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Local Guides
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The Brains
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by
Bill Adams
May 3 -9, 2007 |
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THE BRAINS
Sunday May 6,
CASBAH
306 Main St. W.
905.521.4441
myspace.com/thebrains
It isn’t uncommon for the average coffee–swilling, acoustic
guitar–strumming, long haired artist type folkie to confess that
much of his or her lyrical content is intensely personal but, for
some reason, such a sentiment seems out of place coming from
Rene “El Brain” Garcia. The singer and guitarist of Montreal’s
rockabilly psychos The Brains makes no mistake, however, that
the themes he addresses in his lyrics are immensely personal and
outline the events that both shaped his life prior to forming the
band and continue to chronicle his experiences. There are real
skeletons in Garcia’s closet and truly awful experiences in the
Chile-born, Montreal–raised singer’s life that he continues to
wrestle with now into adulthood. In short, these songs are
Garcia’s life — even if they are a bit allegorical.
“I really want to say that I’m really happy about this album,”
begins Garcia on the phone from his home in Montreal. “I put my
heart into it and it might be like a horror movie, but it’s all true.
All the songs are based on real things — like when I wrote the
lyrics to “Six Feet Under”, it was about how I was feeling when I
couldn’t see my daughter. My daughter’s about a year and six
months old and I wasn’t allowed to see her; I felt like I was dead
and buried for the month that her mother wouldn’t let me see
her. Having to go to court over the whole thing was horrible and it
felt like I was buried and I wrote about it.
“The song “She My Devil” is for some real experiences that
I’ve had with my current girlfriend – walking past graveyards and
things.” Finally, Garcia starts to tell the real horror stories:
“I came to Canada when I was four years old from Chile. We came
here because of a war that was happening there and we were
forced to leave. I lived at my grandfather’s house at the time, and
they literally kicked the door down and told us to get out at
gunpoint. They told my dad, ‘If you don’t leave now, we’ll kill your
family.’ So we were forced into what I thought was a big truck – I
didn’t know it was actually an airplane – I thought it was just a big
bus – and we landed here. We didn’t know the language or
anything, but we got sent to Ottawa and learned French and
English.
“I’ve seen a lot of stuff in my life; a lot of stuff. That’s why,
when I say, ‘I’ve been to Hell and I’m not going back no more’ I
can say it and mean it.”
The Brains came together five years ago on Garcia’s birthday
as a pet project for the members of Garcia’s old band, Vulgar
Daddy, as well as Quebecois rockabilly stalwarts The Alley Dukes
and Grim Skunk. Almost immediately, the band found themselves
with a seemingly readymade fan base hungry for what would
become The Brains’ signature concoction of psychobilly swings,
punk punches and scarifying boogie nightmares.
While Garcia does admit that not every moment of the
band’s career to date has been a bed of roses, he glosses over
any such drawbacks in favour of emphasizing their successes.
“We now have two albums out but we didn’t tour behind the
first one so a lot of people have heard about us, but never seen
us and we’ve been getting a lot of really good response online
and things like that so far,” says the singer. “I don’t know how it’s
possible, but people already know the words. We did a show for
my birthday last week and packed 200 people into it and it was
just crazy; people were singing along, and really into the songs. It
was crazy — I haven’t seen anything like that in a long time.”
Scheduled for release on the first of May, the band’s
sophomore effort, Hell N’ Back, expands upon the established
sound of the band’s debut — and frankly, Garcia is just glad that
he can safely say that he knows people will actually hear this
release.
“This is our first record with Stumble Records, but it’s our
second record and I guess a lot of people must have bought it or
heard it online — it wasn’t very easy to find it here because we
released it through a label in Germany — and it wasn’t very well
promoted at all,” explains the singer of the fate of The Brains’
debut album. “We signed on with them and that was it — no
promotion, and no service. We dropped them an email saying that
we needed CDs and, three weeks later, they got back to us saying
that they’d be $11 Canadian. We had to buy our own CDs! Even
so, people bought the album online — I couldn’t believe it.”
In speaking to him, Garcia is clearly undaunted by such past
problems, and continues to look forward with a much brighter
view now that things seem to be falling into place. The singer is
chomping at the bit to hit the road and show Canada what The
Brains are capable of — in fact, he has even gone so far as to start
plotting the band’s plans after this tour — but, like anything else,
he realizes that each step has to happen in order. “I think this
tour is going to be excellent — the set we’re planning is an hour
long. We’re doing material from both releases and we want to
give the people that come out a really good look at what we do.
We’ve already got plans for what’s going to happen after this tour
and I’m really excited about that, but I can’t wait to get out there
right now.”
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