“I blew an eardrum at one of our first practices. And I don’t mean to glamorize that,” says Sam Clapp, guitarist and founding member of The Brainstems. From its inception in late 2011, the band has honed a singular style with the kind of tunnel vision that leads to one destination: rocking.
“At first, it was all about trying to have a good time at a party. We never really planned for playing shows outside of that,” says Sean Cotton who, along with Clapp and bassist Andrew Warshauer, started the band while attending Washington University. The Brainstems’ earliest shows centered around Xanadu, a spot the three off-handedly describe as a “party house” for KWUR, the college’s radio station.
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“I lived [at Xanadu] for two years. It had been in the radio station’s possession in a way for a while. It just became the place where [KWUR] had parties and we decided to make a band to play at the beginning of the year party that the station always had, and that’s how it started,” says Cotton.
In roughly five years, The Brainstems produced four releases, ranging from the first collection of original songs on a homemade CD-R, to the latest album, pressed on 12” vinyl this past November. The self-ascribed party band started with a set of cover songs sourced from the Velvet Underground, Dick Dale, Black Flag and Ty Segall—a list that doubles as the genetic makeup for The Brainstems’ distinct sound.
To this day, Clapp, Cotton and Warshauer all play musical chairs between bass, guitar and vocals. From the onset, songs were written in solitude by each member and brought to practice for further development. This allowed the fledgling players to explore personal styles before fully fleshing out each song in a group setting.
“It was like different flavors of Cheetos or chips. Same over-arching idea, but different powder sprayed on for each person,” Clapp adds. Despite sharing songwriting duties, all three count original drummer and fourth founding member Kenny Hofmeister as the glue that unified the group’s direction.
“At the beginning it was more subtle, but Kenny kind of decided what the overall aesthetic was. Later on he had more specific edits and kind of guided the process in a different way,” says Clapp.
All four original members not only served on the executive council at KWUR, but they all hosted radio shows, each more different than the last. Rock and roll happened to be more of a middle ground, especially for Clapp who considered leaving the band on more than one occasion:
“For a while, I was almost quitting the band every three months on ideological grounds. I’d always gotten along with everybody, but didn’t want to play three-chord rock, so I thought. We would always have a practice immediately after I broke up with the band, and I would suddenly have the most fun of all time,” says Clapp, speaking on his love and hate affair with the genre.
The first demo, Deadbeat Doggerel And Basement Scum, was tracked after-hours inside the student-run station, using what gear KWUR had for its live studio sessions. When the band ventured outside its college trappings with a string of shows in the summer of 2012, it had roughly a year of practice and a full release under its belt.
The Brainstems quickly caught the attention of Gabe Karabell, a musician and punk promoter based in south city. He approached the band about producing a tape through his own label, Don’t Touch My Records, and this prompted the group to wrap up its next set of songs. Released in November 2012, Stryofoam expands on the band’s ’60s retro vibe with darker psych-rock leanings—an approach that would be taken even further with the next cassette.
Before a brief split in 2013, the band reformed and worked with engineer Jason Hutto to help bottle the band’s lightning—a far cry from self-recording with gear sourced from the radio station at WashU. Cold Sweatin’ marked a bold return from hiatus in 2014 and gave the four enough momentum to forge on with full force.
When a stranger approaches your band with a no-frills offer to bankroll a vinyl record, there’s usually a catch—or lapse in reality. But in early 2015, The Brainstems received such an offer from the owner of Bad Diet, a new record label with worldwide distribution through Redeye.
“It seemed like one of those things, like ‘this probably isn’t real.’ Sight unseen, this guy was like ‘Can you guys make a record?’ He listened to our previous recordings, which never happens,” Warshauer adds. The Brainstems were referred by the Nervous Ticks, a rock band based out of Richmond, Virginia who previously toured through St. Louis.
The offer came at an awkward time. Between constant shows and the band members’ other projects, The Brainstems had little time to finish many half-written songs. Drummer Kenny Hofmeister was set to leave the band in pursuit of his master’s degree, but his bandmates refused to record without him.
