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Brothers playing at Sky City in Augusta. Photo by Payton Fisher
garden city beat
Matthew Porter
Band with Augusta ties releases new record
C
oming off a great show with Ruby the Rabbitfoot and White Violet at Sky City, bassist Noel Brown tells us a little bit about the Athens by way of Augusta band, Brothers. How long has Brothers been around as a band? Brothers has been around in some form for about four years. Who else is in the band and what do they do? Ryan Gray Moore sings and plays guitar and synth. He’s also the primary songwriter and lyricist. Stephen Pfannkuche also plays guitar and Michael Gonzalez play drums and percussion. I play bass. Some of you are from Augusta, you got together as a band in Athens, and some of you live in Atlanta now – how does that work? Michael, Ryan and I all grew up in Augusta. Those guys played in a band called Hello Lefty but I didn’t really get
to know them until we were all living in Athens. It’s funny because all three of us actually worked at Jay’s Music in Augusta, just not at the same time. Now Michael and I live in Atlanta and Ryan and Stephen live in Athens. It can be a bit tricky but we have a practice space in Athens that we use about once a week. I have family in Athens so I’m there pretty regularly anyway. You’ve recently released some new music. How does it fit in with the other things you’ve put out, and where can people get it? I think the songs are a bit more raw and immediate than the ones on our last record, Street Names. Those songs had been kicking around forever as demos from Ryan and then various incarnations and different recordings. What finally came out was ultimately the product of several years of work. This new EP, Beautiful, was written as
a band in a few months and then recorded mainly live with Jesse Mangum at The Glow in Athens. The band’s gotten some recent exposure from Paste magazine. Was it a surprise to the band? How did that happen? It was a really nice write up! They featured the new EP in a section about bands they found on Bandcamp and Soundcloud. As far as I know they just found us on their own. Do you have any shows in next couple months? We (played) at WonderRoot in Atlanta on Aug. 29. It’s this rad community arts center with a dark room, recording studio and tons of rotating art installations. They actually just got a new building that’s something like 10 times the size of where they are now. It’ll be a while before they move in but I’m pretty excited to see what they do with it.
What does “success” look like for the band? We’d really like to tour but all of us have day jobs, so it can be a little tough. For me, success would mean making records, touring in a way that doesn’t completely derail the rest of our lives and just making music together. To hear the newest record from brothers, Beautiful, visit brothersathens.bandcamp.com/ Matthew Porter is a music fanatic, record collector, deejay, and occasional soundman, living in Augusta.
Verge * September 2014 7