THE OCTAVE MUSEUM: After struggling with a solo project, Brodsky realized he needed help. |
Last year, after surviving a deal with RCA and returning to indie Hydra Head, Cave In were voted Best Local Metal Band in the Phoenix/WFNX Best Music Poll. Now the band are on hiatus, and various members have gone off to pursue new projects. Singer/guitarist Stephen Brodsky’s Octave Museum have a new album on Hydra Head, which also has releases by guitarist Adam McGrath’s Clouds and bassist Caleb Scofield’s Zozobra forthcoming. Drummers J.R. Conners and Ben Koller have been playing with Doomriders and Converge, respectively. And though Scofield has moved to New Mexico, Brodsky remains optimistic: “It’s very positive and inspiring to see your friends presenting sides of their musical atmosphere and inner workings that you never really saw happening.”
Brodsky had been Cave In’s primary songwriter, and he’d also released a series of solo albums. After struggling with a bunch of songs that he’d been recording at home, he realized that the support of a band might help. At the end of a Scissorfight tour, drummer Kevin Shurtleff sent him an e-mail. “I was joking that we were going to start a band. He hit me back and said, ‘Well, actually, I’ve got these songs and I want to make a record.’ We just got together and started plowing through them one after another.”
Soon Thee Electric Bastards’ Johnny Northrup was drafted to play bass. “Steve had given me the demos of ‘The Voice Electric,’ ‘Kid Defender,’ and ‘Prove Myself, and I liked them a lot and called him up and told him so. Then Steve saw me at a show and said, ‘Dude, I want you to be in my band.’ ”
After recording their first album, Octave Museum realized they were on to something more substantial than a one-off. Shurtleff: “The initial idea was that he was doing a solo album. Then we thought we could do a little bit more with this and play it out.” Northrup: “It became less like me playing Steve’s songs and more like the Octave Museum the band playing the songs.”
Brodsky is glad he has a trusty trio to take on the road, and he’s also happy to be bringing Clouds along for a February Octave Museum UK tour: “It’s really about the whole camaraderie and representing the place that you come from and seeing your friends play every night and being inspired by that.” Of course, the Octave Museum will need more than an album’s worth of Brodsky originals to play every night. Shurtleff: “We spent time working up some cool covers and picked some choice gems that we all liked.” So far they’ve got tunes by the Kinks and Todd Rundgren as well as the Pretty Things’ “She Said Good Morning.”
Brodsky is already at work on a new solo album, but he’s been writing songs that fit with both projects. “I’m throwing stuff at them and seeing what sticks, and some songs do and some songs don’t and we go with what everybody is feeling. Certain songs could work better with different people, so it’s just a matter of who gravitates toward what.”
Clouds’ beginning was more unexpected. McGrath started working at Newbury Comics on Newbury Street “just because I’d broken my arm skateboarding but had no health insurance, so I kind of needed some quick money.” He found a kindred spirit in co-worker Jim Carroll, and the two of them decided to start a band. He’d played with Cave In since he was 15, so starting a new band was a big deal. “I didn’t want to get a singer, because I can’t stand dealing with people’s personalities, so I had to learn how to sing.” His vocals suggest Gene Simmons on some tracks, and though he may still be unschooled, the energy is evident.
“When Cave In disintegrated, I got really bitter about music in general,” he admits. “I was definitely lost and jaded. I was going back to hardcore and thinking about how much it meant to me when I was younger. I remembered why I play music.”
He parlayed that energy into the force that drives Clouds. “There’s definitely some hardcore songs on the Clouds album, but I have the Beatles’ ‘White Album’ attitude toward everything, where I want to do all of my favorite styles of music.”
Clouds took shape with the addition of bassist Jay Cannava and drummer Q. “All of the things that I grew up listening to — grunge, punk rock, hard rock — all of my influences are coming out now at 27 years old.” To keep the Cave In connection tight, he brought in Brodsky to engineer Legendary Demo. “We recorded the record very innocently, with the intention of giving it away to our friends. It’s a whole new thing getting four adults on the same page and starting a new band. It’s definitely a challenge, and it makes me realize how great I’ve had it.”
And if Cave In’s future is uncertain, at the least the connections remain. “We all came out of Cave In the best way possible. We have this great musical community of friends and we all support each other.”
In fact, McGrath is set to play guitar with Scofield’s Zozobra for a March tour with Isis, and he’s even joined the Octave Museum on stage to add a second guitar to “The Voice Electric.” “We’re getting old enough with people married and families starting. And we were together since we were 15. I do hope Cave In play shows again, but as far as I’m concerned, we had a great run, so if it ends with all of us being friends, I’m fine with that.”
