The Growlers release "Hung At Heart"

(L-R) Scott Montoya, Matt Taylor, Brooks Neilsen, Anthony Perry, Kyle Straka

            Down to the Newport peninsula, just off of 56^th St., I have no trouble finding a parking spot now that the crowds are gone and there are mere days left in the summertime season.  Lead singer of local band the Growlers, Brooks Neilsen, is just about to join drummer, Scott Montoya, in the water for a quick session.  They only have three days to mellow out in between tours, but amidst the constant list of band-related things to take care of, the boys detach from a decent swell to tell me about their newest full-length release, Hung at Heart.

How was Coachella 2012?

Brooks Neilsen:  (Laughing hysterically) It was good.

Scott Montoya:  It was hot.

Neilsen:  I felt like it was the first time that we played like a big stage at a festival.

How was the sound?  Those systems are some of the biggest in the country, did it feel like that?

Montoya: Not really.

Neilsen:  It’s all the same shit.  We got a little overly nervous and then we got out there, and it’s the same shit.  I think the only thing we were thinking about was how hot it was.  It worked out.  It’s hard to get people into it when it’s fuckin’ 115 degrees in the sun.

There wasn’t any covering on the stage you played?

Montoya:  (Shakes his head no.)

Neilsen:  There were some people misting other people with mister guns, so I think that helped a little.  It was 4:20pm and they were all stoned.  All in all it was good.

And you played both weekends of Coachella?

Neilsen:  Mm-hm.

Montoya:  First weekend wasn’t as hot.

Neilsen:  First weekend was nice.  We went in, played, and went home.  Second week we kind of stuck around for the shenanigans.  Scott had fun.

Montoya:  I had a lot of fun.

You always have fun.

Montoya:  I was so hot I thought I was going to overheat and pass out.

Neilsen:  I pretty much did.

Montoya:  I didn’t know whether to play faster to get it over with, or play slower and conserve my energy.  I was thinking that the whole time, trying to get to the end.  I just wanted it to be over, it was horrible.

Neilsen:  I drank too much and overheated and fell off of the stage.

You fell off of the stage?

Neilsen:  It was like 10 feet tall.

I’m glad to see you survived.  That’s what the medics and security are for, right?

Neilsen:  Yeah, I fell on security.

Montoya:  Then we went back to a trailer and met a guy that played saxophone.  There was this trailer next to the stage that was really air-conditioned—it ruled—and met a guy that was emotionally scarred by ‘Careless Whisper’ on the saxophone for some reason.  It was really funny.

You just played FYF Fest also?  Was that a little more bearable?

Montoya:  No, it was just as fuckin’ stressful.

Neilsen:  Well, we got to do whatever the fuck we wanted there on the stage, and decorate the stage and do weird shit with projections and whatnot, which was rad.  In the end, it looked really cool and great, but they wouldn’t approve anything that we were doing.  It was like, ‘Nah, you can’t do that, no nipple tassels, no fireworks, none of your own lighting…’

Montoya:  No goat.

A goat?

Neilsen:  We were going to bring a goat on stage.  We also faked Warren’s (of The Abigails) death.

Yeah, didn’t OC Weekly spread it around?

Neilsen:  Yeah, I think they fell for it a little bit.  It was a good, big, tasteless joke.

Montoya:  It could have gone over better…

Neilsen:  Fuck you Scott.

Montoya:  It went over great!

Neilsen:  He didn’t like my delivery, he thought I did it too emotional.  I kind of bummed everyone out.

Montoya:  It was really believable.

Neilsen:  I’m really good at that shit.  I got them to believe Warren (Thomas) died.

Montoya:  There were a few people that started crying.

Neilsen:  And Warren was backstage and was supposed to come out and be like, ‘Hey.’  (Laughing) He just, he didn’t come out…

So that inspired the press release?

Neilsen:  Yeah, they called him like, ‘Are you dead?’  He was like, ‘No, I just passed out for three days.  Sometimes you get a little tired, and I was a little tuckered.’

Montoya:  It was fun.

Neilsen:  It was good, the whole time there was crazy shit.

Montoya:  We had a lot going on and it was a lot to manage, especially when there were people getting pretty drunk.

Neilsen:  It was in the midst of so many things—moving our fucking warehouse out, and we were about to hit the road for a tour—so it was a lot of shit.

The Growler lair is gone?

Montoya:  Lease is up.

Neilsen:  The warehouse is gone, everything’s in storage, and we are road-dogs.  We’re looking for a warehouse when we get back.