“Obviously, making us do stuff is the best way of getting songs written and recorded,” Cotton jokes, but the band imposed upon itself an arduous task: create a full-length record in one week’s time. The four holed themselves inside a shared apartment, practicing, tracking and mixing as a group.
On a steady diet of pasta and coffee, the four had finished a full set of songs—with the exception of vocals. The band converged for several tense sessions of lyric writing and, by the end of the week, met its own harsh deadline.
“We recorded and mixed everything in about 8 days and sent it to him. I can only imagine what his experience was like on the other end where he got sporadic conversations from us about what was going on. He had asked us to make a record, and had never seen us or met us and then we sent him this thing. I remember thinking, ‘is he even going to like this? What if he hates it?’” Warshauser says.
Bad Diet accepted the record, and helped The Brainstems roll out No Place Else, a record lauded on several tastemaker blogs, namely Stereogum and Tiny Mix Tapes. Brooklyn-based venue Shea Stadium even reached out to host a show—one The Brainstems plan to perform in the near future. Hofmeister has since left for California, but Gabe Karabell has joined on drums, making sure the band never skips a beat.
“The themes with The Brainstems are bumbling good luck and the generosity of friends. We’ve done things that are cool, and I think so many of them are because of other people pitching in and making these big projects happen,” Clapp says.
The Brainstems just arrived safe and sound from a regional tour through the southern United States. Ahead of the band’s homecoming show tonight at The Luminary, we spoke to each individual brain stem about the recent tour and much more:
Can you talk about your favorite spots from your recent trip?
Sam Clapp: The best part of touring is rolling up to a stranger’s house, playing a show in their basement, somehow getting paid, and then sleeping on the stranger’s floor. Except that by the time you sleep on their floor they’ve become a friend. We had a couple exemplary house shows (with incredibly kind hosts) on this trip. In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, we played what might have been the best show of the tour at the Porn Hall, a little ranch house where the bands Big Bleach and Baghead are based. We had to play a really short set so that the cops wouldn’t come, but we were totally in the zone with everybody there. Plus, they made us soup. In Lexington, Kentucky, we played at Home-Tron, where the band NerdRage lives. It was a rainy Tuesday night, but people showed up and turned what could have been a bummer show into something really memorable.
Sean Cotton: There were so many good spots, it’s hard to choose. The Moog headquarters in Asheville was a highlight. Watched them make all these fancy gizmos by hand. I see now why they’re so expensive. Then there was the Porn Hall in Hattiesburg, MS. “The only punk house in the state of Mississippi,” as they claim. Great bands, nice people, and they made us stew!
Andrew Warshauer: Asheville was awesome. We got to tour the Moog factory, eat delicious BBQ, and played a great show at Static Age Records (which had great deals).
In one week’s time, The Brainstems traveled through six states and played with more than fifteen bands. Did any one band in particular blow you away?
Clapp: I liked a lot of the bands we played with, but The Hecks (from Chicago) got their talons in me deepest. They play delicate, dissonant post-punk, a lot like the band Women. They had two guitars, drums, no bass and these entrancing guitar arpeggios. It hurt in a trebly, puckering, pleasurable way. (I talked to the singer, Andrew, after the show. He was like “it’s like wasabi.”)
Cotton: The Hecks from Chicago were great; we played with them in Lexington. They had a weird art punk vibe going on.
Warshauer: The Hecks from Chicago were great. They seemed influenced by the band Women or the band soon to be formally known as Viet Cong.
Bands on the road tend to build up inside jokes on long drives—are the Brainstems an exception or can you give us a peak into the band’s collective brain?
Cotton: Definitely not an exception. Nihilist Arby’s Twitter. The Big Bopper was a long running joke. Just listening to his music. So much good material to laugh at while stuck in a van. There was one about how all recorded sound was made by a Moog synthesizer. Even some illicit material that I’d rather not say.
Warshauer: Plenty. We’d be blasting the Big Bopper. But, and this isn’t a joke, the best thing was just getting to see everyone really bonding. We were able to talk about our real emotions and I felt so lucky to get to know these guys on a deeper level.
