Cary Brothers

I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen a Way Cool Music interviewee on TV. Recently, as I was flipping through the channels, I noticed a familiar face on ET on MTV. I had to do a double take, but sure enough, there was Cary Brothers on the small screen, and not local access. Granted, he wasn't being interviewed, but he was there at the Grammy's with friend Zach Braff getting a little face time on national TV. While other viewers were hearing about Braff's latest girlfriend, I found myself watching Cary and felt that I was in on little secret that even MTV wasn't hip to. In case you're wondering, Cary Brothers is on the brink of mainstream success. After appearing on the Garden State soundtrack, with a corresponding appearance as a karaoke singer on Scrubs, Brothers is definitely making a name for himself. During a recent trip to Nashville (Brothers' hometown), Way Cool Music met up with him to talk about the success of Garden State's 'Blue Eyes,' the Internet, and the importance of building a grassroots following.

WC:

Tell us a little bit about your background.

Cary
Brothers:

I had my first kiss in the first grade and her name was Emily Hanes and she liked ponies. I seduced her on the slide. But, she has a child now, so that's disgusting!

I was born in Nashville, TN and grew up here in the ultra-conservative, civil rights South, feeling that I'm not a part of the place. I wondered how the hell I was ever born here! How it relates to music is that being in this tightly conservative environment, local music was 80's rhinestone cocaine country, which I despised with livid hatred of all that music. I escaped to music from over the pond. The first records I bought were The Smiths, Cure, and Stone Roses. That was the sound I loved. I felt that being in Nashville was obvious and everything was on the table. There was something about the mystery of the reverb-y Brit-rock sound that really appealed to me. It was a challenge and it was something different that made me want to make music. That and REM because they were from the South, I thought, "Wait. They're from where I'm from? And they're doing this?" It gave me hope that someday I could do that too. If they were Southerners escaping the Southern cliche then there's hope for a boy with a guitar.

WC:

Now Nashville is more than just country music. How do you fit into the scene now? When you come back, what's it like?

Coming back to this town now, I see that Nashville has broadened its horizons a little bit. Itâs still not perfect, but It's changed enough that I feel comfortable here now, and I didn't feel that growing up.

WC:

When did you move to Los Angeles?

CB:

I went to college at Northwestern. I left here when I was 18 and did four years in Chicago at Northwestern and froze my ass off. I had a band in college, a stupid college band. Well, it was stupid in the sense that we didn't take it seriously and we were drunk all the time, but I was playing with four people who were probably the four best musicians I could be in a band with. If we had taken it seriously, we probably could have done something with it. It was sad because we graduated from college and they became investment bankers and now they're calling me up saying, "I'd quit my job to come play with you." My old drummer came to one of the shows in Chicago (in December). He's married and has a kid. He's like, "I'll drop it all."

WC:

Did you guys actually play shows in Chicago?

CB:

We started being the campus band and we'd play all the fraternity parties and shows around Northwestern. Then we started playing shows in Chicago. Right as things would have gotten going, we graduated and everyone went their separate ways. I loved music so much, but I could never take it seriously as an occupation. I could just do it, and I don't know why. When I was a kid, I just picked up a guitar and knew how to play. I took some lessons, but I basically just taught myself. I have no idea how. But I always thought, "I didn't earn this, so how can I make a living from it?" Growing up in Nashville, where there are schools and education, and my dad's a doctor and went to medical school, there's all these steps. And music just felt like there were no steps. I didn't take it seriously, but I was always writing at home as therapy.

I was always a film freak. When I went to Los Angeles, I just immediately became involved in film production and moved up really quickly. I started up a production company and was producing independent films within two years of arriving in LA. I did a couple of indie movies. But, just as that was taking off, I hit this wall. I loved movies so much, but I fucking hated making them. I was going home at night and writing songs and getting my creative jones on. Then, I'd come to the office everyday and I kept helping other people realize their creative vision. Writers would come in with a script that was 85% there and I would help them restructure things. Thatâs what I became known for. Writers would come to me and I'd help shape their ideas and they'd option it. Or friends of mine would come in and I'd help them. Zach (Braff) came in and I helped him with Garden State and that script. So I did a lot of that. But, it was frustrating because I was helping other people and I'd send them off and they'd succeed.

