An Interview with B-Rob of Awesome New Republic

I love finding out about new music, I don’t limit my scope by record label or genre because it’s best to approach new music with an open mind.

My latest discovery is Miami’s very own Awesome New Republic; although they have been part of the local scene for several years I had never heard them. This duo made up of Michael John Hancock (MJ) and Brian Robertson (B-Rob) pump R&B inspired jams laced with 80’s new wave influence. These guys have fun making music and it’s clear that they intend for their listeners to dance their asses off, just listen to their new album Rational Geographic.

I had a great conversation with B-Rob regarding the new album, tour plans, and everything in between.

Steve: This new cd is really catchy, I’ve been listening to it non stop since I got it. What are the contributions from the members for this disc and your music in general?

B-Rob: MJ handles lead vocals and most of the drum programming as well as song form. I’m the guy who fills in the gaps and contributes most of the music as far as production. We’re both integrally involved in the song writing process. For this album I’ve slipped into more of a producer role, which is cool. I would say that 97% of what you hear is us playing the music and the remainder comes from a rotating cast of characters that may add a violin or harp here and there.

S: How did you and MJ meet and get started with this project?

B: We met in 2002 through a mutual guitar playing friend and together we formed a jam band called the Empirical Mile.

We played around at places like Tobacco Road for a while, then MJ, me, and our drummer had a different vision for the music. The three of us were divided with some members that liked a looser jam style ala Fish or Grateful Dead, versus us who liked a tighter more concise structure.

We broke away from the band and formed Awesome New Republic with a couple of other friends. We gigged around a lot as ANR and as things progressed we realized we were in a similar dilemma where some of the guys were finishing school and moving away.

Again it was left just MJ and I, so at this point we were like let’s try to make this work as a duo, because we were tired of the band line up changing. MJ took up the drums and I started playing synth bass lines with my left hand and distorted power chords with my right. It was more of a stripped down punk rock inspired sound, we played a minute and a half songs.

It was a burst of energy similar to a band called Lightning Bolt, have you heard them?

S: No I don’t know about Lightning Bolt, it sounds cool though. I was going to say that what you’re describing and some of the tracks on the new album remind me of the Faint. Especially the song Birthday, that song has great energy.

B: Oh really, that’s cool. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the controversy surrounding that song.

S: Yeah I did see something in the blogosphere about this actress Leighton Meester, did you guys write that song for her or something?

B: Well no, what happened was I was living in New York and MJ was living somewhere else and I began working with this guy Nick Scapa who at the time was making beats and trying to sell pop songs to artists. We had some success with that and sold some tracks to this girl Vanessa Hutchins who’s on Disney’s record label Hollywood Records. She did a big part of the High School Musical which is popular with the pre-teen crowd.

Scapa and his partner J. Read Fosse had been growing this business called Honor Roll Music which is basically a music house selling tracks and background music to TV shows commercials and what have you. Honor Roll also became a record label and began signing original artists in Miami. MJ moved back to Miami and signed with Honor Roll and he got me to move back down to pursue ANR again.

Actually before I moved down Birthday was a song that Scapa started with a simple beat and a bass line throughout and MJ finished it off with lyrics and the melody. Scapa had been trying to sell it off with no luck so it sat on the shelf for a while.

Then MJ and I played it live a couple of times and made it an ANR song. We decided to re-record it, so I basically produced the version you hear on the album.

The thing with Leighton Meester, a couple of years ago she had recorded vocals on the track with her styling; she sent us an MP3 copy and we said yeah this is cool. But I guess her manager wasn’t feeling it or something wasn’t right so it was shelved again.

So Nick Scapa is basically the PR guy for Honor Roll Music and he goes around shopping these songs to different record label executives and whatnot. The way it was leaked is a mystery to us honestly, but there were copies of this song around and someone leaked it and Perez Hilton picked it up and it spread like wild fire.

S: Wow, that’s interesting. What are the legal ramifications if any, and are you guys looking for compensation?

B: Well actually as it turned out it was kind of a controversy and at the beginning we were all trying to figure out who leaked it and we were prepared to take it down from all the blogs. The amount of press it generated was mind-blowing, this was last month when she was on the cover of Rolling Stone and there was all this buzz about her blossoming music career and people started talking about it as her lead single. Which I don’t even think its finished.

S: So did you guys work on it with her then?