On February 25, you released a brand-new music video for “Time to Ride,” a track off of the new record, No Place Else. The video obviously speaks for itself, but can you divulge a bit on the imagery in the video and how it connects to the song?
Clapp: We mostly wanted to work with our friend Hayden Molinarolo, who is a talented photographer and video artist. In planning it out, we mostly talked about the feelings that went into that song: it’s a goofy-heroic track about boredom and anxiety and wanting to bust loose. So we decided we would try to evoke a feeling of anxiety or entrapment with our grotesque faces and a sort of implied narrative about a menacing owl. But mostly Hayden did the hard work. We gave him a rough idea of the spirit we were going for and he put the whole thing together, including all the bizarre digital body manipulations that make it so nauseating.
Cotton: Not sure what to say. We let Hayden go wild and work his magic. The result was this amazing video. In my mind, the song explores the feeling of being torn between stasis and change, convulsing and stretching, which the video articulates in distorted profiles. The owl is… I don’t know… time, knowledge, ego? Take your pick.
Warshauer: I don’t know if it did.
The upcoming LAB at Luminary features The Brainstems alongside Soda Boys and Demon Lover. Promotional material for the show alludes to a fourth band—an alternate version of The Brainstems performing a set of cover songs. Can you talk more about the idea behind the cover set and how it connects to the theme of the evening?
Clapp: The Brainstems started as a party band that played songs mostly from the ‘50s and ‘60s—surf rock, Velvet Underground covers, proto-punk, that kind of stuff—so it feels like a part of the band’s essence to play some covers from time to time. A lot of our influences are pretty squarely in rock and roll territory, so our event at The Luminary is a good chance to meditate on the proud lineage of drunk people playing dumb songs.
Cotton: Most people who are our age conceptualize bands a bit differently than folks in the early ’60s. Groups largely performed popular covers on stage, maybe adding their own unique twists and gauging the crowd’s energy for a set list; much in the same way some DJs today perform. The contemporary idea of a rock band, however, largely expects the group to present their own original material as a sign of authenticity. Both are valid. Our aim though is to recreate a Star Club-like rock and roll dance party; making our cover set an homage of sorts. Also there will be DJs.
Warshauer: The general theme is the “Star Club” which was a rock club in Germany where the Beatles played a residency. Just thinking back to how much time in an evening bands used to play, and how they’d have to learn covers to play two or more sets a night. So we figured, why not do something like that? It sounds like good practice and a lot of fun.
If you were forced to pick one song from The Brainstems’ history as a band to name as your favorite, which would song would you pick and why? And don’t punk out with the “songs are like children, I can’t pick a favorite” excuse, pick one.
Clapp: “4244” from the new record is one of my favorites in the ‘Stems catalog. It was written 100 percent collaboratively, which is great, because it allows everyone the pride of authorship while sparing everyone the self-critical shame that inevitably bubbles up when you’ve written something alone. It’s got a weird structure that really jerks you around emotionally, the mixing is good and everyone’s riffing their hardest. Plus, it’s a jam!
Cotton: That’s such a hard question. For me, I think it’d be “Gimme Yr Love” from our demo CD. It was the first song I wrote for The Brainstems so it’s mostly sentimentality. But songs are like children, the first one is the one you care about most.
Warshauer: I think I would have to say “4244.” I think it’s maybe the best-sounding recording we’ve made. I’m proud of the work we did on it. I like that it was a group effort to make that song. We even snuck in a key change to a rock song that doesn’t feel corny. I had this little riff that is just a run of a scale that you hear at the end of the song for 10 seconds. But we jammed it out into this really great song. Kenny’s drums are on point. Sean kills the bass. And I think that locked guitar riff Sam and I do is supreme. Not to mention triple vocals on verses written by each of us.
LAB featuring The Brainstems happens at The Luminary, 2701 Cherokee, March 4. Doors open at 8 p.m., and tickets are $5. For more information, go to theluminaryarts.com or visit the Facebook event page.