Then, I hit the wall and told my production partner that I couldn't do it anymore and that I was going to be a musician for a living. At that point, I had started to play some open mic things. Thatâs when I fell on the Hotel Cafe. I had heard Gary Jules' cover of 'Mad World' on the Donnie Darko soundtrack and fell in love with it. I had to see him live and found out he was playing at this new place called the Hotel Cafe. I went down to see him right when he was starting a residency and I loved it. They used to have an open mic there. I went there on a Sunday night (to perform) and Gary saw it and said, "I like it. Come play with me." That was one of the first times I had been back up (on stage) in years. It freaked me out to be in front of someone I liked that much who embraced it. He brought me into the fold and then (the club) started booking me. There is no better place in the country right now for music than the Hotel. Obviously I'm biased, but it's such a great room. The people who are playing there are at the top of their game. There's such a regular crew and community thatâs been playing together for awhile. Everyone supports everyone. It's like Cheers with music. Everyone knows each other and there's nothing else like that in Los Angeles, where there's been this pay-to-play mentality for such a long time. Finally, there's a real community of musicians. And great young people run it and that changed my life. Just having a home room to go and play every night. I just played there once a month. I'd be doing my shows or playing with a friend of mine and it just became something great that I don't think many musicians experience. I feel really lucky to have gotten in because, now, it's impossible to get booked there. Now, it's a whole different thing and I can't even get some of my friends booked there because it's become such a popular room. I'm just glad I got in on the ground floor.

WC:

How long was it between the time you left Northwestern, quit playing music and started playing again?

CB:

I had the production company for four years, so four years. But, you have to understand something. Every night I was going home and playing as if I was rehearsing for shows that I wasn't going out to play. When people ask how many songs I have for the next record, there are too many to count. I just recorded everything. So, I have stacks of tapes and CDs of songs. I'd stay up until 5:00 A.M. writing a song and then pass out. The next night, I'd have an idea for a new song, so I'd take out the tape with the half-done song and work on the new one. I would have no idea what the other song was on that first tape. So, I need to go through all those tapes. I'm sure some of it sucks. But, it was just constantly writing and playing.

WC:

How would you describe your music to someone who's never heard you play?

CB:

I'm definitely a Nashville kid worshipping Brit pop. That's always going to be my thing. But, what the Hotel did was bring it back to the acoustic guitar, basing everything around it and getting a lot more into finger picking and letting softer, acoustic influences, like Buckley and Elliot Smith, come through. I have no idea how to describe it. One of the reasons I liked releasing the EP independently was because, in talking to labels, they asked, "What are you? How can we sell you?" And that's fine, but I don't want to be sold yet. I just started. If people like it, then they know by my name what the sound is without having to market myself or fit into a genre. Singer/songwriter isn't really what I do. Live maybe it has a little of that, but recorded, it's not. My EP is not a singer/songwriter EP. I hope it's bigger sounding and sounds more like a band.

WC:

Do you play with a full band live?

CB:

In LA. Right now, I can't afford to travel with them. Right now, I just go out with my guitar. But, as I get more money, I'll bring more players out and will hopefully get bigger.

WC:

Talk a little bit about your Garden State experience.

WC:

Is it true that when Zach was shopping the movie, he made sure they had the soundtrack as well?

CB:

Yeah, he came over to my place the night before he sent the movie out and we made a 25-song CD that he sent out with all the scripts. Evidently, people still have that CD. We had a good idea what the music and the energy was going to be like. A lot of my sound, and the sounds of the other bands, are the sounds he really likes. Looking back, I wish I would've had more stuff, because I probably would have had more stuff in the movie! The funny thing is that the version of 'Blue Eyes' that's in the movie is the original home 8-track. It wasn't until the movie was at Sundance and I saw it in the movie that I thought, "OK, that's going to be on the soundtrack. I need to redo the song!" So, I went into the studio and just kept going and that's how the EP came about. People ask, "Why is it only a 4-song EP?" Because that's all I could afford.

WC:

If you could have afforded more and had more time, what would the EP have been like? Would it have become a full-length CD?

CB:

I always liked the idea of an EP to give people the taste of something, to whet the appetite and get people interested. I was also in a crazy, new writing phase after that and I knew this EP showed what I could do. It's somewhat of a spectrum, from pop-punk to a little acoustic. It just shows that the full-length is going to be all over the place. I don't want to be the guy to have "a sound" where you listen to the CD once and think, "Oh, this is great." By the third time, you're over it and are bored to death. That goes back to, "What is my sound?" I don't want to define that. I want to have a shot at doing a little bit of everything. If I had had more money, maybe I would've gone ahead and done a full-length, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

WC:

Is Redeye is handling your distribution?

