Interview: The Brightside Suicides play Smith’s Olde Bar tonight
October 18th, 2009 by bknight in Music news
By B. Knight
It’s always great to capture the grind of a band that shows serious promise before they get gelled-to-perfection hair, a publicist and a Crackberry, because you can truly get a sense of who they are versus the image created for them. (Did someone say Maroon 5?) The Brightsides Suicides would certainly qualify as that gem. The five-member band from Dothan, Alabama has come to Atlanta in search of big music dreams and we’re catching them right in the middle of their REM cycle. You may have seen them at local venues such as Sweetwater, XI in Decatur or Uptown Loft as their following continues to grow. Their eclectic sound includes musical influences such as Radiohead, Modest Mouse, Marvin Gaye, the Beatles and Okkervil River to name a few. You’re definitely in for some dope instrumentation.
The Brightside Suicides have only been in existence for a short time, but have created quite an underground buzz both in Atlanta and their home state with the EP entitled Starring in a New Diary. The bandmates gave us the scoop on why we should care and why others already do.
I’m sure you get this all the time, but how did you all come up with the name, the Brightside Suicides?
The Brightside Suicides: Seth, Ben and I [Patrick] were all trying to come up with band names. One night, I was sitting around trying to think of different contradictions and how they related to me and us as a band. The name just somewhat came to my head — Brightside Suicide. We debated having “the” in the title and thought the “the” fit and flowed better with name, so we added the “the” and hence the name, the Brightside Suicides.
Ok, so who’s on what?
TBS: I’m [Patrick Whiddon] on vocals, rhythm guitar. Richie Gurrell, bass. Seth Burkett, lead guitar. Greg Coker, guitars, mandolin and banjo. And Ben Patterson, drums. We have a guy, Chris Wilson of the Barnstormers, filling in for us on the cello and keys. So we’ll also be trying out string players, and piano/synthe players as well in December hopefully.
From looking at your MySpace page, you guys are getting quite a buzz both here in Georgia and Alabama, how do feel about that?
We feel great about it. It feels fucking awesome. We just love that people enjoy what we are doing and come out to see our shows and support us. It’s great people are listening to us on MySpace (myspace.com/thebrightsidesuicides), Lastfm, etc., and watching our videos on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-5hSJ0P7B8). We are also going to have new stuff coming out on both soon. We are actually about to add new live clips this week, because people are wanting more, and we love that. Hopefully it’ll only continue to get better for us. The crowds keep getting bigger and we are gonna strive to just continue getting better not only for us, but more importantly for the people who do enjoy what we are doing.
You say in the song “Broke Down in Roswell,” “Just some boys raised by wolves in a deep dark den way back in the woods….” What inspires your lyrics?
Seth Burkett and I [Patrick Whiddon] write the lyrics to our songs, and it really just depends upon the song. We probably value our lyrics more than any other part of our music, besides maybe the melody. That particular line you mentioned is actually about alienation from society and the conflict between societal values and innate desire. Anything from relationships to societal conflicts to religious beliefs are all inspirations with our songs. Some of the songs are more personal, and others are more fantastical or character driven.
You guys also have a little mini music video to that song “Broke Down in Roswell.” I love it.
That was just us having a great time. We like to shoot footage of us just hanging out, and playing and what not. That’s pretty much how that video came about. Seth Burkett made that video, and he did a great job on it. He just took different footage of us all hanging out, doing what we do and made a homemade video out of it. We never realized at the time we were shooting a music video or anything, we were just having a great time hanging out and playing music. We love it.”
I read in your bio that you guys played your very first show and second show all in the same night. How was that?
It was great. We got to play in our hometown in front of all of our friends and family. The turnout was amazing. The actual show part wasn’t so hard, I’m sure we were all a bit nervous, but we just love to play. So we were stoked just to get to play and actually do it in front of people. Also our second show that night lasted over three hours, so we definitely got our feet wet from the get go. Actually at our first show — funny story, how we even got the show. This girl wanted us to play an art charity event in our hometown, but she also got us a paying gig at a club close by. She got us a show with them not having any idea who we were or by hearing any of our music. She told them we were a big deal and that we were huge in Atlanta. She got someone else to fake as our manager and negotiate the finances for the show. She even gave them a CD of us, which was blank, because we had no music recorded at the time. Meanwhile, we had no idea this was going on. She called me one night and was like, “I have you guys another show at the District making pretty good money.” I was like “Really, that’s awesome, how’d you manage that?” And then she told me what she had done. So it was pretty amusing to us. We kind of faked the whole time like we were bigger than we were to the owners and what not. Meanwhile, I accidently said at one point during that show that we were happy to be there and that it was our first show. Anyhow, kind of a funny story about our first show. I still don’t think that venue knows about that, though now, I don’t think they’d really care that much. We are their biggest draw, and we make them shitloads of money every time we play there.” (laughs)
What else can Atlanta expect from the Brightside Suicides in the near future?
More shows, more songs. We really want to reach new people and new crowds, as well. We always love playing in front of new people. There is nothing better about playing music than reaching out to new people. Atlanta is a great place for that, with an excellent music scene. We are taking December off to compose new songs — hopefully a full album in the next few months. We are working on that. We have five members in the band who all write their own parts, so the songs can take some time. That is why we are taking a month off to work on new material. Every member brings something new and fresh to each song we do, which does make the songwriting process a lot more interesting, though it does tend to take more time than most probably. It’s a lot of fun though, and a lot of creativity stems from it.
The Brightside Suicides. With Michael C. Smith & the Neighborhood, and Justin Trawick. $5. 7 p.m. Smith’s Olde Bar, 1578 Piedmont Rd. 404-875-1522. smithsoldebar.com.
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