Summerbirds in the Cellar

A conversation with Curtis Brown

(June 2005)

Interview by Adam McKibbin

Orlando has been best known, on a national level, as the place to go when a person is in the mood for Disney or looking to sign a boy band.  The emergence of bands like Summerbirds in the Cellar, then, has doubtlessly been a relief for those many residents who would like to expose a much deeper layer to the city’s artistry than play-castles and choreography.  Formed from the ashes of Pilots Vs. Aeroplanes, Summerbirds aim to transcend city limits, though.  Local band today, universal band tomorrow?  Well, their debut full-length certainly merits the attention, aching with moody melancholy and turning heads with its dense, meticulous guitar-rock. 

Curtis Brown discusses his band’s artistic process, Orlando’s musical emergence and explains how a car crash helped create with the hands of the hunter it all becomes dead. 

Let’s go over some of the basic biography.  Did you and Brad start Summerbirds after your last band [Pilots vs. Aeroplanes] had dissolved, or were they coexisting for a time?

I would say they were coexisting.  Brad and I were always writing, constantly.  I came in at the end of Pilots, and the lineup wasn’t the original lineup at all.  The keyboard player was moving to Portland to pursue his own music, his kind of folk solo project.  Brad was basically the only original member, and I wanted to take the music in a different direction and Brad was over the sound that Pilot had formed.  We scrapped it altogether once the other original member moved to Portland.  But, yeah, Brad and I were writing on the side during Pilots, and when it dissolved, we wanted to keep playing together because we felt we really worked well together. 

That was when you started working together, when you joined Pilots?  Had you known each other for a while previously?

Well, we grew up in Lakeland together, which is a pretty small city between Tampa and Orlando.  Basically, you had to find something to fill up your time.  We all realize now that it was a really healthy place to live, to write music and pursue music and blossom into some sort of musician.  You’re locked away, you know?  In these garages and wherever, just recording and writing. 

I’m from a town of 4,000, so I can relate.

Yeah, and Lakeland is pretty small.  It’s mostly mobile homes and a lot of churches.  It’s a Bible Belt city.  So, yeah, we were each in our own bands and we were drawn together eventually as they were openings in lineups.  I moved to Orlando and Brad was here by that point, too.

When you started as Summerbirds, were you able to build on whatever foundation Pilots had built, or did you feel like you were starting from scratch?

We used a lot of the same connections, but in different ways because the music and the direction we were headed was pretty remote from the original idea of Pilots.  I feel like Pilots was kind of a typical project—there wasn’t a lot of creativity in it.  So when we started doing something that was off-course, we didn’t want to keep too many of the ties we had originally.  I mean, it’s not like we had a ton of connections anyway.  We’re still, at face level, a local band as far as a lot of people are concerned.

So how did you get hooked up with a label out here in L.A.?

Chris Sapone is the guy out in L.A.  He started a label recently because he fell into a money—he got in an accident and got a huge settlement.  With that money, he decided to start a label, and he’d always wanted to help us.

He’s from Orlando, then?

Yeah, he’s from here.  We were friends with him, and he knew who we were even when Pilots was around.  He never even saw us before he signed us.  He just heard the recordings and really liked the recordings. 

That’s great.  Take me through the songwriting process.  How do you guys work together?

I’ve talked to a lot of musicians around here that I’m friends with, and we’ve compared our process to others and I guess it’s a pretty different.  We definitely work off of songwriting—Brad’s the singer and guitar player and he’ll sometimes come up with little melodies, but it’s never a fully structured song.  He’ll say, “I really like this, now I want you to take it and complete it.”  He’ll give it to me and I’ll add some things to spice it up.  He usually gives the songs to me for structure.  Our drummer multitasks—we all do.  We can all switch off instruments.  I’ll hop on drums sometimes.  It’s really nice—if someone has an idea for someone else’s part, they can get up and play it for them.

Do you ever do the musical chairs thing in shows?

We used to, but it’s kind of hard.  I’d get out from the pianos and go behind the drumset—it was too much downtime.  It’s easier to just stay at our stations.

I’d read that you were conscientious of song length.  Does that mean that sometimes you end up with songs that you feel are too long?

Actually, there are definitely some long songs on the record.  We’re writing new songs and some of those are eight minutes long.  It’s not so much that I do editing, and I don’t think any one of us says, “This is what the song needs to be.”  They don’t come to my desk and say, “Is this good, Curtis?”  But it seems like I’m more meticulous, that’s all.  And if it feels right and the song is ten minutes, I’m all for it.  We’ll stretch things longer live than we do on record.