CB:

Yeah, after all the soundtrack stuff, I've been talking to labels and who knows what's going to happen. But, whatever happens, it's going to take a long time. In the meantime, I have all this momentum from the Internet. And, iTunes has been great to me. I don't want to lose that momentum waiting around for somebody to come and change my life. I'm going to change my life for me. I'm not going to wait for somebody to give me a paycheck and bless me with their label wisdom. I feel like I know what I'm doing as well as anyone else right now. I sit in a room with anybody and I just feel confident. I feel that I'm ready to do this on my own if I have to. If someone wants to come in and help and give me a lot of money and allow me to have enough creative control that I'm comfortable, then that's great, but it's not necessary. Listen, I would love to have a nice studio, but I'm paying my rent and bills and I'm a professional musician and happy as hell. If I can have more than that, that's great, but right now creative control is much more important to me because, if I have the chance to do what I think I can do, and have the creative control to do that, then I think I can find more success then if I have someone over my shoulder steering me in a certain direction. I don't necessarily trust record labels anymore. I don't think anybody knows the truth or has the answer, especially the way things are moving now with the Internet and all the changes that are happening in the music industry. I think everybody is scrambling. And while everybody else scrambles, I'm going to keep marching forward and do what I'm doing and let them catch up.

In all honesty, I've built a good following in LA and California, and worked my ass off for the last year, really working message boards and sites like myspace.com. I've built a fan base on the Internet by people buying the music and going to my site. I'm doing this free song of the week to get people to come back. It's almost as if people get to see live shows because I'm constantly giving them new material that's rough and not completed, kinda demo stuff. But, the flip side of that is that I haven't been out there touring for two years when all of this happened. I feel that if I went straight from the Garden State soundtrack to major label stuff, it wouldn't work. I want to give myself the opportunity to get out there and tour and play on the back of this EP. So that by the time the record comes out, I will have hit a lot of towns a couple of time. I feel there are a lot of bands who don't get out there, local/regional bands, that get a label deal. They get the big hit single that's sold, sold, sold. That record and single sells a lot of copies, but when they come around with that second record, nobody gives a fuck about it because the public doesn't care about them.

The most important thing to me about putting this EP into stores independently is that people can walk into a store, buy it and hopefully they'll love it and they'll feel like it's "theirs." That's what I love about music now. I find something new and it's "mine" for a certain amount of time. Sure, more and more people are going to find out about it, and then I can call them "sell-outs." But, for that certain amount of time, they are "your" band and you want to see them when they come to town and you want to support them and buy the t-shirts because you want to wear with pride this music you love. I want to try to build more of that and take it slowly. I have all the time in the world. I don't need the big payday right now. I'd rather allow this thing to take time rather than try to go for broke and watch it flame out, which happens to so many bands. I feel like I forget bands with greater frequency than ever before. I remember songs, but I don't know who the band was, and I don't really care about them.

WC:

And, you actually respond to the messages left on your message board. People seem amazed by that.

CB:

It's great. It's because I care. I care when people send me emails and say that 'Blue Eyes' is going to be the first song at their wedding or that some song helped them through their depression. That means something to me because I'm a music lover first and know what it's like for a song to move me. I'm not some egotistical musician who thinks, "I'm going to change the world because my music is incredible." I have all the time in the world to be an asshole! But, thatâs what music does for me and I'm so happy to do that for other people. It's tough now because, with the Garden State stuff, there are 500,000 people who bought that CD and that are into the music.

WC:

And you are one of the more accessible people on the soundtrack. You're not going to email The Shins and get a response.

CB:

Right. I consciously made that decision. I could pull my email address off the Internet and then I become less accessible. And, I could not answer emails and let people post on the board. That's easy. When I got home for the holidays, I spent Christmas Eve night, from 1 A.M. to 9 A.M., 8 straight hours responding to emails. My eyes almost popped out of the head and my hands were all cramped, but that's important to me. When I was a kid, when I wrote anybody and got something back, it made me feel great! I don't necessarily think I'm that important, but if they do, that's great. It's amazing. I don't take any of this for granted. I feel that I was blessed with this opportunity and I'm going to be gracious and not be an ass. If they care enough to write, I'll care enough to write back. It's getting more difficult. It's going to hit a point when I'm on tour where I can't respond to everything and I'm sure people will get pissed off. But, until then, I'm going to try to communicate with people as much as I can.

