Brickmaster InterviewThe Brickmaster Interview By Kori Burnham Brickmaster was one of the first bands I e-mailed
after the first thought of this crazy idea of a zine!
Great people! Originally, this was going to be a Miltown
interview, but as you’ve obviously heard, they
decided to split. Brickmaster is equally as good, though,
so I hope you enjoy! For your own references, Brickmaster is: Well, our influences are pretty diverse. As far as ska
goes, we are all big Allstonians fans, as well as The
Scofflaws, Hepcat and some other trad stuff like that.
Everybody likes their own different ska bands as well.
Travis, the trumpet player,likes the Toasters, while I
can’t STAND the Toasters. Jerry is into Kicked in
the head, Don loves The Planet Smashers, Meph and The
NYSJE, Sarah and Ryan really like Skavoovie and Denise
and me are really into a lot of Skinhead Reggae (although
it isn't really ska) as well as Prince Buster, The
Skatellites and actually, I think Big D is great too. Big
D is the NICEST bunch of guys you could ever meet. Q - What local bands do you like and why? For local bands, The Allstonians get BIG props. They
are really cool guys, and put on a great show. As I
mentioned before, the ENTIRE Fork In Hand crew has been
extremely supportive since the beginning. Skavoovie is a
big favorite, Mission 120 is a group of really cool,
funny dudes, as well as The Rockets, The Skatupults,
Jumpsuit Jerry and any other band that we have played
with that I forgot to mention. Also, The Brass Monkeys
are good too. Watch out for those guys man. Their guitar
player is excellent. Q - What advice would you give to someone who wants to
be in, or start a band? Well, first off, find a bunch of friends to play with.
It is the only way that the band will last. Then,
practice your a**** off. It takes about a year for your
average band to get their name out there, so make a
s***** demo, and call every club in Boston every week
when you have sent them one of them. Lie about where you
have played, and get every members family to come and buy
TONS of drinks. The only reason most clubs want you there
is if you can get people to drink. Money is the main
thing. Q - What is your favorite place to surf on the
Internet? I am a big fan of www.theonion.com, and I like to
check out pages that have links to a lot of ska bands,
like the attempted ska page. I love checking out the
competition. Also, Internet porno (ahh, forgive him. Don’t
you readers get any ideas!~Kori) is a fave as well! haha!
I don’t really know about the rest of the band. Q - How old where you when you wanted to be in a band? Pretty much everybody had different times. Me, Denise,
Jerry and Travis have wanted to be in bands for as long
as we can remember. The others may have been a bit later
on. Q - What is your favorite book? Can I have a reason? Hmmm....I know that Denise likes Anne Rice and Richard
Allen. I have read every damn Dean Koontz book. Jerry has
been reading the Miles Davis biography lately. I really
don't know what is on everyone else's bed stand though. I
cant ask them right now, because nobody is around. Q - Brickmaster is a mighty skankin' name!!! Where did
you come up with it? Well Kori, one day when I was about 15, I was sitting
around at school writing down possible names for bands. I
was between bands at the time, and knew that I wanted to
start one of my own. I wrote them all on the back of a
notebook, and eventually picked out what I thought was
the best one. BRICKMASTER. I thought "Gee, what a
mighty SKANKIN' name!” It is actually a business
too. New England Brickmaster. They kinda do house repair,
but with fake bricks. I hope they don't sue us. One of
the other names was Bubba Zanetti, which actually became
the title and subject of one of our songs. Q - Do you ever play covers? If so, what do you enjoy
doing most? We have done "On My Radio" by The Selecter
for a while now. People always love that. Denise sings on
that one, and I play bass. Sometimes we get our old
trombone player to come up on stage and play guitar and
sometimes Alex from the Skatupults plays guitar.
Basically whoever knows how to play it on guitar can just
come up onstage. If we don’t have somebody who can
do it, we ask the crowd, so anyone out there who knows it
and comes to one of our shows, let us know beforehand,
and you play on it. We also usually do "Brown Eyed
Girl" by Van Morrison and "Honor Your Mother
and Your Father" by Desmond Dekker. We have also
done "54-46" by Toots and the Maytals,
"These Boots are Made For Stompin’" and
"Skinhead Girl" as done by Symarip, "Open
Up Bartender" by Prince Buster and a few others that
I cant remember. We love doing covers and have tons in
the works that we are going to do. Q - How did you form Brickmaster? It happened over a long period of time basically. We
started off as just Me, Denise and this other friend of
ours on drums. That was around 2 years ago. We kinda
played stuff like the velvet underground. Tons of reverb,
silly poetic lyrics and stuff like that. After a while,
we started throwing a few ska songs into our set and
eventually added some horn players and stuff. Pretty soon
we just played ska. We have had like a million members
throughout our existence, but we feel pretty comfortable
with the lineup we have now. It is just a lot of fun
playing ska. We just love it. Q - Does everyone get along for the most part? Definitely. Most of us where friends before the band
even got together. Denise and Sarah have been good
friends since Jr. High, and I have known Travis since I
was about 10. Travis has been buddies with Ryan for a
bunch of years now too. Basically, we are all friends. We
hang out outside of the band and just get lunch or
whatever and talk. I personally just love everybody in
the band. They are all really great people and kick a**
musicians. I couldn't be happier with the people that we
have right now. Q - Any album plans for the future? Yessireee. We have been recording for the last couple
of days actually. The stuff we are recording is going to
be on different compilations basically. We are going to
have one song on the next "Ska down her way"
compilation, as well as 2 songs on this English ska comp.
We are also going to be submitting tracks to the next
"Skarmageddon" comp which is put out by moon
records. So that is what we are doing right now, but we
are definitely planning to have a CD out by summer. It is
just financial problems keeping us back at this point,
but it should be out soon. Buy it when you see it! Q - What do you think of the Boston music scene in
general? Q - Do you write songs from personal experience? Who
is your principle lyricist? Well, I (Seager) am the principle lyricist. I hate my lyrics and have no idea how to write good ones. I have never been good at writing them. I just come up with instrumentals a lot of the time, and try to come up with vocals after. Travis and Don are starting to write more lyrics and I am trying to write better ones for new songs. As for personal experience, some of the songs are, but some are just about movies or people or whatever. "Laundry" is about this guy we know who never washes his clothes. That is how dumb my lyrics are. |