Count Your Lucky Stars

Read a new interview with Brave Bird at Casual Friday here: http://casualfridaymag.com/?p=1006 or just read on!

Ever since I first listened to Michigan’s finest, Brave Bird, I found that I just can’t get enough of them.  My interest in the band increased, especially after I saw them play in a basement in Lowell, MA with tour mates, Dowsing.  I was quickly amazed by the band’s talent and live performance.  Chris Lieu’s (lead vocalist, guitarist) fingers move a mile a minute when he plays guitar and sings, all the while with his eyes closed.  Also, Mike (bassist) holds it down with drummer, Mark, and adds his necessary back-up vocals when needed for that extra “umph” that their recordings include.  When Brave Bird returned from tour, Chris was nice enough to find the time to answer some questions regarding his band.  Many people, like myself, would compare the band to Brand New and American Football, but why don’t you find out for yourself?

1.  Brave Bird is gaining more popularity lately, especially since signing with Count Your Lucky Stars Records.  When did you guys form as a band?  Has the line-up remained the same today?

It’s really only been a few weeks since we announced signing with Count Your Lucky Stars, but our demos have been getting passed around and listened to more and more in the last year. We formed in the summer of 2010, but didn’t really do anything until 2011. We’ve gone through a few second guitarists, but Mike, Mark and I (Chris) have been the in the core group since we started playing shows.

2.  On May 9^th, Count Your Lucky Stars Records announced that Brave Bird signed to their label.  What made you guys decide to sign with CYLS?

We’ve been friends with Keith, through playing with Empire! Empire!, for a while and he’s always been supportive in what we do. At times it feels like Michigan has a pretty sparse scene, so we help each other out whenever we can. Really when it came down to it, we knew that Keith would take care of us and mentor us through the long hard process of releasing our first LP, which is something that can’t be said for a lot of other labels. Count Your Lucky Stars has put out some amazing releases and we’re so excited to add to that library, but even beyond the music the bands on CYLS form a very tight-knit family. And I guess we’re the little brothers on the label.

3.  Your Ready or Not EP was released in 2010.  Where was the EP recorded?  Are there any benefits from allowing your fans to download this EP for free on media fire?

The Ready or Not demos were recorded in my bedroom. I don’t think you can be in a newer band and get away with not giving your music away for free. Why would you want to listen to a band you’ve never heard of before that makes you pay 5 dollars to hear their basement quality trash demos? That’s just cocky.

4.  You guys also released a cover of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps”.  What made you guys choose this song to cover?  Did you do anything specific to make the song sound different from the original?

I think there’s a huge stigma about playing covers of bands that haven’t broken up yet. But I think it’s kind of a fun thing to do. We play Tegan and Sara covers at our shows sometimes for no good reason. “Maps” is a super popular song, but it’s still has a very genuine feeling to it that I identify with. I recorded that song by myself one night and I accidentally said it was a Brave Bird song. I don’t even remember what tuning my guitar was in when I recorded it.

 5.  You’re currently on tour with label mates Dowsing.  How did this opportunity come about?  Where are you most excited to play?

We’ve been friends with Dowsing pretty much since our bands started. They are our best friends, and we had planned to go on tour with them for a long time. We just finished our tour with them actually, but the show I was definitely most excited for was our Allston show with The World is A Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die. However! Looking back on that tour my favorite show was probably Philadelphia. That show was a huge surprise. The kids out there are amazing. Also Black Bird’s vegan pizza and cheese steak in Philly was the best food we ate on tour. Actually Peace-o-Pie vegan pizza in Boston was pretty insane. The ACTUAL best food we ate were fat sandwiches in Jersey. I’m really hungry.

 6.  Any other tours that you will be a part of in the near future that we should know about? 

We’re going on tour again this summer with the band Pity Sex. It should be happening in August.

 7.  Count Your Lucky Stars Records posted that Brave Bird will be recording this summer at Minx Recording Studio with Mat Halliday (Empire! Empire! , I Was a Lonely Estate, Reptilian, Fireworks) and the songs will be released sometime in the fall.  How did you decide on choosing to record your record at Minx Recording Studio?

