INTERVIEW: Young Braves — Music Musings & Such

INTERVIEW:

Young Braves

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THE boys of Young Braves have been gabbing…

about their newest release, Hunters, and what the song is all about. I discover how Young Braves formed and how their music/ranks have evolved/shifted; what sort of sounds they all listen to and take guidance from – they tell me what sort of dates are booked in the diary.

I ask what it was like (almost) supporting Fleetwood Mac; whether there is a healthy music scene where they are in Shropshire; which new acts we need to get our chops around; what they all want to accomplish before the end of this year is done – the chaps select a cool song to end the interview with.

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Hi, guys. How are you? How has your week been?

Elliot: Hey, Sam. We’re doing good, thanks. Our week has been quite pleasant: a mixture of working our jobs in between rehearsing and writing new music. We just found out that Hunters is Record of the Week on our local BBC Introducing show, which we’re all dead proud of, and the music video came out on Friday, so that was pretty exciting as well.

For those new to your music; can you introduce yourselves, please?

Ollie: We’re Young Braves (Ollie, Jacob; Elliot and Max); an Alternative-Rock band from Shropshire, England. We’ve been playing music together for around ten years now; starting when we were between the ages of ten and twelve-years-old - and we’ve been writing music for as long as we can remember.

We’ve recently been through a bit of a rebuilding phase, with a lot going on behind the scenes, which includes the addition of our new friend and drummer, Max; so we’re treating this year as a kind of ‘fresh start’ and can’t wait to get back out there.

Hunters is your new song. Can you reveal how it came together and what its inspiration is?

We’ve actually been sitting on Hunters for quite a while, but we all agreed that it’d be a great first track to bring us back out onto our feet again. It was one of those tracks that kind of wrote itself, really. You start with an idea and the next bit just naturally follows...

Jacob: Yeah. Musically, it all came together pretty quickly, to be honest. I was already working on another song, that was going to have three distinct sections rather than a standard structure at the time, and Hunters just started off as the first section of that track. Once I got to what is now the chorus of Hunters, I knew it had to become its own thing.

So; I carried on working on the demo through the night and pretty much had it finished within four hours.

Ollie: It was the same with vocals, too. When Jacob played it to me, that chorus melody was the first thing I sang and I remember saying: “Wait; that’s it, I gotta record that in my phone!”. In terms of the lyrics, the song isn’t based on personal events but a story about being with a girl who won’t let her guard down. She tries to mask her insecurities by saying hurtful things: “It’s so subtle when you say you hate me”/“I feel so lucky when you say I’m useless” and she tries to push you away by being so closed (off) and untrusting: “Admission is tribal, you try to set me up and again you’re tearful/It’s an evil”.

But; it’s also a love story, you know. You care about this girl and you can see she’s hurting and you just wanna be there, and for her to trust you and let you in so that you can help her and make her happy.

How does a Young Braves song come to be? Do you all write together – or will someone take lead?

Jacob: It varies from song to song, really. It’s a pretty collaborative process. Sometimes, one of us will come in with a completed song and then we’ll all give suggestions if we think anything can be improved. Other times, somebody will come up with an idea and the rest of us will take it, put our ideas in and build it up that way…

Ollie: …and sometimes we’ll just jam something random and end up with some really cool ideas. There is a lot of unused stuff that we always go back to as well. We’re constantly writing new material; so we like to revisit any ideas that we couldn’t quite finish the first time around with fresh ears and, sometimes, that can lead to some great stuff.

You formed in the summer of 2013. Did you all know one another before then? When did you know you had to make music together?

Elliot and I are brothers, so we’ve always known each other, but we met Jacob at an open mic night when we were nine and eleven-years-old, where he used to play a few songs with his friend, and Elliot and I played together. We started out kind of like rivals and it became a sort of competition where we would try to outdo each other. Eventually, Jacob caved and asked us to join a band with him and, funnily enough, we became best friends rather quickly.

Max is the newest member of the band and we met him through a mutual friend. This was only a few months ago - but he’s already part of the family.

Shropshire is where you are from. Is there a substantial music scene there? What kind of sounds are coming from the area?

Max: There was a period, about five-or-so years ago, when there were loads of bands doing bits in the area, but there’s not much going on in Shropshire anymore. There are not even many decent venues here now, so we mostly travel to Birmingham and treat that as our local area, really, because there are so many great venues and bands there.

What sort of music do you all like listening to? Do you have quite similar tastes?

