Burden Brothers

Ep #1

CD permanently out of stock. Sorry!

Texas-sized rock from former Toadies lead singer and former Reverend Horton Heat drummer.

tracks

: 1 Beautiful Night
: 2 Buried in Your Black Heart
: 3 Hang Your Head
: 4 Your Fault

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By Location

USA: Texas

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notes

Last summer, when Todd Lewis reluctantly pulled the plug on his 12 year-old band the Toadies after his bass player walked, he decided he wanted nothing to do with music for a good long while. "There's never a good time for your band to break up," he allows, "but it was a bad time." Completely dejected, Lewis was determined to just lay low and quietly go about the business of wrapping up all the loose ends left from the Toadies. The last thing on his mind was starting a new band. But within a matter of weeks, that resolution was shot to hell, and The Burden Brothers were born.

The brainchild of Lewis and longtime friend Taz Bentley (formerly drummer for Reverend Horton Heat and Tenderloin, as well as a current member of Izzy Stradlin's band), The Burden Brothers is as much a concept, an experiment, as it is a band. Make no mistake, this is no side project - "this is the gig," stresses Lewis - but neither Lewis nor Bentley has much interest in going about their Burden Brothers business in a conventional fashion. Their game plan, while innovative in concept and details, is in theory elementary: throw out all the headaches that accompany the process of being a music maker (and fan), and keep all the good parts.

Missing from the equation? The pipeline-clogging middle man - i.e., a major record label - that inevitably slows down the process of getting songs to fans, or sometimes stops them from ever being heard or even made in the first place. (Lewis knows all too well what that can be like; Hell Below/Stars Above, the Toadies' second album for major label Interscope, was released an epic six years after the band's platinum label debut, Rubberneck). He readily admits that working with the Burden Brothers has already re-lit his fire.

"We already have two songs finished, they're mastered and they're on a compilation," Lewis says in wonderment, referring to the first two Burden Brothers tracks - "Hang Your Head" and "Your Fault," which were featured on a recent Buzz Oven sampler. "That's never happened to me before, and it feels really good to be able to just go in the studio and put a song out that fast. I mean, I would still be waiting for approval at Interscope."

The Burden Brothers' new project, is a joint venture with Dallas-based independent label Last Beat. The relationship works like this: when Lewis and Bentley are ready to record, Last Beat schedules studio time, and the Burden Brothers proceed to record whatever their creative fancy dictates. New songs are then offered for sale and/or download on the Burden Brother's Web site (www.burdenbrothersmusic.com,) and at the end of the year the tracks will be collected onto a single album. "We'll offer the singles in different packages, with T-shirts or stickers accompanying each one, and we're also thinking of releasing each single as a 45 as well. When each one's gone, they're gone - we like the collection factor."

As can be expected from such a mercurial setup, the sound of the Burden Brothers is an ever-changing work in progress. "Right now, the idea is to not have a style," says Lewis. "That's why it's just me and Taz in the band, and we can bring in other people to record and play shows with. We want to have it open. We'll fall into a sound eventually, but I want it to be a natural progression and not like, 'We have two guitarists, so therefore we have to have a song with two guitars in it.'" That's not to say there won't be touchstones to grab hold of, first and foremost being Lewis' throaty growl of a lead vocal, which on both "Your Fault" and "Hang Your Head" is every bit the seductive monster it was in the Toadies. "We're having fun experimenting," enthuses Bentley. "The good part is we don't have anyone from the record company looking over our shoulder saying, 'That's not quite what we're looking for.' Record labels can steal your soul if you're not careful."

"Todd and I both think, 'We've been through the circus,'" muses Bentley. "In my case and I'm sure with him, we got to go farther than we ever thought it would go. So at this point it's just like a couple of old guys getting out in the garage to work on the car, just having fun with it."

reviews

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This CD is great!
author: Aimee Olvera
EP #1 is great I listen to it all the time with my friend. My boyfriend is pretty tired of it though! I'm going to have get another one for the house. Because this one is for the car.