Keith recommended him to us. He’s recorded a lot of cool bands, and he’s located very close to us. It was pretty much a no brainer.

 8.  Are there any different approaches you guys are taking to write the songs that will be on this next record?  How would you compare and contrast your writing process now from your Ready or Not EP?

We’re recording most of the songs off Ready or Not for the next record anyhow.  But the newer songs are either really long or really short.  We’re trying to do a wide spectrum of things, like placing poppy songs and sort of “avant-garde” songs next to each other. But generally the new stuff is all pretty much standard Brave Bird material and if you liked ourReady or Not demos you’ll probably like this stuff as well.

 9.  Are there any influences you guys have that you would say contribute to your writing process?  What are you guys currently listening to?

I mean we get compared to Brand New and American Football a lot, which is a huge compliment seeing as those are two of my favorite bands. I listen to a lot of stuff and that contributes to what I think sounds good in my head, but I don’t really ever try to write songs that sound specifically like anything. I’ve been listening to a lot of Bear Vs. Shark, Paint it Black, Crime in Stereo, Into it. Over it., Joanna Newsom… I think the best band on the rise right now is Joyce Manor.

10.  What bands out there would you love to collaborate or tour with? 

I think if I could choose one band to go on tour with, it’d be Spraynard. I really don’t think you can be a bad person if you are the kind of person who would go to a Spraynard show. But more realistically it’d be awesome to go with The World is A Beautiful Place or Empire! Empire! Both those bands are stellar and contain the funniest and nicest people I’ve met in a long time.

 11.  Anything else to add?

We’ve been sitting pretty on the same batch of songs for a while now and haven’t really done too much. But we’re ready to start taking this seriously and put in the time. We want everyone to hear our music. Also… I hope I don’t fail school, but I guess that’d be okay if I could do as much with his band as I wanted.

Download the Ready or Not EP here for FREE!

Brave Bird’s Facebook

Brave Bird’s Bandcamp

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Brave Bird’s Bigcartel

Brave Bird’s Twitter @bravebirdmi

Listen to Brave Bird’s “Scared Enough” off of their Ready or Not EP

Our buddy Adam over at Manual Dexterity really outdid himself this time, look at the previous post and you will see why.  This issues features reviews from Ape Up!, Dowsing/Parker, and Perfect Future.

Read the reviews here: 

http://mandexzine.com/reviewsmay12

Empire! Empire! also did an interview about their West Coast trek, which can be read here:  http://mandexzine.com/transmissions/empireempire. 

Get to reading!

Read a Perfect Future interview at http://www.skreamyourlungsout.com/?p=1895 or just read it here if you don’t want to click:

Perfect Future is a post-punk/emo band from Frostburg, MD and parts of VA. They’ve been a part of Count Your Lucky Stars Records for the past couple of years, releasing one full length and many different split EPs.

I recently got a chance to ask them some questions about their upcoming album “Old Wounds: Warmth in the Winter of 1914-1915” and some other things.
You can stream the record on the Perfect Future bandcamp HERE and pre-order it from Count Your Lucky Stars Records HERE. Enjoy!

Perfect Future facebook
Perfect Future bandcamp 

SYLO: Tell us a little about Perfect Future in general. 

Brendan: We are a band that is separated by 3 hours as two members live in Frostburg, Maryland and the other two live in Annandale, Virginia. Different people have compared us to Yaphet Kotto, Kolya, Van Pelt, Black Sabbath, and a bunch of other twinkly emo bands. I’m definitely not going to bore you with how we became a band because it is very average.

Matt: I’ve known Brendan for a pretty long time, and was in a band with him earlier before PF. In early 2010, he asked me if I’d be interested in doing the summer tour with him and joining the band, and I was more than happy to do so. That’s how I became involved.

Ted: Perfect Future is a band that played in my backyard about three years ago and then about a little under a year ago Brendan asked me to be in it and I said “Yes sir” and then I recorded guitar for the new album, and am stoked to be in such a great band with awesome friends.

SYLO: What do you do when you’re not writing/playing music?

Brendan: I personally am a couple of weeks finishing up a Master’s degree in order to teach English in middle and high schools. So the last year has consisted of student teaching, night classes, running into my students at punk shows, and trying to hide my tattoos from other teachers, principals, and parents.
But realistically, when I am not playing music I am watching anime, playing Magic: the Gathering, playing Dungeons and Dragons, or hanging out with my girlfriend.

Ted: I am finishing up a bachelor’s degree in English at GMU, so I’m only a few steps behind Brendan. I also work at a restaurant, play soccer with my Latino homies, skateboard with my girlfriend, be a comedy duo with Matt, play a ton of jRPGs and platformers, play music with a few other friends in a couple other bands, and get pressured into watching Lost by Brendan and John. Slowly but surely.

John: I am a cat whisperer.

Matt: I can be found slaying internet dragons in Azeroth, or working on tons of other musical projects and ideas that never form into real bands.

SYLO: You’ve all been in a lot of different bands. What are some of those and how does Perfect Future differ from those?

Brendan: I’m not going to start listing off bands because we are all in multiple bands right now and because John is the drummer for every band in his area for like the past 4 years. As far as genres go, between the four of us we have been in other emo, screamo, punk, hardcore, drone, stoner metal, folk, d-beat, beatdown hardcore, pop, and slow-core bands. I think what Perfect Future does differently though is mainly in regards to the concept of the band as a whole. The band was basically started as a way to play a genre that I love while writing lyrics that don’t quite fit with the genre. Basically, I wanted to have a traditional 90′s sounding emo band that had songs about colonialism, urban sprawl, resource conservation, militarism, and a host of other societal and ethical problems (Hence the name Perfect Future). However, I wasn’t quite sure how to pull off the project early on, which is why some of those early songs are radically different from one another both musically and lyrically. Since then, we have kind of found our niche as a band and our songs are more focused.

John: I’m currently in several bands in my area: Studying, Kilgore Trout, New Years, Green and Solomon Solomon. Perfect Fu’ture is special to me because it is the only band I have been on tour with, and also it’s the only band that I’m that has been signed to a label. Perfect Future’s genre is unique and unlike any other project I’ve been involved with.

SYLO: Perfect Future recently did two rad splits, one with List and the other with Wits End! How did those come about? How did you enjoy the split album process?

Brendan: Oddly enough, both of these splits began with members of some of my favorite bands emailing me to ask if PF wanted to do a split with them. Our split with Reaching Away grew about a little more organically because I was a penpal with Roger since back when The Pine was together; when he started his new band it just sort of happened that we planned a tour and a 7″ split together. I have liked doing all of these splits because it was a way to write songs that are supposed to stand alone. So rather than think about an overall sound aesthetic and song progression within an album, I was able to write a song. I kind of want to do more split records, but at the same time, I’m also interested in the ep format since PF hasn’t one yet.

SYLO: You’re releasing a new album with Count Your Lucky Stars, Adagio 830, & Sea of Tranquility Records soon. I know it’s a concept album. Can you tell us a little about the story and what inspired it?

Brendan: I’ve been really into concept records since high school. I was in a few bands (where I wasn’t the songwriter) that would try to write a concept record, but would write two or three songs and then would drop the whole idea. So after the PF s/t CD, I knew I wanted to try to write one. I also knew that I wanted each song to have a stand alone concept as well. I’m not sure if I remember exactly when or how I became so fixated on the World War 1 Christmas truce, but at some point I became somewhat obsessed and did some pretty extensive research on it: reading whole books on the topic, looking up articles from that time, watching documentaries and Joyeux Noel. Anyways, it seemed like that would be the ideal setting to write.

