An Interview with The Brother Brothers: Creating Community

It doesn’t take long listening to The Brother Brothers to realize that they’re doing something special. David Crosby just tweeted the other night that he heard them opening for I’m With Her and he said, “They are excellent … they sing really well … really quite fine.” High praise indeed from one of the great harmony singers of the twentieth century. Adam and David Moss are twin brothers and are set to release their debut album, Some People I Know, on Friday, October 16. The album is gorgeous. The harmonies from these two are immediately reminiscent of the silkiest harmony duos: think Simon and Garfunkel or The Milk Carton Kids. The writing is ambitious and exciting and because Adam and David play a range of instruments (guitar, banjo, fiddle, cello), the album is sonically varied and interesting. We go to chat with Adam and David as they were getting on the road from Nashville after playing at Americanafest this year about the new record, their process of writing individually and together, and the stark reality of what happens when communities give in to gentrification.

RLR: I’d love to start with “Frankie,” especially that stirring repetition at the end “I don’t care about money.” And I know that the song is thinking a lot about gentrification, and I’m wondering about how you two think about communities really valuing art.

DM: I like to think of that line as community and real estate and how the two differ. Real estate is something where people live there and create communities in the real estate, and communities create value. And then there’s people who put their money in real estate and use it like a bank. And they don’t work together. It’s a real problem, because the people who are known to make communities thrive tend to get priced out when they actually make something happen. Starbucks can come into an already thriving community and they profit off the people who are living there, because the community is thriving. However, Starbucks adds nothing, and only takes away from the community. That’s the reality of gentrification.

RLR: So what does a thriving community look like to you?

AM: A thriving community is a sustainable system inside a town or a city, where a community supports each other. People know each other. People feel comfortable borrowing sugar from each other. And if there’s a problem, you can find support in your community. The community employs people that live inside of that community. Those who are employed and being paid are spending their money inside the community, and, therefore everything is enriched.

I think that art is an inescapable reality of the human existence. However, art doesn’t necessarily create rent; it creates emotional wealth and enriches the culture, but can’t be quantified by dollars. Therefore, when you start monetizing the real estate, art gets pushed aside, because it doesn’t bring the money, and it has to be subsidized by the community.

DM: The song, “Frankie,” comes from perspective of a bartender, and, in New York City, bars are a meeting place for everyone. They employ people who live in the neighborhood, and it’s a meeting ground. What happens when rents get high, the people don’t work in their neighborhood anymore. You watch the community that used to all meet up at these bars and coffee shops, they end up being the kind of people who come for a beer and go to bed at night. So, a lot of these places are hard to support, and they get replaced by places that don’t have substance. They’re the kind of places that play stock music, as opposed to be a rich cultural hub that supports its community.

RLR: There’s a thread in this in terms of how we tend to get access to music now, which is the expectation that it’s free, and there’s no cost…

AM: If I could interrupt you, I think that there is a cost. We’re willing to pay it, without realizing we’re paying it: and that cost is constantly being advertised to. And that does represent a cost because music is the anti-advertisement, yet musicians are being forced into sponsorship to pay the bills. It’s a deal with the devil, in a sense, but it’s the only way that we can survive and make music. It seems free, but there is a cost.

RLR: So how much does that impact songwriting? Does it constrain you?

AM: I would say that it doesn’t, only because we operate on the assumption that sincerity is what people connect with. Advertisers are constantly trying to find sincerity, because they’re basically lying to people all the time to sell a product. So, if they can latch onto something sincere, then that’s going to appeal to them more. I wouldn’t let advertising constrain my creativity in any way.

So, turning back to the record, “In The Nighttime,” provides this bang in the middle of the record, and I saw that the song was developed busking here in Boston. Can you talk about what you learned from busking?

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AM: That’s an interesting question. This record is an expression of us announcing ourselves, and who we are, and who we are is just as much an expression of where we come from. Just as David was bartending and writing songs about his experiences there, part of my experience was living in Boston, playing for a living in the subway. And that was me honing my skills. I was able to play for four hours a day and experience an incredible amount of energy flowing by me, and feeling like a nobody. Most of the songs are pretty chill and sentimental, but it felt like it was important for us to represent ourselves in our fullest form.

RLR: One of the other songs that stands out to me is, “Angel Island,” a cover of a Peter Rowan song. What drew you to that song?