Will it be local?

Neilsen:  Costa Mesa or Long Beach.  I just found some great spots in Long Beach, so my broker is hitting them up right now so I can go look at them tomorrow morning before we take off.  It’s going to be bigger, badder, weirder, cleaner.

Cleaner?  You say that now…

Neilsen:  I threw away half of that warehouse in the dumpster.

Were you still a little emotionally attached to that stuff?  I know how you like to hoard...

Neilsen:  Yeah, but I’m finally over it.  It felt good to throw that shit away.

Montoya:  Purge.

Neilsen:  Baby steps, ‘k.  And buying less things on the road.  I’m getting better.

Montoya:  Purge.

Let’s talk tours.  You just got back from a tour…how long were you out and where did you stop?

Neilsen:  Almost two weeks.  West Coaster…  Yeah we went to Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Eugene, Arcata, Humboldt, Chico, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco.  Wow, I think that’s everything.

And you’re back on the road for another tour in two days?

Neilsen:  That one is for three or four weeks.  I’ll get back the 16^th or 17^th, then we play October 19^th and 20^th at Observatory.  This tour’s gonna be really good.  This one is like perfect time of year and they are all spots that we’ve been building.  We’ve been touring for a little while now, so we don’t have to show up to any empty venues anymore.

It just takes time to develop your crowd, right?

Neilsen:  This last one was great.  It was Guantanamo Baywatch and Cosmonauts, who are great people, who party.  This time we jump on with Florida Kilos, a touring band, likes to drink Tequila and have fun.  It’s gonna be great.

You look kinda tired when you say that…

Neilsen:  (Laughs) I know, when I’m home right now I get to just surf and chill…

And recharge your batteries?

Montoya:  Touring is tiring.

Neilsen:  This tends to happen in between each tour, just at least three days at home to surf and be back.  You only need to be home for a short amount of time to get bored, like, ‘Alright, I’m ready to go back on the road.’

Let’s talk about the new album, Hung At Heart.  You write a ton of music all the time, but how did you choose for this collection?

Neilsen:  I don’t want to go through all the bullshit, but the album has been somewhat cursed.

Montoya:  It’s a nightmare.

Neilsen:  It’s been a fucking nightmare.  I mean, it’s too easy—we wrote the songs, the songs were good, we recorded the songs, should be over with.  But the record didn’t sound that good, we threw it away, we re-recorded it.  It took forever, shopped it out, people act like they want to do something, then they give shitty offers, so finally we said, ‘Fuck it,’ and put it out on Everloving (Records).  It was supposed to come out in October.

You guys started the recording process with Dan Auerbach?

Neilsen:  Started with Dan.

Too bluesy or what?

Neilsen:  You know what, we went in there with very little time.  We had written the songs rough-draft and didn’t have time to actually write them into songs.  Then we were touring, we changed drummers…

Montoya:  We just got back from Brazil too.

Neilsen:  Just got back from Brazil, went straight over there, jumped in and recorded 18 songs in ten days.

Montoya:  They weren’t even done being written.

Neilsen:  So we had to get there in the morning, hung over, write ‘em, record as much as we could everyday, and then party with Dan at night.  We got home, and the record was taking a long time to be mixed.  We originally wanted it to be tape, it wasn’t.

Montoya:  Dan just came out with an album too, so he was really busy touring around.

Neilsen:  He was busy and we had taken so long that we had been playing the music live.  We had changed the songs a bit and they sounded better and were better written, so we’re like, ‘Fuck this, let’s go record the record over, on tape, down the street.  We have the songs better written, we’ll take our time and do them right—‘cause it was taking a while anyway—and it came out better.

You never mention Mike McHugh?

Montoya:  Yeah, Mike helped.  Mike did the recording.

Neilsen:  (Laughing).

Montoya:  Mike helped us record.

Has he recorded everything for you guys through the years?

Neilsen:  No, we just did a 7” with him before that.

Scott, how much of the catalogue have you recorded?

Montoya:  I did the earlier stuff.

Neilsen:  All the earlier stuff.

Montoya:  Up until Gay Thoughts.

