***KUTX Artist of the Month is powered by PNC Bank***
The band just released their new album, Strawberry Seed
By Jeff McCord
Since 2012, Austin’s Big Bill has been mining the comic, proto-punkish vein of art rock, imbuing their music with the same deadpan stoicism found in bands like Devo.
I ask Eric Braden, who’s fronted the band since the beginning, how or if he feels like a different person after all this time.
He laughs. “It feels like we just started the other day. But, yeah, in some ways, very different, you know, grown up. Seeing things a little different. Staying creative keeps us tapped into that feeling of origin.”
It’s not as if the band has completely left their chaotic and bizarre origins behind. Their new album, Strawberry Seed, has its moments of deja vu. But the band itself is different, most notably in the absence of Eric’s brother and co-founder, Cody.
“I’m the only one left from the original lineup,” Eric admits. “[The lineup has] changed many times over the years.”
“My brother and I both grew up in Houston, but I had gone to New York for a year, and he was in school in Houston and had just graduated. I had started a band when I was in college in Lubbock, Texas, having no musical experience, just feeling the urge to be a front person in a band. So I had a little bit of experience, but my brother was the musician. He knew how to play guitar. When we joined up, we started writing a lot of songs that we wanted to hear, that we enjoyed.”
“From the very beginning, that was home base for me, looking over and [seeing] my brother right there; we can handle anything together. During the pandemic, my brother and his partner were living on a farm south of Austin. For their rent, they were picking flowers for this flower farm. So when the pandemic hit, they were already very isolated. My brother was like, ‘I don’t want to ever be around people if this virus keeps spreading.’ Towards the end of the pandemic, they moved to Florida. Now they’re in Roswell, New Mexico. He’s out there still being creative, doing his stuff, but I think he had enough of the rat race of being in a band, the pressures and the business side of it, trying to manage all that. He always hated anything besides just being creative. It’s a lot of work, a lot of waiting around at bars for hours before a show. He was just kind of done with all that.”
So post-pandemic, Eric had to re-think everything.
“It was surreal the first time going on stage without him.”
There was some fear, but also, genuine excitement.
“[My brother and I] were the primary songwriters in the band,” says Eric. “His output was at least 50% of our songs. So the excitement was, what do we sound like now, with me writing the demos? He’s a much more accomplished musician. When I approach songs, it’s more from an outsider artist perspective. I was pretty excited about taking on that load.”
“We have new members, Jeff Olsen [ex-White Denim] on drums. In a way it’s a whole new lineup. Everything shifted. Alex Riggleman, our old bassist, moved over to guitar to replace my brother, because Alex is a guitarist at heart. Our old drummer, Alan Lauer, moved over to bass. We levelled up in a lot of ways, and [with] everybody approaching the same songs from different angles, it really feels like a fresh start. A new era.”
Strawberry Seed is just Big Bill’s third full-length album in their dozen years as a band, and it brims with newfound energy and ambition. A few songs are a direct lineage to their shambolic past, while on others, tracks like “Clean Feeling”, you can feel the band flexing their creative muscles.
The band is all looking forward to what comes next, none of them more so than Eric.
“I actually just quit my job,” he confesses. “I was working as a high school science teacher. I would actually be starting back work again today, so it’s sinking in. For the first time, I’m diving fully into this as far as trying to make art every day, being part of this band every day, and touring as much as we can. It feels like a long time coming, but we’re all eager to do everything we can, to get out there and start living and breathing music.”
Artist: Big Bill
Date June 4, 2024
Set List:
“Ex Con” (Smog cover)
“Poverty of Wires”
“Emotions”
Album: Strawberry Seed (Spaceflight Records June 14, 2024)
Musicians:
Eric Braden – vocals; Alan Lauer – bass; Alex Riegelman – guitar; Jeff Olson – drums; Keith Galloway – keys
Credits:
Producer: Deidre Gott; Audio Engineer: Jake Perlman; Rene Chavez; Ezra Gomez; Simón Marulanda-Mesa; Audio Mix: Jake Perlman; Cameras: Deborah Cannon, Renee Dominguez, Ryan Olszewki; Edit: Renee Dominguez