When you do arrive at the finished product, are you able to remain content?  Or does that meticulous side have you saying, “Ah, if we’d had one more day?”

That can get at you and bother you sometimes, and you can overthink things.  But I’ve gotten to the point where I realize that you just let go at some point and say it’s fine.  People are going to like this, and people would have no idea what I’m shouting about.  I’ve got to get to the point where you write the song, you do the best you can, and you say, “I hope people will like it.”  I think I’ve gotten to the point where I’m pretty comfortable with letting go.  I think we’re all like that.  We’re not too crazy.

Are you influenced by music that you’re listening to as you’re writing and recording, or are all the influences internalized already?

It’s really weird because I don’t know how we came to having this picture in our heads of what we wanted the band to be, but I think we’re all on the exact same page.  We don’t ever really specify influences, where like we’d go up to Athens with ten records and say, “Alright, we want to blend all these together.  Can you do this, Andy?”  It’s not like that.  Are you asking about specific influences?

No, not necessarily.  I was just curious whether someone would bring in a record and say, “You guys need to hear this—it’s great how they do this or that.”

We definitely bring in stuff, but it’s so detached from what we play (laughs).  We were all blown away by the Joanna Newsom record.  Actually, when we were recording in Athens, that was the majority of what I was listening to—which you can’t hear in our record at all.  There’s not too much of a Milk-Eyed Mender influence.

Speaking of Andy, there’s no producer credit on the album, but he’s given a “recorded by” credit, which is reminiscent of Steve Albini.   Do you resist the “producer” tag?

Well, it was definitely a cooperative effort to get everything the way we wanted.  It wasn’t that Andy was behind the boards saying, “This is where it goes.  This is good, this is bad.”  It’s our record.  But it was really great to have his insights and fresh ears.  He’s just really good at telling you what’s necessary and what’s not necessary.  Sometimes we get too carried away creatively and we can lose the songs.  He definitely had his input and we learned a lot from that.

He and Brad had played together in Now It’s Overhead?

They played a show with us in Orlando at the Social.  Afterwards, Andy came up to us and told us he really enjoyed the show and that he had a studio in Athens and would like to have us.  We were honored, but at the same time, he can offer that, but we needed to have five, ten thousand, whatever.  It takes a lot of money to be able to do it.  Then we just happened to talk to Chris, and Chris talked about starting a label about a week after we talked to Andy.  Chris we like, “Wait, you got an offer to go record and you’re not going to do it?”  He got with Andy and worked out the funding details. 

What’s the community like in Orlando?  Do you feel like you’re in a good scene, or do you feel like a black sheep?

I feel like right now it’s in a really transitional stage to becoming a tight-knit group.  It’s not there yet, but it’s on the way.  I’m actually pretty happy to live here right now.  A few years ago, it was complete shit.  It was awful.  But now there are bands I can’t believe are from here.  There’s a band called Band Marino—a complete folk uprising with vocals that are really strong, almost like Thom Yorke, but with music completely different from anything Radiohead-esque.  It’s very folk-rock.  Then there’s a band called Yip-Yip, who are kind of like Daft Punk.  They’re two guys who dress in all white with insane costumes and play electronic music.  They’re amazingly tight and creative and talented.  There are about five bands here that I feel are right around the corner from breaking into a whole new level and exposing Orlando.

What’s the catalyst for that transformation?

I don’t really know what triggered it.  There have always been three or four venues that have been really helpful and supportive of local acts.  I always feel that whenever bands come out at the same time, it’s because people are feeding off of each other.  We’re friends with everybody here that I feel are really talented.  We all know each other and hang out outside of playing shows. 

Do you ever worry about getting too comfortable as a popular local band, especially as the surrounding scene gets better?

I don’t think we’re worried about that.  A lot of the local bands here don’t plan on getting out, they don’t foresee themselves getting in a van and touring.  The first thing I said when I heard someone wanted to put out the record is, “Can we get it distributed overseas?”  I want to go to Japan and Europe.  I don’t want to be considered just a band from Orlando. 

Yeah, it can be hard to muster up the courage to setting out on the road when you’re drawing hundreds of people at home but playing in front of handfuls on the road.

Yeah.  You just have to prepare yourself, mentally and physically. 

Is the touring as much fun as the writing and recording for you?

This band has only done a couple of short stints in the Southeast.  We’re waiting to line up a booking agency because I’ve watched way too many of my friends go out on tours on their own.  That’s not too beneficial, and you can waste a lot of money and time.  Now we have a record; the first few times we went out, we’d go for a week or two, to North Carolina and back, but we didn’t even have a record at the time.  At least now we can leave people with music and not shirts.  (laughs).