Neilsen:   This time we wanted to go into the studio, but since it didn’t work with Dan, we still wanted to go into a professional studio.  We wanted to do it on tape, so we did it with Mike, and Mike’s the man, but it was taking a while.  But we did it, we finished it, and the record is supposed to come out November, but they fucked up on production of the vinyl so we missed deadline, so now it’s going to be out in January.  We already have everything set up and people jonesing, so for the fans, we’re doing like a limited tape on Burger Records that’s all the rough-drafts from the record and some extra songs that haven’t been recorded.  So we’re going to have double, and that’s just more stuff that’s cool.  And the CD and the tape for Hung at Heart will be out in January.  October for the Observatory shows with Burger are going to have this tape and we’ll do a listening party for the Hung at Heart album.

What types of songs are we to expect?  Same feel as before?

Neilsen:  (Sarcastically) Nope, we went all dance music—it’s like cross-trance and I have the sound-effect on my voice like Cher…  It’s a little of the same Growlers.  We kind of picked some happier stuff, and some weirder style songs, kind of funkier.  But it’s got everything, some reggae-sounding stuff.

Montoya:  It’s cleaner though, the recordings are better, for sure.  Mike’s really good.

Neilsen:  Better vocals, more in front, just more legible, and we’re stoked on it.  But, after a month of songs, we wanted to hear something new and make something new, and it’s been too fucking long.  This thing needs to be out there so we can go make a new record and move the fuck on.

Baby steps…  So eventually you’re planning on releasing cassette, vinyl, CD, and digital versions of the album?

Neilsen:  It all got pushed back.  I gotta change it right now ‘cause all these people think we’re releasing all that at the show.  We’re still gonna offer a limited cassette tape with Burger that’s gonna be the demo-songs from and some other unreleased songs on there.  It’s going to be that cassette tape, but we’re also gonna do, you buy two days, you get to go to the listening party, you get t-shirts, CDs—all this different shit.

Montoya:  A listening to the new record, not the demos.  We’re having a listening party…

Neilsen:  In January.  Yeah it got pushed back.  That was going to be the whole deal, but, what can I do?  We thought, at least give them something, ‘cause I was thinking, fuck, we gotta pull out the record and bum everyone out.  It’s mostly close fans that are going, so I think they’re going to enjoy the demo songs—our close friends and my chick do.  They like that shit more.

There’s a character about demos…

Montoya:  It’s way more raw.

Neilsen:  And there’s imperfections and things that you get attached to.  I like when you can hear someone coughing or something.

That’s how the 7” felt to me.  It wasn’t perfect, but you listen and you get accustomed and then you love it.

Neilsen:  Totally.

So next year you’ve got an album coming out in January.  Will there be a trip to SXSW or any tours to go along with that?

Neilsen:  I don’t know if we’re gonna do SXSW yet.

Montoya:  South By is exhausting.

Neilsen:  We enjoy it, but I don’t know how much these festivals do for you.  I mean, they go and they see you, and it’s like they’re burned out.  If they saw you for five minutes, they keep it in their head that they saw you, and then you’re back there in a month and they’re over even showing up.  I don’t know, it’s weird.  People are all over-stimulated.  You see a hundred bands and it’s like, ‘Uhhggg.’  And we do the same thing, we go and we just party.

Montoya:  By the end we’re fucked.

Neilsen:  We might do it again this year, but we’re definitely going to tour heavy starting in January.  We’ll tour for five or six weeks, come back for a little bit.

Check out what the Growlers are up to these days here.

Record Store Day with The Growlers

The first signs of Summer finally hit Orange County and Los Angeles today, causing the city of Silverlake to simmer with a sizzling heat. Right around the corner from Echo Park, directly on Sunset Blvd., is the thin corridor of a record store, called Origami Vinyl. On this sunny April 16^th, the guys at Origami have opened their doors to the public to celebrate the Official National Record Store Day. Propped upon the wall rack closest to the entrance is a collection of the Growlers’ previous record releases like Hot Tropics, and Are You In Or Out? To commemorate Record Store Day, the Growlers are releasing a new addition to their vinyl collection, a 7” titled, Gay Thoughts.

Around 7pm, The Growlers roll right up to the curb outside Origami inside of their updated school bus named Lizzy. Taking charge of the wheel is bassist, Scott Montoya. Outside the store, a line is beginning to stretch down the sidewalk, causing a bit of a distraction to the traffic passing by. Inside the sweltering bus, guitarist Matt Taylor, keyboard player Kyle Straka, drummer Brian Stewart, previous percussionist Warren Thomas and the beautiful girlfriends, Brook and Emily, fit snug into their seating areas. One by one, each member exits the bus, presenting their sunburnt faces and tan shoulders to the growing crowd of fans that have been awaiting the band’s arrival.