DM: I learned this song in an altered state of mind at a festival, kind of trying to escape from the craziness of it. My friend, Jesse Dalton, sat in a tent with me and played it for me. I’d never heard it before. And what I know of that song is his version; it hit me so hard. So it’s actually a cover of my friend covering Peter Rowan. It wasn’t until years later, after I’d learned the song and played it my own way, that I heard the original. So it was really my friend’s rendition, and if you heard it, you would think, “That would be a great song for the Brother Brothers to do.” His version is so beautiful.

RLR: How do you think about pulling on the range of instruments you play to create a dynamic album or set, and how does that range play into the development of songs?

DM: A lot of things start for me just on guitar and we actually try and make it as easy as possible. We’ve tried to add cello to certain things instead of guitar and it ends up not being there. So we end up gravitating toward the guitar a lot more.

A lot of the songs are played on the instrument they were written. “In The Nighttime,” was written on fiddle; and the accompaniment just felt better on the cello. “Paper Bride,” the way it was fleshing out, it was just obvious that the cello was supposed to be there. Adam wrote “Banjo Song,” on the banjo. We don’t really put too much thought into what the instrumentation is supposed to be, because it’s usually pretty obvious.

RLR: In a live setting, it’s gotta feel like there’s more places you go, and that’s a huge advantage in holding an audience. Does it feel like there’s less of a need for you to travel with a band because you have this broader range to draw on?

DM: Well, everybody loves a band, because you can get some real ripping players. We really do look forward to a time that we can afford to bring a band on the road. But there is something very special just traveling as a duo and fleshing that out. We’re really fortunate to be able to play these other instruments, because it does provide that opportunity to keep the set fresh and break up the monotony.

The writing ends up being a lot different, because you take different avenues as you’re arranging things on different instruments. If you’re just playing guitar, I play a lot of just cowboy chords and they get a little boring; so it’s good to be able to switch to cello, and have different voicings, so we’re very fortunate to have those options.

RLR: You spent a few years apart, playing in different projects. Can you talk about the value of having had that time working on different things for this current project?

DM: Usually twins will tend to stick really close together or they’ll strive for their independence, and we were definitely the latter. Since we were very small, we never wanted to be doing the same things, we never wanted to wear the same clothes. Like, we hate it when people come to say hi and try to hug both of us.

So, we wanted to take our own journeys and find ourselves individually as opposed to as a unit. We had a really tough time in high school: people wouldn’t call us by our names, they’d call us “the twins.” That kind of made us feel like we were responsible for each other, which is stressful, to say the least, as you’re navigating social norms and trying to figure all that stuff out.

When we branched out and started making a living musically, we definitely didn’t take into account what the other was doing. We just set off on our own paths. And had we started playing music together as a unit, we probably wouldn’t have gotten along together and been able to travel together, because we are twins, and we definitely have a different dynamic than just friends.

AM: We needed that time apart so that we could come back together and have it work.

RLR: So thinking about that dynamic when it comes to a song, what does that process for figuring out how songs you’ve written as individuals work as a duo?

AM: Since we’re older now, we approach the songs with a certain amount of respect, so whoever wrote the song has the vision. And when we bring it to each other, the other one inserts ideas and accompaniment, so we have ownership over the parts we come up with, and the arrangements are pretty collaborative. However, whoever wrote the song kind of has veto power; he can say, “I don’t want this song to be that.”

RLR: On this record, it feels like there is a thread of looking forward or backward, or taking stock. What do you think about the conversations between the songs on this record?

DM: One of the reasons we named it, Some People I Know, is each song is pretty much about a single character, inward looking or outward looking. None of them are real, but some of them are based on conversations I’ve had, or Adam’s had, or experiences we’ve had with people. So as far as the outlook on it, it’s almost like a character study in humanity, in a way. We spend a lot of time with people. And we really love hanging out with people, and joking around, and really getting deep with people. It’s a fascination. I feel like this is a really good case study of a bunch of different looks into different kinds of humanity.

You can catch The Brother Brothers at The Lizard Lounge on Thursday, October 18 and pre-order the new record here. They’re on tour with I’m With Her and will be back through New England in November, playing Portsmouth 11/10, Portland 11/11, Burlington 11/12, and New Haven 11/14. Tour dates and tickets here. Get out there, folks!

Photo Credit: Erika Kapin