Basically, the overall plot is about a narrator that writes a letter to a war-time widow at some point (possibly decades later) and reveals that he is the soldier that killed her husband. The narrator kind of feels the need to justify everything before he actually gets to the story, so he tells her about his life growing up in a society that glorifies war and about going to boot camp where he was taught how to not feel sympathy when killing one of the “enemy.” Eventually, the impromptu truce occurs and the narrator meets the widowers husband as they were the first ones to bury the dead soldiers before the truce. The two swap addresses at some point. Later, the commands come down that anyone not fighting will face treason charges, and the narrator is forced to kill the widows husband. This story is made up of a bunch of other stories interwoven to make a more compelling narrative, but it is more grounded in fact than I think a lot of people will realize.

SYLO: How does that compare to the concept of your self-titled record?

The self-titled record is conceptual in its approach to songs that all strive to convey the idea that politically, socially, and emotionally things can and must get better. However, I never really intended for it to have a real narrative. Though I do sometimes think of that record as some sort of personal credo that explains all the problems that leads me toward the inevitable conclusion that things must change, but the solutions are left up to the listener. I think the only two songs that offer a definitive answer to cope with world are Make Fun and If We Dance, which both come to the conclusion that the collective “we” must not try to separate our emotions from our actions and that we need to find joy in even terrible situations to avoid complacency.

SYLO: The new record has a lot of guest vocals and guest instrumentation! Can you give us some examples? Why did you choose to record the album this way?

Warren Franklin, Chris from Pulling Teeth, Kjetil and Tules from Wits End, Keith from Empire! Empire!. These whole bands are on the record in at least group vocals form: Lizards Have Personalities, Two Knights, The Ground is Lava, and The Island of Misfit Toys. Brendan Ekstrom from Circa Survive was initially supposed to record a guitar track, but after we sent him the track with both Ted and my guitar parts, he said that he liked it so much that everything he tried to add just distracted from other elements he liked.

I think the main reason that we went this route was because the concept felt like it needed more bells and whistles than a stripped down four piece band could use. Another factor is that Matt and I have shows at our house, so it was an obvious choice to make bands do group vocals. Although, maybe the subconscious reason that I pushed for all the guest musicians is because Axe To Fall is my favorite Converge record because of all the guest musicians.

SYLO: What has Live Together…Die Alone Records been up too lately?

LTDA was a project I started to put out some records that I made that did not have great USA distribution. It’s been on hold while I got my master’s degree, which has left me in quite a lot of debt. Depending on whether I get a steady job or something part-time will determine if LTDA picks up momentum or continues to put out records infrequently. Either way, I have been toying with the notion of putting out some super limited lathe cut 7″ splits for solo songs. Super limited in that I might make 10-15. The problem with that would be that each 7″ would cost more than most people are comfortable paying for 2 or 3 songs (maybe $9 a 7″ plus shipping), but some people might dig it.

SYLO: Any tours soon?

We are going to be touring New England and the Midwest with Empire! Empire! in July. We are still booking some shows, but it looks like the rough outline is this:

13 – Washington DC @ Wasted Dream – 431 Kenyan Street NW – w/ Carved Our Names In Snow and more tba
14 – Philly, PA*
15 – Robbinsville, NJ @ Jake’s House – 7 Donna Street
16 – Willimantic, CT @ The Handsome Woman – 271 Ash Street – 6PM – $5 – Vegan Potluck – w/ tba
17 – Providence, RI @ tba
18 – Boston, MA*
19 – Manchester, NH*
20 – Bangor, Maine *
21 – Burlington, VT @ tba
22 – Albany, NY *
23 – Wilkes-Barre, PA*
24 – Pittsburgh, PA *
25 – Akron, OH *
26 – Ann Arbor, MI*
27 – Huntington, WV – house show – w/ tba
28 – Frostburg, MD @ tba

It’s usually bad news to plan too far ahead, but in the winter I want to try to go to Texas again. Next year I really want to try to do a tour in the UK or Europe, but a lot of that will depend on the financial state that we are all in.

SYLO: Last words or other things you want to add?

Matt: A big “Thank you ” to you and the people running the site!

I just did a totally swell interview with the gents at Rockfreaks.net about our label and our band Empire! Empire!, and you can read it here: http://www.rockfreaks.net/interviews/264.

Topics include babes, swords, and pizza.