B: No, really we just sent her an instrumental version of the track and she over dubbed some vocals and sent it back. Everything else just happened by osmosis. There’s been some talk about collaborating with her on future projects, maybe song writing or producing but nothing has been set yet.

S: That’s pretty cool. So are you guys big Sci-Fi buffs? I read something about the album concept likened to Star Wars and there are some definite futuristic song themes like Forcefield for example.

B: Yeah I read a lot of science fiction as a kid but this whole comparison was started by this intern at the studio.

Originally we were going to release the album as a gigantic 14-18 song record. So in keeping with our philosophy of revolutionizing the music industry in whatever way we can we were talking about releasing the album as three different eps in a span of nine months. We’re actually trying to avoid calling them eps because the term ep has a negative connotation as like a lesser release, so we’re referring to them as volumes.

Basically the content of each volume is somewhat reflective of Star Wars in that the first recording an introduction, introducing the main characters and the conflict at hand, trying to blow up the Death Star and whatnot. The second volume gets kind of dark, it gets much darker than the one you’ve heard. We draw influences from bands like Joy Division, just really sparse stripped down instrumentation and going with the Empire Strikes back Theme.

The third and final Volume is going to be a celebration capping it all off. The way we’re going to release Volume Three is going to be a physical CD, an LP, with a thick liner note booklet featuring collaboration with global artists that we’re friends with in Miami. We’re going to collect the three volumes and release a double album somewhere around 20 tracks. It’s important to note that we’ll be giving away the first two releases for free on the internet.

S: It’s interesting to hear about your background the type of music you played in the past and see what your doing now. You must enjoy making this type of music because its what your doing now. Would you say this is an evolution for you?

B: Yeah exactly. We really enjoy playing forward thinking music; we try to avoid traditional instrumentation because we don’t want to limit ourselves. We admire older artists that use traditional instrumentation. We make a lot of music with computers; we do switch off on different instruments in the studio based on our strengths.

S: How was the recent touring stint you did, and where'd you go?

B: We went up the East Coast: hit NY, Toronto, Chicago, and Bloomington, Indiana. We played a really cool outdoor festival at Indiana University called Culture Shock!, that was probably the highlight of our tour.

We worked our way down through some lesser known towns and worked our way back home. We have a touring drummer, his name is Jorge Rubiera. He’s a filmmaker and an amazing drummer. He really helps flesh out the music live and allows MJ to get up from behind the drums and react to the crowd.

S: You have a release party tonight at Vagabond?

B: It’s a welcome home show capping off our tour, however Jorge won’t’ be there, he’s filming a documentary in Ireland. We’re trying to put a show together with him when he returns; it should be at a more unconventional venue like maybe the Planetarium on US1. We played there a few years ago when we first got back together with a laser light show going on in the background.

We’re trying to think outside the box and put together a strange show, definitely a free show because at this point it’s all about having people hear our music. We’re not trying to get rich just yet. Right now its just about exposing our music to as many people as possible and getting our message across.

S: And what is your message?

B: In the past we relied a lot on topical songs about certain politicians that we didn’t agree with their philosophies however we’ve shifted more towards sociopolitical commentary dealing with humanity as a whole. We’re addressing racial and social injustices that go on, on a day to day basis such as same sex rights and clean drinking water for everybody. We’re not throwing darts at a single individual; we’re just trying to work towards the final solution.

S: Very cool, I think that’s a good message. I think people should be more receptive to that.

B: Yeah we think it’s a waste of time to blame certain people. Hopefully as musicians and artists we can contribute something of value that will help people reconsider their actions.

S: I appreciate your time and good luck to you; I hope to see you all play here in Miami soon.

B: Great thank you.

Go to Awesome New Republic's website to download Rational Geographic Vol. One for free, and read my album review this Friday!

LINKS

Awesome New Republic’s website (www.anrmiami.com)
Awesome New Republic’s myspace (www.myspace.com/awesomenewrepublic)
Honor Roll Music website (www.honorrollmusic.com)

If You Enjoyed This Post, You May Also Like:

• Awesome New Republic Album Review: Rational Geographic Vol. One
• 5 questions with Jota from Radioboxer
• New York Times article focuses on Miami Music scene
• Steve chats with Hoosha
• An Interview with Oscar G

Tags: Awesome New Republic

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Art, Counter-Culture, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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