Ollie: There’s a lot of common ground when it comes to what we listen to. Artists we all like include Pixies, Nirvana; The Maccabees, Kings of Leon; Jeff Buckley, The Smiths…the list is endless. Haha. Jacob listens to a lot of Radiohead, Wild Beasts; Broken Social Scene, Car Seat Headrest, and I also listen to stuff like Kendrick Lamar, John Mayer; Mac DeMarco, Bombay Bicycle Club etc.

Max is mainly into much heavier music, but we’re gradually beating that out of him and giving him playlists of Alternative/Indie bands and songs to listen to that he’d like. Haha.

Do you have any gigs lined up? Where are you heading?

Max: Yeah. We’re trying to get as many gigs lined up as possible at the moment. We’re heading down to London on Wednesday to support Suffer Like G Did with Death and the Penguin in Kingston, and then we’re back closer to home on Saturday supporting Red Rum Club at Albert’s Shed in Shrewsbury.

Elliot: …and we’ve also got a headline show at The Actress and Bishop in Birmingham on Friday, 8th June which we are dead-excited about as well.

What do you hope to achieve in 2018?

Ollie: We had a real tough time last year and we went through some pretty unfortunate stuff, which resulted in last year being our quietest year to date. We’ve spent a lot of time rebuilding the band over the last few months, writing loads of new material - which we feel are some of the best songs we’ve ever written.

We also have a team of really amazing people working with us now and we’re looking to keep building momentum; releasing content throughout 2018 in preparation to make 2019 our biggest and most exciting year as a band…

Have you each got a favourite memory from your time in music – the one that sticks in the mind?

Elliot: I think our favourite memory has got to be when we supported The Amazons at their sell-out show in Birmingham last year. We played at Mama Roux’s, which was a great venue, and the crowd was sick. We spoke to the guys from The Amazons after the show and they were so down to earth and really supportive of us as well.

Hopefully, we’ll get to play with them again sometime in the future.

Is it true you were asked to play a Black Keys show – Fleetwood Mac were also due to appear! Even though the gigs, at Birmingham’s 02 Arena, were cancelled; what was it like being asked after only one single?!

Jacob: Yeah. They were two different shows but we were asked to play on the Forum stage at both the Black Keys and Fleetwood Mac shows at the LG/Genting Arena in Birmingham. The Black Keys cancelled quite a while before the show due to the drummer getting injured, but the Fleetwood Mac show was cancelled just after we’d sound-checked, minutes before the doors opened, which was absolutely gutting as they’re one of our favourite bands!

We were so happy that we were asked, though, and it would have been an unbelievable experience…especially when we were so young as well.

If you could support any musician alive today, and choose your own rider, what would that entail?

There are a few artists that I’d really love to have a chance to support, but I think Radiohead would probably be at the top of that list.

As for my rider; it would be pretty simple, as well: just a few bottles of IPA, a pack of smokes and a decent meal to keep me going.

What advice would you give to new artists coming through?

Max: Rehearse as much as possible and take every opportunity that comes your way.

Jacob: I’d say, make sure that you are all committed to the same goal: you don't want to have one of you pulling all of the weight while the others just show up or just treat it as a hobby, especially if your goal is to make something out of being a musician. It’s a hard thing to achieve; there are lots of ups and downs but, as long as you all have the same passion for it, then there is no reason why you can't make it work.

IN THIS PHOTO: The Golden Age of TV/PHOTO CREDIT: Andrew Benge

Are there any new artists you recommend we check out?

Elliot: There’s a band we know called The Golden Age of TV who are really great and doing really well at the moment. A friend of mine is in a band called Party Hardly and they’re really cool.

There’s Middle Kids; an Australian band who are wicked, and a couple of local bands called Only Shadows and Candid who are also really cool. You should definitely check all of those guys out!

IN THIS PHOTO: Middle Kids

Do you get much time to chill away from music? How do you unwind?

Ollie: We do spend a lot of time working on our music, but we all have things that we enjoy doing in the spare time we do get. Me and Elliot have recently got massively into basketball, so we’ll go and play at our local court or watch NBA games. It’s always nice to have a lazy day, just chilling with our girlfriends as well; binging on Netflix series/films and going on walks etc. All that good stuff. Haha.

Jacob: Yeah. I like to watch a lot of films, too, and go for long drives to clear my mind.

Finally, and for being good sports; you can choose a song and I’ll play it here (not any of your music - I will do that).

The Golden Age of TV – Beast