Powerful and emotional, alternative soul duo 8 Graves is on the brink of greatness. Highlight staff writer Bailey Ziegler had the chance to sit down with member Brent to talk about the future, passion and the balance of life with music. You can check out the full stream of the band’s new EP below.
First things first, how did you get started with music and what really drew you to it?
Brent: That’s a long time ago. I started making music when I was really young, when I was in like 4th and 5th grade through the program that they offered at my school. I originally started playing wood instruments and things of that nature. That was my first real exposure to music. The school music programs were what originally got me into it.
Other than that, as far as listening to music and being a fan of music, it isn’t something that I kind of turned to in order to make myself feel better when I was down about something. When I had stuff going on in my life that was difficult for me to get through, I often turned to it for kind of like emotional consolation. It became a very, very important device for emotional support and catharsis my whole life. Now it’s been something that I have used kind of as a coping mechanism.
I also heard that you both wrote, recorded, mixed, produced and mastered the entire album?
Brent: Yeah, we did everything start to finish, the only hands that touch it are our two set of hands, mine and Nick’s. We have our own studio that we’ve kind of put together over the course of time, ad dumped a bunch of money into it that we really don’t have. Nick more so than I, but yeah, we have all of our own equipment, microphones, etc. I do some basic editing, mainly of vocals, but Nick is really the one that does the mixing, the mastering, the heavy edits, the producing. I’m more of like the vocals and lyricist. I help with arranging songs, and I assist production also, but there’s only 2 brains that get to touch these songs, it’s just Nick and I.
That’s awesome. Then, what is the biggest advantage to that process, and then what’s the biggest disadvantage to only having 2 brains?
Brent: The biggest disadvantage is time. We both work full time jobs, that’s the hard part about trying to make it in music, more so than … Once you’re established and you’re making money to be a musician, all you have to do is music. That’s it. For us, I’m a full time tattoo artist actually, I work sometimes 65-70 hours a week and Nick normally works somewhere around 60 also. He’s an IT guy at an insurance firm. We both have real full time jobs, and the disadvantage is definitely trying to make time to do all this stuff that we need to do. Poor Nick, I have so much respect for him, because he’s the kind of person that goes to work at 7:30 or 8 o’clock and gets home at 4:30 or 5, or 5:30 and then does music until 10 o’clock every single day. On top of that, he puts in 10 to 14 hours Friday and Sunday.
Oh my god.
Brent: He is one of the hardest-working musicians I’ve ever been around in my life. It’s part of the reason I have such a good time working with him, and I respect him so much. That’s why I’ve been making music with him for 11 years. The the biggest disadvantage, is definitely the time and the energy. You have a shitty day at work and then you have to go to the studio, sometimes you’re not really in that creative mood, or you’re stressed out, it’s hard for you to focus. That’s definitely the disadvantage of doing everything ourselves.
The advantage is definitely having complete control, we’re never at anybody’s mercy. Anything we want to sound a certain way, it’s going to sound that way. We never have to try to relay that message to a different person who’s doing our mixing. We always can, we’re going to have everything 100% true to our concept and to our desire, because it’s all in our hands. I think for the project that’s a huge thing, we never have to rely on anyone to get our sound, we can
Yeah, because communication breakdowns are a real problem.
Brent: Oh, 100%. We’ve had situations where we’ve worked with producers that kind of blew it for us. It was stressful, and you spend a lot of money to go record with somebody. When you take all that time, get your songs back and they don’t sound how you want them and that’s very stressful. There’s some quote that, I don’t know who said it, but it says that being an artist, you live at the intersection of wanting to hide and wanting to be heard, something of that nature. For me that’s definitely true, I have a lot of social anxiety, I’m a fairly private person, I stick to myself, I don’t like big crowds, I’m not generally comfortable with the spotlight or in front of the camera.
