MUSIC

Brandon Decker lets his inner rocker take the wheel and finds a cure for boredom on 'Snake River Blues'

Ed Masley
The Republic | azcentral.com
Brandon Decker

By the time he came in off the road after touring the country almost three times in support of last year’s model, “Patsy,” Brandon Decker was feeling a little like that line in “Dancing in the Dark” where Bruce Springsteen sings “Man, I’m just tired and bored with myself.”

He’d recorded the album at WaveLab Recording in Tucson with Craig Schumacher and done his part to try and take that music to the masses. Now here he was, back in Sedona, feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the progress he’d made on behalf of his fifth studio release as decker., the name he employs for his rotating cast of musicians.

“Truthfully, ‘Patsy’ was this all-in move for me,” he says. “And I did everything I could. We really worked that music hard from the point of writing it to me working with different musicians on it during the recording. Then, we toured the country with it damn near three times. And I really hoped that I was going to be able to reach a lot of people. But then it just kind of didn’t hit what I had hoped for.”

It didn’t help that he’d begun to view his own recordings as “laborious,” noting that “Cellars” on “Patsy” is nine minutes long.

“A lot of songs just had these long builds,” Decker says, “especially on ‘Patsy’ and ‘Slider,’ (his previous album), these five-, six-, seven-minute songs. I was just really bored of it all. And when I got home, I was just really disenchanted, depressed and frustrated.”

'I want to ... make some rock and roll'

Decker.

He found salvation in old Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry records and an album of “dark, garage-y s—t” called “Carrion Crawler/The Dream” by San Francisco’s Thee Oh Sees.

“And I was just like man, I want to write some I-IV-V, three-minute songs and, you know, make some rock and roll,” he says. “That really was the thought there. I wrote every single one of these songs in probably a two-hour sitting. We’ve had so much fluctuation in members because of the work load, I wanted it to be the kind of stuff where I could just send it to someone and they could learn it and show up and play.”

At that point, Decker was not known for rocking out.

“There’s always been this talk,” he says, “especially around Arizona, since that’s where I’m from, like ‘Decker’s too mellow,’ ‘Decker’s too acoustic,’ not necessarily saying we weren’t good, but just like, you know, ‘We can’t give ‘em this spot because the BPMs are f--king too low” or something. That’s not an exact quote. But it is an exact sentiment. I felt problematic. And it’s like you wouldn’t tell Pink Floyd their BPMs are too low. Everybody can’t be a bar band, you know?”

And having decided he wanted to make some rock and roll, the choice of a local producer for “Snake River Blues,” his new album, was obvious -- Bob Hoag at Mesa’s Flying Blanket.

As Decker says, “Bob’s got that gear and that ear and that mind to do some gritty stuff. He did the Love Me Nots records and Gospel Claws. I knew Bob could make a rock and roll record. And I knew he was methodical and a little bit crazy. Like me. I’ll tell you what brought me to Bob, is I felt like on the records I had made, I had run into people who really cared and were into it but didn’t quite have the ear and the prowess with the gear or I’d run into people who were super qualified that didn’t have the heart. And I knew if I went to Bob that he would obsess over the music. What I never thought I had was someone who cared enough to take my vision elsewhere and who could. And that’s why I picked Bob. I told him what my vision was and that I wanted to come in and let him take it where he takes it.”

And that vision was?

“Like Decker meets blues rock and roll but not in a Black Keys kind of way.”

MORE:Captain Squeegee unplug and share 'Dually Noted' video details | The Haymarket Squares bring punkgrass political protest to the azcentral studio concerts | Get the Things to Do app | Latest concert announcements | Top concerts this week

'Snake River Blues' rocks

Hoag says the Decker recordings are among the more satisfying he's worked on in a while.

"It's always exciting to work with people who are very passionate and dedicated to the music and art they make," he says. "It just really helps you to feel like you're making something special, and I certainly felt that way about this record. I think we both did. Brandon is very focused and driven and can be really blunt and I kind of knew that going into it, and I think I was worried it was going to be challenging. But that also sort of helped me rise to the occasion. It ended up not really feeling challenging at all. Maybe we just complemented each other well? It just ended up being a really great experience, and I feel lucky that I got to help him bring his vision out of his head and into this plane of existence."

There's no mistaking Decker's vision on “The Holy Ghost,” the new album’s relentless lead single and opening track, for which director Matty Steinkamp shot a great new video. The single rocks with both conviction and a ghostly sense of atmosphere, arriving at some sort of gothic rockabilly swagger with a trembling lead vocal from Decker and excellent use of dynamics from Hoag. It feels a little the Bad Seeds or maybe the Gun Club channeling Jerry Lee Lewis. To Decker's ears, it's more Chuck Berry. But the point remains, it rocks.

"The Holy Ghost" is one of five songs he and Hoag recorded for “Snake River Blues,” which Decker is calling an album but most people are inevitably bound to think of as an EP.

Decker had his reasons for keeping the sessions to five songs. For one, he didn’t have the kind of resources it takes to make a 12-song album at a place like Hoag’s. And as Decker explains, “It felt imperative to me that we come back on the heels of ‘Patsy’ immediately.”

Another factor? By the time he hit the studio with Hoag in April, these five songs are what he had.

“Every album I’ve made has been a group of songs that came in a spurt,” he says. “Those five just came. And it was like, ‘This is it. This is what we’re gonna do and we’re gonna go take it to New York.’ All the albums are a snapshot of some period and every bunch comes out how it’s supposed to. This is just ‘Snake River Blues,’ you know? It’s these five songs.”

New York residency, Matty Steinkamp documentary

decker.

The idea of doing a residency in a New York venue to roll out the record was integral, Decker says, to the planning of “Snake River Blues.” There's also a documentary on the making of the album – directed by Steinkamp, who also did the video for "Patsy" – in the works.

“Part of the thinking of the album really,” Decker says, “was that we were in New York in October last year and it was just this beautiful fall weather. It was super romantic and invigorating, like the s--t that playwrights and poets write about. I had never been to New York until last year. And I fell in love with its energy. We got back in October and in November, I was like, ‘I’m writing an album called “Snake River Blues,” and we’re gonna go release it with a residency in New York. And all those plans came together in November. I booked the residency (at Rockwood Music Hall), wrote the album, got Bob on the horn and booked the time for April, made it happen.”

The New York residency is in September. In the meantime, he’ll be celebrating the release this weekend here in Phoenix with a show at Valley Bar.

And despite the tougher rock sound of the new release, he’s standing by the label he’s been using to describe his music for the past few years now -- psychedelic desert folk.

“We started touring in 2009,” Decker says. “And you run into bookers who have no idea who you are or people you’re trying to get to come to your show in Tulsa and they want to know what you sound like. You don’t want to be like, 'Oh it’s folk.' Or 'Oh, it’s rock.' I don’t think very many artists feel comfortable pigeonholing their s--t so we wanted to make it seem like something kind of interesting. There was one phase when the band was me, an accordion player, a mandolin player and a guy who played trumpet but also had a snare drum hanging around his neck. And we called it something like psychedelic white-boy gospel or something like that. But I think the desert always has been this kind of integral descriptor of the music. It’s not psychedelia but it has those elements. It’s not folk but it has those elements. But it’s definitely desert. You would never listen to my album and be like, 'That’s Chicago.'"

MORE AZCENTRAL ON SOCIAL: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest