about
i grew up in a small, super hot town in southern arizona (Yuma). when i was 17 i
dropped out of high school and moved to tucson to go to the university of arizona where
i studied 19th century american lit. i bought a 4track tape recorder with some of my
student loan money. pretty soon after that i started losing interest in school. i started
fucking with synthesizers and old guitars, casio drum machines and cheap microphones.
i even had a beat up sitar my dad gave me. it was broken, but it made cool sounds,
sometimes. by my second year in school i only left my apartment to go to class or get
food and cigarettes. the rest of the time was spent taking acid and recording. my
neighbors thought i was crazy. example: i had a 5 minutes song where i played the
same chord over and over at varying tempos and the only lyric was "clint eastwood," it
was definitely an experimental phase. i think i had about 40 tapes filled up by then end
of that year. i lost the tapes in a move a couple years later. after that i started to call
myself digital leather.
i think the combination of drugs and reading too much postmodern theory (baudrillard,
lyotard, lacan) is what first inspired DL thematically. but i was still pretty much doing the
same thing as always: recording in my bedroom. not caring what people thought. the
concept of DL just kinda stuck with me and evolved. never had the desire to do anything
else like start some side project, or work at a bank. although i did have to work at a
porn shop for a year. that was fucking scary. i used to do graveyard shifts. sometimes i'd
go in there drunk and pass out in my chair behind the register. i'd wake up an hour later
to some creepy old man trying to by a sixteen inch dildo or something.
i've been broke all my life. lived in hovels, squats, drug dens. spending a summer in
phoenix with a dealer in a house with no electricity really changed my perspective on
things. i lost A LOT, but i feel like i gained some uncommon wisdom from the
expreience. dragging myself out of that situation supplied a lot of content for Warm
Brother. leaving that world behind was the hardest thing i've ever done. even though i
get my song material from some pretty bad times, i try to to always approach music
with a sense of humor. nothing over the top. more tongue in cheek style. i've always had
a fanstasy about being a stand up comic. ha.
i've toured around the US and all over europe with all kinds of different lineups: two
dudes with keys and drum machine, four guys and a dancer, no synths at all.
i moved to omaha spring 2009 shortly after touring through there. i really liked the town
and more importantly, i knew some of the guys i met there were meant to be in DL. it
was like fate. they are crazy people. plus, they're great musicians. this is my favorite
lineup i've ever had. they create a cool dichotomy between the recorded stuff and the
live stuff. live, we sometimes sound like a straight up punk band live. the dudes LOVE
ted nugent. it's actually pretty good driving music. random facts about the band
members: austin(guitar) will do ANYTHING. he only fears two things in this world: dogs
and heights. he was a theater arts major in college. johnny(bass) grew up on a pig farm
in iowa and was a high school wrestler. jeff (drums) has a blackbelt in karate.
warm brother is my first proper studio record. it took a year to do. i was touring on and
off the whole time. we used awesome gear and cool old synths and guitars. the whole
thing was done in a big ass house that had been converted to a studio. so it was like
doing bedroom recordings in a way. just on a larger scale. i did all the writing and
instrumentation myself, save for a couple tunes where i had friends come in and play a
drum track or synth track. 99.9% of this record is me and my engineer in this house/
studio getting fucked up and doing weird stuff with instruments. christmas was great. i
spent it completely alone. everyone went to go see family out of town. i walked down to
the gas station to get some food with the $2 i had to my name. slim jim and can of dr
pepper. that was about 8 months into the record. i started mixing it myself that day. i
had seen the engineer work the board enough that i thought i could do it. i was right. i
had to mix secretly so as to not offend anybody. when the engineer heard some of my
final mixes, he was totally impressed. in this recording i was trying to reference my lo-fi
roots while ate the same time having a big feel. i was going for ambience AND
personableness.
the title Warm Brother is a nazi derogatory term for homosexual. i like the sound of
these words together and i love anything provocative. i'm like a junky for provocation
and aberration. i am fascinated with human sexuality. i don't really believe in just gay or
just straight. it's lame to label yourself or others. i like to stay in the gray area there. i'm
all for legal gay marriage though. on that note, i'm also for the socialization of health
care, regulation on corporate greed, and, of course, alternative fuel.
this album, to me, is about freedom: having it, losing it, taking it for advantage, abusing
it, gaining it, defining it, deconstructing it. might sound cheesy put that way, but it's true
i let my mom listen to the record. she said it sounded like nirvana, billy idol, and lou
reed. i liked her comparisons. kinda funny.
i might describe it as electro-acoustic space folk. or new wave nazi fag punk. this is just
shit that pops into my head sometimes.
ultimately, it's just weird pop.