The cool thing about Nick being the only one I have to go to is that I have this really, really close creative relationship with Nick. He’s one of my closest friends and I never have to worry about being exposed or uncomfortable. I always get to just deal with him. He knows me better than anybody nearly anybody in the world because he’s dealt with me and gets my honest feelings on things all the time. I’m very, very comfortable with him and there’s definitely an advantage, I think we get a better performance out of me because I’m so comfortable with Nick. I wouldn’t be able to be that way with anybody else. That’s an advantage for me personally.
It’s obviously a ton of emotional depth in your work. Why do you think more artists, like top 40 artists, kind of stay away from that like tend to shy away from that?
Brent: I don’t know that they stay away from it. I think, again, we were talking about us having total control of our music, I don’t think that a lot of those people have control anymore. I think once your ball gets rolling it just kind of snowballs and you have people telling you what kind of songs you have to make, people trying to tell you, “You have to make a song that fits this formula.” You can listen to songs and you hear how trendy everything becomes, like that Jack U, Justin Bieber song comes out and now all of a sudden everybody’s trying to make that U.K. where they have smooth vocals and then there’s like a dance breakdown, that becomes the formula.
I think people shy away from these personal connections to their music because they’re not writing it, AND they’re not creating it anymore. You look at song of even the biggest even the biggest pop stars and sometimes there’s 8, 9, 10, 11 writers credited. I think it’s very, very hard to create something that’s personal and emotionally invested in it and emotionally, when there’s 19 hands in the pot.
Yeah, definitely.
Brent: I think that’s a big part of it, that’s just the industry end of it and people wanting to succeed, because it’s a balance of, if you want to be a musician it’s all you want to do, no one wants to talk about it. I grew up in the metal and rock world, I’d never been a punk-rocker, but I’ve been around plenty of IT, being from New Jersey. Growing up around My Chemical Romances and the Armor For Sleep, a lot of those guys have become my friends. People in that post-hardcore kind of culture, they talk about selling out. A lot of bands don’t want to do that, but at the end of the day, if your dream is to be a musician, you still have to be able to put food on the table. You still have to be able to keep a roof over your head. It’s a balance between staying true to yourself and making something that’s commercially accessible.
I think that’s one of the things that I’m very proud of [in terms of being a creative]. We’ve created something that I think is very accessible, I think a lot of people could like it and listen to it, it’s not off-putting, it’s fairly pop-sensible, but by every measure it is easily the most personal and honest thing that I’ve ever created in my 16 years of playing in bands. I’m proud of it in that sense.
That’s good, I’m really glad. I always love hearing when artists are like, “I actually like feel a personal connection to what I do,” because sometimes I talk to people and it’s not there, you can tell it’s not there.
Brent: Yeah, 100%. I have a connection with it to the point of beyond being connected. At this point I’m almost embarrassed at times to have people listen to the songs, because it’s so honest and has a lot to say about a lot of things that I try to hide from people to seem like a normal, functioning adult.
What was the highlight of working on We’re Out There? Was there a particular moment that really stands out to you, where you were just like, “It was so funny,” or, “It was so much fun,” or it really struck a chord?
Brent: Yeah, to me the big moment for me was when we got “Two Wrongs,” because Nick had created the instrumental and I had been working on it for like 3 and a half weeks, and I had been getting nowhere. I called him and was literally on the phone with him expressing my frustration about how I couldn’t write a song. For me it’s really weird, I’ll write a song and people will be like, “What was that about?” I’ll be like, “I don’t know.” Then 2 weeks later I’ll get drunk and have a conversation with someone, I’ll be like, “Oh, shit, that’s like what that song was about.”
For me, writing a song is a lot of times just a way for me to get stuff off my chest and get it out of my system. When I don’t write a song for a couple of weeks or a month or a month and a half, it really starts to weigh on me, it really starts to hurt me. I was struggling with it and I had an hour long conversation with Nick about how frustrated I was, and as usual, he sat quietly and listened to me while I ranted and raved.
I got off the phone with him and I think literally 90 seconds later the song just popped into my head and I called him back, and I was like, “Shit, I have it, I have it, I have it. I have the whole song.” I start singing it to him and he’s like, “Dude, go write it down! Go write it down!” I think that, to me, was a huge thing because I kind of breaking that song and I’m really, really so proud of that song.
That’s awesome. I can definitely relate to that, I have moments when my brain just kind of so focused on thinking about the thing that I’m not doing the thing.
Brent: Yeah, totally.
Getting even more reflective, if you could go back to when you first met Nick 11 years ago, and did you or Nick some advice about starting 8 Graves, what would it be?
Brent: If I could go back, first of all it’s funny because when I first met Nick, we both worked at a Circuit City part time.
Oh, seriously?
Brent: This is how we met, yeah. We worked at a part-time job together and one day, my little sister actually got me the job. I’m terrible at having job. That’s not an exaggeration. Even now at the shop I work at, now I’ve been fired from it 3 times and my boss just asked me to come back. We get in arguments and have fun all in the same day, but my little sister got me the job at Circuit City. One day our boss, who was also a musician, (he was a drummer in a cover band), told Nick that he should bring his guitar and play guitar by the door, so when people will walk in and it would be something cool for the customers.
He was in there playing guitar one day and my little sister was like, “Hey, you want to play in a band, you should talk to Nick. Nick plays guitar, he’s bringing his guitar in today.” That’s literally when I was like, “Hey, we should jam.” That was like 11 years ago, a long time.
Yeah.
I think if I could go back in time and tell us anything, it would be, “Be yourself. Don’t be afraid to create what’s in you without paying any attention to the outside world.” At the same time, us going through those phases is kind of what made 8 Graves possible, because I went through my phase very early on before I ever met Nick. I wanted to be an R’n’B singer, then I got out of that to sing in bands, eventually I got out of that to sing in rock bands. Then Nick played Rock’n’Roll music and got in touch with the very emotional content of the Alkaline Trios of the world. Then he rebelled against that and started getting back into like Prodigy, which was one of Nick’s like superstar hero bands. Prodigy was really up on his list, started getting back into wanting to do electronic stuff, then copying deadmau5 and Wolfgang Gartner for a little bit, that really tightened up his production, made his production skills and his studio abilities just multiply. He was into reading about them and getting better.
While I would go back in time and say, “Hey, just do what you want to do,” I don’t really think that we could have done what we wanted to do without going through those phases and copying those people, getting those musical tools on our belts. It’s important to understand to express yourself and be yourself, but at the same time, I’m happy we’ve gone through the phases that we’ve gone through, because I think in our music it’s very, very apparent that all of those influences are there.
Yeah. Then a little wider, what has been the most encouraging part of your career so far?
Brent: Oh, man! Am I being too much of a misanthrope if I say I rarely have been encouraged in music?
Not at all.
Brent: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, most of my career in music has been nothing but discouragement. I think that’s a very important thing for us. All the projects that I’ve done, I’ve always been pretty proud of and I always felt they were pretty good. I never felt we were as good as the quality that we’re making with 8 Graves, I think that now we’ve really kind of come into our own and are creating something that is on a level that deserves success. The bottom line is, anybody who’s going to get involved in music, you have to understand it’s going to be a theater of heartbreak. That’s what it is. You get up close to someone offering you a record deal and it gets pulled off the table. You get close to earning yourself a good tour and they decide not to put you on, or you get close to succeeding in any regard, landing a big show, and you get told, “Nah, actually we can’t fit you on.”
You spend a ton of money, I’ve been fired from job after job after job, because they didn’t understand, “Hey, I need to take off these days because we have to go on tour, we have to play shows.” You release a song and you hope for a great response and you don’t get anything, which is like, actually it was one of the songs on [about asking for help from some of our famous musician friends and not getting any. I’ve never really been encouraged in music, the only encouragement that I’ve ever really gotten is from us, from myself and from Nick and guys like PJ, that was our guitar player on Love Automatic, he’s from Armor For Sleep, and our very, very good friend Mike Glita, who’s serving as our manager.
