by Jane Roser
Asbury Park has become a mecca for great music within the past forty years. Artists such as Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and The Ramones frequently performed at local clubs here before they were a twinkle in a record label’s eye. Add to this impressive roster Brick + Mortar, the indie pop duo consisting of Brandon Asraf and John Tacon, childhood friends who started off playing instrumental shows before morphing into their current band in 2010.
“I was looking for something to do with myself and John suggested I try learning to play bass,” recalls vocalist/guitarist Asraf, “I never thought I’d sing, however, until five or six years ago. I figured that if I could play this music, then maybe I have something to say. I thought most singers had an epic story to tell and I wanted to write songs to be uplifted and to uplift others.”
Asraf is extremely gracious and well-spoken. Our conversation started off with an amusing, laid back chat about Blade Runner and the Star Wars franchise, so it’s easy to see why fans are endeared to this down-to-earth group that describe their sound as ‘controlled chaos’. Speaking more about their early days, Asraf says, “John was playing with a few other groups and I was afraid I’d lose him to another band, so that’s really how we started. I wrote songs about my life and experimented to see if people would accept it and they did. I’d never before identified myself as a singer or front person; at the time I had no aspirations to do this.”
Along the way, they’ve learned a lot about the process of making and producing an album and have received some invaluable advice from mentors, being told that “you’re always going to write another song and writing music is like working out; if you don’t do it all the time, you will eventually not do it at all. Sometimes when you think that you’re going to lose your mind and you’ll never write another song again, that’s when you have to do it for another two hours because you absolutely need to lose your mind.”
Asraf and Tacon collaborate on songwriting with Asraf diving “pretty deep to get the bones of the song. I’ll cut things up and work in a frantic manner because I didn’t study songwriting; I’ll put two or three songs together to create one. The words are usually mine and then John tweaks what I’ve written, providing the live element and he also has great ideas for the melody; it’s a give and take, but the songs are very personal to us.”
Brick + Mortar’s current EP, Bangs, has been garnering smashing reviews, earning 4.5 stars on iTunes customer ratings with one dedicated fan expressing that the band “speaks to a generation that understands the power of digital, but remembers the ethics of analog.” Asraf agrees that while they use digital up to a certain point, the background of a song isn’t as important, “if I can’t sing that song without anything else, then it’s not a good song. The problem with digital is there’s only so much you can do, but no one will listen to it unless you write a good song.”
I ask Asraf how the EP’s title was chosen and he tells me that he’d been living in Asbury Park for five years and the street he lives on is called Bangs, “when I was writing this song, I looked at the lyrics and thought about Asbury Park and how it’s always being rebuilt and tries to come back, but never really quite gets there. We actually re-released this song for the EP and it represents the underdog.”
The official music video for “Bangs” is violent, visceral and not for the faint of heart, reminding me of films such as Reservoir Dogs and The Boondock Saints, but the real inspiration came from Asraf’s dad who was among other things, a real-life diamond smuggler. “I got to identify with the character being a criminal and outlaw. With my dad, I never knew what really happened, but I felt that if he did that, then I needed to do something truly epic. He was on the run for 10 or 15 years and now lives in a hut in Costa Rica. I wrote a lot of songs about him because there really is no good or evil, there’s only shades of grey.”
Brick + Mortar have been intensely touring, opening for Imagine Dragons, Icona Pop and Jimmy Eat World, as well as performing this past summer at festivals such as Lollapalooza and Made In America. On the horizon is a fully animated music video created by artist Richie Brown, another tour after a month long hiatus and fans can also expect their debut full length album, which is in the works now.
Asraf’s lyrics include themes that are based on honesty and unafraid to push the boundaries of both merriment and despair explaining, “I don’t like what isn’t real. When you find something that’s real and digestible, that’s when the magic happens.”
