar part or a drum pattern to them.
When reviewing your latest album, SHOW ME THE LIGHT, I made a comparison to early Son Volt.
I actually played with Son Volt about five years ago. We did a Christmas Eve show with them. I also recorded with Ken Coomer, who was in Uncle Tupelo with Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy.
Was your band name was influenced by Son Volt's album AMERICAN CENTRAL DUST?
No, this is how it came about. I was in a band called Bare Bones. That band intended to be very stripped-down, acoustically oriented music. I was the primary songwriter but didn't want to put the band under my name. There was a band called Horse Feathers around that time, and our very first show was with them. We did a nice run of shows with them, and then our drummer bowed out and moved away, so I thought that if I'm going to have a project where I am the primary songwriter for better or worse, I'm going to have my name attached to it. If I show up with one guitar and myself or five other people, the songs are the same, whether stripped down or full band setting. I had run the gamut with the musical spectrum, been there and done that, and I wanted to pay homage to some of my influences. There is that tie back to the Son Volt record or that kind of music, and I wanted to name the band Blake Brown and The American Dust, blank. My bass player suggested 'choir', and I always loved the word 'choir' and thought it was a little misleading in a way. I thought it sounded cool and a little bit mysterious.
When writing material, are you conscious that the songs will be performed live, both solo and with a band?
It is important to me, but I don't hang my hat on it. On some of my early recordings like my second EP, TURNING TIDES, there is a song, Hanging On A Wire, that is very bass and drums-driven but was written on acoustic guitar. I do perform a lot solo and with my wife, but I love the full band setting; it goes back to my punk rock roots and that sense of comradery. So, I often write with a band in mind, but I am also aware that I will usually have to pull it off solo.
I'm very fortunate to have a strong relationship with some great players for my band, guys who know the songs. There is a different chemistry between your hired guns and buddies that you've grown up with.
You are back living in Austin, Texas, after spending time in Nashville. What drew you to Music City?
I was there for two years. My wife and I owned a home in Colorado, and right before the pandemic we had sold our house with the intention of moving to Nashville, we had toured through there plenty of times and had friends out there. I signed a new management deal with a team there during Covid and when things started to calm down, they facilitated the relationship with Ken Coomer. The South was slightly different from other parts of the country when it came to Covid. We have a daughter who is five years old now, and at that time, the little ones were the last to get vaccines, so we were playing it very safe, not doing shows and staying under the radar to keep her safe and healthy. The world has moved on since then but it was such a dark time then, we were in Nashville, a new management team' working with Ken Coomer on a new record. We should have been blossoming, but it didn't feel like that at all. There weren't many answers around the Covid pandemic at that time. Nashville is quaint, easy to get around and has cute neighbourhoods; it's a great town. In hindsight, being a parent and adhering to my career aspirations as a musician during our time there was challenging. There weren't a lot of parents in the music scene with whom I was directly involved. I was my daughter's primary caretaker, a forty-something-year-old man hanging out with a little baby, writing sad bastard songs (laughs); it does not get any darker than that. I made the record x there and did other music business stuff but I still have family in Austin and it made sense to move back here.
What comparisons do you draw between 2018's LONG WAY HOME and your latest album, SHOW ME THE LIGHT?
I think my songwriting has grown, I tend to integrate a lot of my own experiences more in my writing and the new record is the most experimental one that I have done, I call it a headphones record. A gentleman named Joe Richmond helped me produce LONG WAY HOME, and Chris Frenchie Smith. Produced SHOW ME THE LIGHT. With due respect to both parties, that was more of a relationship for me with Frenchie. I felt more at home, and we were able to take our time with the recording and as a songwriter, the gift of time is huge. Even when I recorded with Ken Coomer in Nashville, we started at 10 am on Monday and finished at midnight on Sunday; that was it. Everything on the new album was recorded in the studio, there was no remote work. We laid down all the scratch tracks on acoustic guitar, dissected and analysed them as we went along from there. There was never a full band environment, but I did play along with the drummer on certain takes.
Light is a recurring theme in the new album. It's referenced in the title track, Turn On The Lights, Darkest Hollows, and North Star. Was this intentional?
I'm not sure if it is coincidental; I was living in Nashville when I wrote a lot of this record. I still remember writing the song Darkest Hollows on my back porch outside. There was a lot of darkness surrounding the songwriting process. A thematic element or thread comes out in the songwriting. A woman, who was a palm reader, came up to me after a show and said to me that almost all of my songs in the set had mentioned hands. I didn't realise that theme in my songs. It was a very dark time when I was writing these songs, and I had no idea what the record would be called when I was working on it, but I eventually felt that SHOW ME THE LIGHT was the right title as it was created at a time of darkness.
Will you be performing at the SXSW Festival in Austin this year?
Hopefully, I'm working on it; we'll see how that goes. I've played the festival officially and unofficially over the years. There are lots of festivals all over the country, but being from Texas, there is a sense of pride and validation being booked for the festival.
What advice would you give to a younger artist starting their career?
I've been doing this for a long time, and the main thing is finding the right management partnerships on the business side. Write, write, write, exercise that muscle, and develop your voice, but essentially, you have to do it for the love of it and do what your heart is telling you.
And your own survival kit?
For me, it's a box full of my favourite records/record player, a guitar and notebook, and, of course, my family. Maybe some good food and drink too!
Interview by Declan Culliton