Page 12 - the NOISE June 2014

BROTHERS GOW HEARS THE SOUND OF FLIGHT
INTERvIEW BY MIKE WILLIAMS
The Brothers Gow will be performing at the Orpheum Theater on June 19 to benefit the Sound of Flight mural that adorns the side of the historic venue. These reggae jammers have been steadily building a nationwide following from their home base in San Diego, but their hearts
never strayed far from Flagstaff where they first formed the band. Their attitude is the kind of dead-on mix of humor and dedication that takes a band to the top and is complimented beau- tifully by jams as crunchy as a bowl of granola. This writer took the call to action & spoke to the band, keyboardist & frontman Alex G. Bastine, guitarist Ethan Wade, trumpeter Kyle Merrill, drummer Nathan Walsh-Holmes, and bassist Carson Church ...
You guys have Flagstaff roots! What are they and is there any apprehension about playing home state shows? Stalker ex-girlfriends, unpaid parking tickets, etcetera?
Ha! Carson was the first member to move there for hockey. He was a goalie at NAU and about a year later the rest of us moved up there. A lot of us went to NAU and that was where we started the band. But, yeah, a lot of ex-girlfriends and unpaid parking tickets, yes, but it doesn’t stop us, ha! We always love coming up to Flagstaff.
The Brothers Gow Foundation for Musical Education, in addition to being a pretty sweet rhyme, helped put musical instruments into all of the classrooms at Ocean Beach elementary. As musical programs have been cut nationwide, more and more artists like yourselves are stepping up to the plate to keep music in schools. What prompted the Brothers Gow’s involvement?
We were here in Ocean Beach and wanted to ingrain ourselves into the community. For us, there’s no better cause than this, we’ve all been involved in the music in school to some capac- ity and that’s what shed light onto what we do for a living now. It was one of those things that came from asking ourselves how can we help out with community, what is in line with our interests, and it seemed like donating instruments was a noble cause. Donating guitars to class- rooms here in OB where they’re cutting more and more programs on a daily basis, it was just like, well, they can’t stop us from just giving them to the students. And, not only the musical aspect, but it also helps you develop different parts of the brain — like with math. It builds confidence, too. It helps in so many more ways than just a kid learning music.
How did you come up with name? I know Gow is of Scottish roots ...
It’s one of our middle names, actually a mother’s maiden name. The story is kind of random ... Kyle, our singer and guitar player, was under 21 at the time and we were trying to go see Ziggy Marley at the Pine Mountain Amphitheater ... Alex had just gotten a new picture taken with long hair at the time but had shaved his head since, but they looked similar enough. While in line, the bouncer was giving us a little bit of guff, and we just told him that we were the brothers Gow, it’s fine, and for whatever reason, it worked and they let him in. The name Gow is really what stands out on the ID, so we were both Alex Gow for the day. We called each other that for a little bit and when it came time to pick a band name, we were just like, we’ll just go with Brothers Gow for now and come up with something later, but it just kind of stuck. We like it. It’s unique and when you search it, it’s the only thing that pops up, so that’s a plus, ha!
What prompted the move to California?
The weather, ha! We loved Flagstaff, we loved living there, but we wanted to go and try to make it in a bigger music community in a bigger city, just to see where we could go. We played a show in Ocean Beach and it was packed. It felt a lot like Flagstaff, but just by a beach. When we first started in Flagstaff, we had so many people coming out to our shows and showing us so much support from show one and that first show in San Diego had that same type of feeling. We love it here and it’s still close to home in Flag and Tucson.
We recently caught your Black Sabbath cover ... What you brought to the song was fantastic and unique. I loved the addition of the jam and reggae elements and how much you upped Sabbath’s
pre-existing psychedelic influence. Were you nervous about the crowd response when playing this, as this is definitely a departure from your sound?
Oh yeah, it’s nerve wracking when you throw a real hard rocker at some of these jammier audience members, but the way that we do eases them in. They’re willing to take that journey with us because they know that we can go anywhere with our show. As far as the covers go, we love doing them as much as we love putting our own spins on them. We did a reggae ver- sion of Adele’s “Set Fire To The Rain” and do some mash-ups where we’ll take three songs and just put them together into one. One was three songs from 1975 ... “Fame” by David Bowie, “I Believe In Miracles,” and that “Make A Little Love” song. We just kind of threw all three of them together into one song and made it our own.
Will there be any international touring in the future? And have your problems with the border patrol continued?
Ha! Ha! We avoid them at all costs now. We will drive out of the way just so we don’t have to go through border patrol. There’s no immediate plans, but our booking agency does work in Canada. We’ve done Bellingham, Washington, and White Fish, Montana, both of which are so close to the border we might as well be there. We’d just love to eventually get out, especially back to England. Kyle was actually born there and it’d be great to go back and play where the Beatles played, like the Cavern and go to Abbey Road studios. Hopefully in the near future we can make that happen.
What inspired the food truck idea?
When we moved to the Bay Area with high hopes of making it, we were thinking outside of the box and one of our dad’s expressed interest in a food cart. That escalated pretty quickly into buying a food truck and us driving it. It was very cool, we had all the guys working it and it was nice to have a huge mobile billboard where we were living. But, we figured out pretty quickly how hard it is to run a successful mobile food truck, especially when you’re playing in a touring band, so when we moved down to San Diego, we tried to see what we could do to get it down, but with travel costs, permits, and our extreme debt, we had to sell the entity as it was. But, to this day, the Gow Chow is still up and running in the Bay Area. We sold it to a guy who owns a restaurant and it’s still promoting our band, so we couldn’t ask for much right now.
Onto trivia! Best eats on tour?
Anything cooked by our drummer and resident chef Nathan Walsh-Haines. Anytime we go to a kitchen or someone’s house, we will hit a grocery store and whip up an awesome meal. Anything from the Eastern regions, like rice stir-fry dishes to down-south burrito dishes. He loves to feed our hosts so they invite us back and we don’t have to pay for hotel rooms. Ha, ha! And now that Nathan is not only our chef, but also our drummer, we’ve wound up as grown men with no idea how to feed ourselves. Especially right when we get off tour, we wake up and go, “Where’s Nate preparing us a stunning rustic burrito? What am I to do?”
Best town for BBQ?
(the entire band chimes in) Austin, Texas!
Favorite brewery?
Keeping it local, the Oak Creek Brewery. We used to play there all the time when were first starting out. Playing their brewing room, which is also the show space, the sound reflecting off the tanks made for a really loud show. Oak Creek Nut Brown is a classic.
Awesome, thanks so much, guys!
| Mike Williams is nonplused by glossy pr. mike@thenoise.us INTERVIEW
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