WC:

What has the audience been like over the past two years since you started playing the Hotel Cafe and then with the release of Garden State.

WC:

You recently worked with Joshua Radin. Tell us about that project and wearing the producer hat.

CB:

Josh is another old friend of mine who, out of the blue, came up to me and said that he wanted to do some songs. I was like, "OK." Then, he opened up his mouth and out came this incredible voice. I thought, "Where have you been, dude? What's going on?" He's a really good songwriter and he came to me and asked if I could record some songs. We did three or four demos at my house and gave them to Zach, who listened to them while he was shooting a Scrubs episode. They ended up putting the demo of 'Winter' on the show. We did that and he got a lot of attention from it. It's a great song.

After I finished my record, Josh flew out to LA. Chad (Fischer), who produced my record, and I did Josh's record. We were just in a zone and figured we'd just keep going. Basically, we just pulled Josh up and said, "Sing!" and just kept moving forward with him. I'm really proud of those songs and think he has a lot of potential. I'd really like to end up touring with him before the end of the year.

WC:

Whose career path do you see yourself following?

CB:

I kinda like what Ben Gibbard has done. I love that development and how they gave it time. It's like I said about taking time and not worrying about 8 billion records at the outset and taking the time to develop an audience. Yeah, I have a boost because the Garden State thing, but that doesn't mean I want to go full speed ahead right now. I'm ready to step back and then gradually build. But, I like what Ben has done, and what Bright Eyes has done. They've kept indie alive a little longer.

WC:

Any advice for an aspiring singer/songwriter who wants your career at this point?

CB:

I say get a 4-track or an 8-track and just record. The reason that things are happening for me is because I was afraid for a long time. I was afraid of putting stuff out there. I was doing stuff at home alone, which allowed me to get my chops because I was playing all the time, but stepping out into the real world and putting your stuff out there is a huge risk. I think if you're unwilling to take that risk now, then get a 4-track or an 8-track and just write, and write, and write, and write. Don't stop writing. Write shitty songs, write good songs. Don't stop writing and don't stop working. Get out there and find a way to get a website up. Get on these online communities and work fans and get them into the music. Just do the legwork. That's all it is; it's just legwork.

Before the Garden State soundtrack came up, I spent months staying up all night long. I didn't have any money. I had a computer and an Internet connection. I had to find ways to find audiences. I literally sent emails one at a time to people that were on certain boards that liked a certain kind of music, just to see if they would listen. At first, five percent would listen, then ten percent, and it just kept growing. When the Garden State stuff happened, it just jumped after that. There was an awareness for a few thousand of people across the country before the soundtrack happened. I feel that if I had to keep going with that, I could've built an even more grassroots thing. Mixing grassroots Internet work with the soundtrack, it all just came together.

If you're young, the most important thing is to write. Find an open mic if you can and play every night of the week that you can. I know so many people who are so gifted but feel like, because they have talent, the world owes them, that they don't have to do the work. They think that someone is going to come along and make it all happen for them. They don't do the open mics and they don't work hard. It's a matter of going out and doing the legwork. The talent part, you either have it or you don't.

WC:

You're working on a new CD. Are you going to do extensive touring behind it?

WC:

Other than Ben Gibbard, what other music are you currently into?

CB:

I'm really into this band called Gersey. I saw them play the Knitting Factory in L.A. and was amazed. I'm also into Huge. They're a beautiful band. I've been listening to the Doves a lot again. I just can't get enough of them. I've also been going back and listening to The Cars, Elvis Costello, and Squeeze. It's a weird balance between the old and the new. I go into my historical era. New stuff, the Keane record is pretty cool. I've kinda been a song guy lately. I've been so busy that I don't have time to love an album, so I love songs. There's a Secret Machines song that I worship, and the Snow Patrol song, 'Spitting Game s'. I know it's a good song when I'm driving my car and find myself driving 15 miles per hour faster.

WC:

Thanks a lot of meeting us in the middle of your hometown.

CB:

No problem, thanks!

To find out more information about Cary Brothers, visit his website at www.carybrothers.com.