Q&A: The Brook & The Bluff
Interview By Sophie Gragg | Nov. 15th 2019
THEY'VE GOT SOUL AND HARMONIES THAT PULL YOU IN - The Brook & The Bluff know just how to capture their listener. The Birmingham-born, Nashville-based band recently released their debut full length album, First Place, with each track filled with heartfelt sounds. Though starting off as a duo of Alec Bolton & Joseph Settine, The Brook & The Bluff developed a fuller sound thanks to the addition of John Canada & Fred Lankford. The band is wrapping up their tour across the US, ending in Birmingham November 27th. Read more about the narrative behind the album, their recent music videos and more below.
LUNA: For starters, how is tour? How is the road treating you?
SETTINE: Really well! We've had some super long drives to get out here, but they're always beautiful once you hit the Rockies. It's easier to handle a 12 hour drive when every time you look out the window you have a jaw-dropping landscape
LUNA: You just released your debut full-length album, First Place, how have you seen your sound evolve since you first started making music?
SETTINE: Absolutely, our sound has come a really long way since our first songs came out - the most obvious being that our first release was just 3 acoustic songs. So, taking the sound to full band evolved us and then on this album really spending time in the studio making sure we had the exact sounds we wanted to record took us even further. It feels like we really grew-up as far as our communication in the studio, and I think it results in a way more evolved sound that is our own. Before the album, we had really been just searching for our own sound.
LUNA: Did you find yourself having a common theme or narrative when writing First Place?
SETTINE: First Place is basically a narrative of the past 3 years of my life, starting when I took a trip to Europe to visit my girlfriend and then going through a couple of years of being on again off again. I tried to look back and reflect on myself, who I was that caused some failures in our relationship, things that I should have expressed in them. Writing is definitely my way of processing the world around me, and more importantly the things that happen to me. First Place is all of that wrapped into 10 songs. Searching, longing, fighting to get back to someone, believing in who you love no matter what happens. It's all of that.
LUNA: What song means the most to you from this album?
SETTINE: It is incredibly hard to pick, but if I had to I would say Father McKenzie probably means the most to me. It was one of those songs that when I wrote it, didn't feel like it was coming from me like it was a transmission from somewhere else. Then as I kept working on it and finished the song I realized it did have a lot of my story wrapped into it, and it ended up becoming the most personal of all of them. It's also definitely the oldest song on the album, so I think it's important because more than any other, it holds our entire journey within the song.
LUNA: You’ve already put out three videos for this album, which were all really well done. Why is bringing in the visual side important to you?
SETTINE: The videos were important to us because we all feel like music has this visual component that needs to be searched out and represented. A lot of our favorite songwriters are ones who can put vivid images in your head while you listen to a song, and that was always one of our goals in the process of creating the album. So when it was time to start putting out the singles, we wanted to have some element to go hand in hand with the songs.
LUNA: What do you want people to know about you as artists and people?
SETTINE: I think the most important thing for us as people is that we really cannot take ourselves too seriously. Most of the time that we spend together is jokes, cutting up and laughing, trying to keep each other entertained by saying or doing something that usually gets weirder and weirder depending on how many days straight we've been together. As artists, I would say that the songs would show you what we want you to know for that. We were so meticulous about every note, and I think it shows.
LUNA: As the year comes to a close and we enter 2020, what do you want the coming months to bring you?
SETTINE: I'm just hoping that people keep listening to the album, that we played some really good shows, and that we all stay healthy. I think if those three things can happen then whatever comes down the line will be exciting. We are all living our dream right now, anything else on top of making and playing music together for a living is a bonus.