Those are the guys that say, “Hey, look, I’ve had success in music and I know that you have what it takes, so keep going.” Obviously my family, Nick’s family are both really, really supportive of us. Sure they have their moments of, “When the hell are you going to grow up and get your shit together?” But I think even that comes from a place of love and support. They want make sure that we’re going to be okay. The chances of success are so slim and if you get into it expecting to be encouraged, I think you’re going to have a rough go of it.
Oh yeah, definitely. I’m just curious, since you said you have done the tour a little bit, have you had a lot of interactions with your friends? Are there any stand-out, not friends, fans. Have there been any stand-out moments? Or like anything of that nature?
Brent: Yeah, the biggest thing for me is always, and I kind of can’t get into specifics just because a lot of it is pretty personal, but I always say I write songs not for me, for them, but I write songs because I have a lot of stuff that I deal with. I don’t fit in anywhere. I don’t generally speaking do well socially, in the workplace, in relationships, pretty much anywhere. I’m a pretty crazy person and I feel a lot of things very, very strongly and I suffer because of that.
The biggest thing for me is always every time I get an e-mail or a Facebook message, back in the day it was an IM. Every time I get some sort of message from somebody that says, “Look, I heard that and it helped me.” That’s what drives me forward. I always say, I don’t know, because of some of the things I’ve got in my life. I don’t know that I love people in the traditional sense of people loving people, but I know that I can love people through music.
Every single one of those moments of someone understanding me, or feeling like I understand them, that sometimes is the closest thing that I really get to loving people. Every single one of them is so special, and every single one of them is so important and so vital to A.) me continuing as a musician and B.) to be completely honest, to me surviving, to me being alive. If anyone hears or reads this and they can think of a time they told me, “Hey, that song helped me,” then I want them to know that that was very, very important to me.
Yeah. Then this one actually might be a little more fun for you. You had to pick one word to describe 8 Graves overall and why?
Brent: If I had to pick one word and this is actually kind of an easy question for me. The one word that I would pick is ‘honest’. Honesty to me is something that has become lost in music. You can’t believe something that somebody says if they’re not the one that wrote it. You can’t believe that somebody who dresses in some weird costume is representing themselves accurately. When I go to do a photo-shoot and I’m wearing a tank-top and a leather jacket and jeans, that’s what I wear every single day. When I tell somebody something in a song, I’m telling them something that I mean, that I wrote, that I sang into a microphone, that I edited, that Nick tuned, that Nick mixed, that Nick fixed, that Nick produced.
Honesty to me is what music has always been so much about, and that loss of people writing their own music, that loss of people being really, really tightly connected to what they have to say in their songs, that’s fakeness. That contributes to the selfie generation. The people giving more of a shit about what they look like in front of their screen on their camera, than what they think and what they feel and how they act. It’s this loss of caring about our minds and our hearts and just focused on our face.
That’s what 8 Graves is about. It’s about telling people honestly what I think, what I feel, not caring, not being afraid to be myself and be who I am, regardless of how crazy or dysfunctional I may be. I am who I am and I think I’m a good person and I try hard to be. That’s what 8 Graves is all about. It’s about being honest, it’s somewhat of a rebellion from the superficial, fake, contrived, manufactured nature of what, not just music, of what our whole stupid world has become. Honesty is important to me and that’s an easy word that I would always love to have associated with anything that I create.
Will you guys be touring in the near future? I didn’t really see anything about a tour coming up and I was curious personally, so I figured why not?
Brent: Yeah, we’re trying now to establish just getting out and playing shows. I’m a big believer in spending our time usefully, because our time is very limited, as I spoke to earlier. We put in for shows that we think can help us. Unfortunately we’re at the point where we can’t do the whole grass-roots, play 90 shows a month thing. To me I tried to replace some of that grass roots outreach through doing commentary videos, through doing interviews like this, that kind of get what I’m about out there.
Stuff like this is super important to me, every time I do an interview with someone I always thank them for taking the time to listen to me ramble – because I think that, thank you. I think the message behind what we’re doing is maybe twice as important as the actual music. That’s like really an invaluable tool for us, but we are right now putting in, I guess we call it a bid, not that we’re spending money. I don’t really know what the proper term is, but we basically put in to be considered for shows.