As the sun begins to wane and the congested lights of Silverlake come alive in the darkness, lead singer Brooks Neilsen, who had driven separately, finally joins the band. After a quick run to the liquor store, the guys squeeze back onto their makeshift tour bus, sucking down tall cans and getting a few puffs in before heading inside. A huddle of pretty female fans linger out front the bus entrance, hoping for the chance to be invited in on the fun, but the guys choose to relax, watching videos together, rather than mingling with the hectic vibe outside.

Inside Origami, the employees are rushing around, attempting to keep the racks of records inside clean, and the crowd outside organized. In the midst of preparation, the phone continues to ring off the hook in anticipation of the free Growlers show about to take place. A little before 8pm, the record store ringleader begins to let the line trickle in bit by bit. Most of the crowd appears to be younger, Los Angeles locals, with a reoccurring image of dirty-indie-surf-skate-artistic-rock-kids. The temperature rises gradually as the fans file in, causing the corridor to radiate with a muggy heat that rises upwards towards the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling. Once the room fills capacity, the Growlers sneak in the back door located inside the pizza joint next door, through the hallway, up a winding metal staircase, and up into the loft storage space converted into a dangerously cool overhead stage.

Eyes lifted up towards the platform catch a clear view of Neilsen front and center, and Taylor off to the right, but because of the sharp angle, not much of Montoya, Straka, and Stewart can be seen. Despite the setup, the blocked vision doesn’t stop the crowd from swaying with a sweaty swagger to the ominous melodies crackling from the PA. Neilsen croons to the crowd, “I don’t know where I am, I think I’m lost in the badlands, don’t want to lose who I am, but I’m lost in the badlands.” These dark lyrics are an ironic choice to share with the audience of Los Angeles locals, considering the fact that morality tends to diminish in places like Hollywood and other surrounding cities.

Outside, another hundred people huddle around the front door, catching a glimpse of the Growlers through the tall paneled glass storefront. Fans have officially taken over Lizzy the bus, peering out through her open windows. A brave few have even climbed up the bus’ exterior and onto her roof, smoking cigarettes and moving their stationary body to the beat of song after song. Beach balls fly back and forth in the crowd, and as more people walk by, the group thickens with more and more of a Growler mob.

Neilsen hangs his feet over the edge of the stage, singing the morbid lyrics of “Sea Lion Goth Blues,” with a serious look on his face, and the contemplation of death on his mind. Right to the edge he teeters, and perhaps he’s determining whether or not to take that final step as he sings, “I’ve just been thinking about my Will, thinking about what mark I’ve made, and if I get killed, I wonder who’ll bring roses to my grave?” The cryptic lyrics continue through the rest of the Hot Tropics tracks played, but, as the extensive set progresses, it shifts towards a more positive outlook. The newest songs, “Gay Thoughts,” and “Feelin’ Good,” are officially introduced to the eager crowd. Although Death has fled from these two tunes, the satire and cynicism of Neilsen’s lyrics intertwine with the reoccurring ideas of moral ambiguity he cannot escape.

More than 15 songs in, and the guys decide to call it a night. But the audience wants more, pleading for an encore. Neilsen gets the nod from the Origami manager, and the PA comes alive yet again. Post encore, the swaying crowd outside cries for another encore, caught in the trance of the Growlers. The record store finally empties of sweaty attendees, fans crawl down off the bus, and the mass dissipates. The band continues to sell merchandise and linger with their devoted fans. From the open back door of the Lizzy, Brook peddles t-shirts and such while Neilsen wanders between the cracks of the crowd, humbly interacting with his followers.

After a full set, the Growlers now have their performance systematically wired in preparation of their two-month long National tour. As they travel, they will release their “Gay Thoughts” all over the country, including spots like New Orleans, Pennsylvania, and New York. The trend tonight consists of youth lingering for autographs, the chance for the surf/skate deviant to meet their favorite band member, and the opportunity for that pretty little female to snag a photo opportunity; all things that will no doubt continue as the Growlers travel on their tour. A few female followers huddle around Neilsen, one exclaiming that her picture with him was a, “profile pic, for fuckin’ sure!” Meanwhile her friend nearby couldn’t believe that, “Oh my God! He touched your face!”

Songs Played:

Wandering Eyes

Tijuana

Sea Lion Goth Blues

Badlands

Camino Muerto

Acid Rain

Empty Bones

Let it Be Known

A Man With No God

Old Cold River

Wet Dreams

Stranger’s Road

People Don't Change

Gay Thoughts

Feelin’ Good

www.thegrowlers.com