We’re putting in to get on put on shows with acts that we believe in, that we think go well with our sounds. I’m pretty selective about who I will play with. We’ve been offered some shows that I turned down, and the people kind of look at me like I’m a crazy person sometimes, because they’re like you to be turning down shows. Again, that goes back to honesty, we’re only going to play with people that we value as musicians.
I’m not saying it in a stuck up way, I’m just saying that in a … I’ve faked it for too long with some of the other stuff I’ve done and now we’re going to be pretty picky about how we chose to represent ourselves, because it’s all about not being contradictory to our methods and not being a contributor to the superficiality of some of the music that happens to go around now. We are trying to find shows and tours and we’re actively seeking it now. Hopefully for the end of this year, early next year we’ll be getting out and meeting people in person, because that’s what I think a big part of anything that people [like 00:29:50]. While these interviews and me doing videos on the internet and stuff, are awesome, it’s really gratifying for me to get out and shake somebody’s hand.
Yeah, definitely. Also, I think it’s really awesome that you’re being intentional about who you play with.
Brent: Absolutely.
That’s why I was curious, but then you explained the job thing, I was like, “That probably is why I didn’t find it right away.”
Brent: Yeah, it’s going to be a little tricky for us, especially coming out of a new project. We don’t have the street cred. We’ve never been the cool kids, being involved in the New York City music scene for as long as I have, I’ve never been on the A-list. I’ve never been one of the cool kids that everybody wants to hang out. I’ve always been kind of the outlier.
Like I said, I’m not the social butterfly that a lot of musicians are. A lot of the reasons you’ve ever heard of any of these musicians from New York City is because they’re social butterflies. That’s kind of never been my thing, I don’t think that partying 6 days a week should be a part of being a musician, but unfortunately in New York that’s kind of a big part of it. It’s going to be a little tricky for us to land the shows that we want to land and to put ourselves in the company that we want to put ourselves with.
It’s important to me that we stay true to ourselves. Our poor manager, Mike; I make him pull his hair out a lot and he already has short hair, so he’s got little to spare. I definitely am a little difficult to deal with in that regard, because I only want to play with people that I respect.
Yeah, and I understand that.
Brent: I tell this story a lot. I’ve been to L.A. a couple of times to hang out with some of my friends who are musicians. None of us were ever really that big. II have a couple of friends that were already successful, but most of us are up-and-comers. There are 2 different kinds of people, the people that drive around Hollywood and go, “Wow, look at all their clubs here! I’m going to play there one day.” Then there’s the type that see the giant mansions and go, “See those giant mansions, I’m going to live there one day.” That’s an important distinction, the kids that want to live the life and the kids that want to perform.
Last question. I think you’ll enjoy this because it’s actually more reader-focused and it’s all about your guys’ message. What piece of advice do you have for our readers?
Brent: For me the biggest thing, it’s kind of the combination of what I said I would tell myself, is about being you. I think that that’s kind of a cliché thing to say, I think everyone gets that piece of advice thrown at them a thousand times. To me the two biggest things that I would like to say is, love each other, it’s an important thing to me. There’s so many people and when we look around and we, you walk down the street, you walk past 10 people, each one of those people are dealing with something.
My tagline that I always kind of use is, we bleed together, no one fights alone. That’s what We’re Out There is all about. We’re all fighting our battles, we all have our things that we deal with, but those battles, we’re all connected as human beings and those battles are all part of the same war. That’s the idea of We’re Out There, that sometimes we’ll feel alone. We’ll feel like what we’re going through, we’re the only person in the world dealing with it, and that’s not the case. We’re all together and we need to support and love each other and take care of each other, because you never know what the person who’s sitting next to you on the train, or the person that’s walking by you in the bar, you never know what they’re going through.
I think we’ve gotten to a place in our world that there’s a lot more people being mean than being nice and I think that that’s kind of silly. We’re all fighting and just remember to love each other and remember that we’re all struggling and we can all give each other a lot of help with a little bit of love.
