- Interview with Mighty Brother – Nick Huster (N) & Ari Kirkman (A)
Q: Hey, can you tell us a bit about where you come from, and what made you want to start a career in music?
N: We are based in New Orleans, but got our start as a band over 7 years ago in Bloomington, Indiana. Ari and I were fresh out of college where we had both studied music in some capacity, and came together for one fateful winter “jam” that blossomed into a wonderful friendship and musical partnership. This served as the corner-stone from which we’ve built Mighty Brother. We moved the band to NOLA shortly after our first record, started working with some very talented musicians, and have kept it going.
Q: Did you have any formal training, or are you self-taught?
A: Nick and I are mostly self-taught, though we both studied music a bit in school. We are lucky enough to be joined by Quinn Sternberg (bass), Nicholas Solnick (drums), and Jonah Devine Tarver (saxophone), who are all formally trained musicians. It’s phenomenal to be backed by such amazing players! We pretty much get to throw whatever at them and they bring it to life!
Q: Who were your first and strongest musical influences?
N: For this album, I individually have to say Pink Floyd. That was probably my first favorite band at 13 or 14 years old, and the first time I heard of a concept album with The Wall, though Final Cut has always been a personal favorite. From my early-age excitement about that group, to being here now with a band with our own concept album, there’s probably a pretty straight correlation.
As a band, we’ve been influenced by all sorts of groups. Ari and I listened to a lot of Alt-J & Decemberists early on in our co-writing, but also love contemporary indie, rock, and folk bands like Fleet Foxes, Avett Brothers, and Grizzly Bear and even more alternative and prog-rock stuff like Radiohead and Porcupine Tree.
A: Yeah, Nick just listed some of the most formative bands for me… I would say these artists are integral to what I do now, but I have a lot of roots in old country and singer-songwriter era music that my dad listened to. Folks like Willie Nelson, Jim Croce, Johnny Cash, a lot of Dylan in college, and when I got my first set of wheels in high school I was listening to the classic rock station with my brothers every chance I got.
To jump off what Nick said, I think my first concept album may very well have been Pink Floyd’s The Wall, although I didn’t know it was a concept at the time. Friend of mine in grade school lent me MCR’s The Black Parade, and that might have been my first foray into concept album territory before my metal phase with Between the Buried and Me, The Contortionist, and Periphery. I would say I still write some heady transitions and riffs purely because of those influences! *laughs* Lots of measures of 2!
Q: You have just released your new album ‘Azimuth’. Is there a story behind it?
N: There is! A story behind it, and a story in it. It is a concept album that is kind of retelling the hero’s journey. We wrote it during the pandemic when we were feeling a bit unmoored as artists–I think everyone was feeling that way–and it is mostly about staying true to yourself and your personal journey. Finding your north while navigating difficult times.
A fun story about the album is that we got to write it on the Oregon Coast at a BNB called Turtlejane’s. A friend-of-our’s grandma runs the place, and it was vacant due to Covid. She gracefully let us stay there for almost a month to focus on writing. The album was fully conceived and written with that Northern Pacific ocean-view backdrop.
A: To add to that, I think we were thinking a lot about the audience. Like, a lot! We had gone from touring 3 months out of the year to 0, and we were feeling the loss. But I think it also got us excited to share what we were making one day, at least it did me. The drop in the song “Azimuth” at the last chorus was definitely a part I go back to. When we were shaping that tune, I imagined how the audience would groove and flow with the music and transitions… It changed a lot with the full collaboration with the rest of the guys, and performing the tunes on the road felt like fulfilling some prophecy we wrote for ourselves. Super grateful to the audiences we’ve interacted with this past year.
Q: What is the message of your music?
N: We like to tell stories in our songs. This album has a lot of repeated themes that have been prevalent for musicians through the pandemic: loss, listlessness, the importance of art, rebirth, etc. But I think there is this tone of (cautious) optimism throughout it. This go-out-and-get-it, tell your own story, “baby you got this!” mood that always seems to wiggle its way in. We’ve always been inspired by folks who commit to their passions and are unapologetically themselves, and we hope to be in that number and encourage others to be as well.
A: Yeah, I think about what we channel in our songwriting and in our process a lot. The songwriting space has always felt really positive between Nick and I, and Quinn and Jonah bring in the cool factor to the process. The space feels very invitational. It might feel like work sometimes, but it’s also play and full of joy. Writing with these cats is very fulfilling, and I think we try to communicate that invitation to others through our music. You might see our posts on the gram during tour and think, wow, they’re really out there doing the thing! And it’s a lot of work on the back end, but the experience of performing together and interacting with people across the country has been profoundly wonderful. Even in the recording process we try to capture something LIVE, like you might be listening to it there in the venue. We want folks to feel invited to have fun with us, to check out a show, and to feel empowered to make music and fun of their own.
Q: What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?
N: Contemporary rock with a saxophone! New Orleans Indie Rock! Those are our general tags for the music. But we hope people enjoy the storytelling in the songwriting, the melodic interplay between 2 lead vocalists and a saxophone, and the creative rhythm arrangements that Quinn and Solnick bring to the tracks. Keep an ear out for auxiliary percussion like congas, djembe, and clave in songs like “Every Drop of Moonlight” and “Midnight Moon” and other fun elements like the horn section Jonah arranged for “Doldrums” or the sweeping choral arrangement Ari composed on “The Breakers”.
Q: Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfillment as the amount of work you are putting into it, or are you expecting something more?
N: That feels like a loaded question, haha! I think as a musician you need to find fulfillment in doing the thing itself. Of course we hope that our music continues to reach more and more ears and the project builds and gets bigger and better opportunities with each release (I think anyone who does this would), but that’s because we believe in the music and that what we are putting out has the potential to entertain and impact listeners in a meaningful way. As a band, though, we are very satisfied with the music we are making and fulfilled by working together to create it, and all the friends, family, and fans that have come together time and time again over the years to show their support and love for it. If we’ve inspired just one person to pick up songwriting, or painting, or whatever their passion may be (and I’m confident we have), then I am very very fulfilled!
A: Yeah, super loaded! Um, personally I’d say that I think the entire process has become more fulfilling over time. You know the pandemic was an unfortunate opportunity to take stock, and I really missed performing, seeing my friends on tour, visiting new communities and making new friends. I think the project has been a bridge for connection, and I think we’re communicating something authentic and accepting to the folks we meet. Like Nick said, if one tune or one performance was inspiring to one person, it’s worth it! There’s a lot of pressure to know what you want to do for the rest of your life and few folks will tell you that maybe music is a viable career. But it’s not ever been about money. Sustainability is always nice but being able to connect with communities and work closely with so many talented creators is the real deal.
Q: Could you describe your creative processes? How do you usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song?
N: Ari and I both write a lot (like a lot) of songs individually and have a stack of ideas and incomplete tracks. Through the pandemic we actually started a weekly songwriting club called Feedback where us and other songwriters could meet to share new ideas and give each-other feedback on them. This lasted for the better part of 6 months, and a lot of the songs that ended up on this album were born from weekly challenges like “write an acapella song” or “go back into your archives and finish one!” From there, Ari and I usually meet and try to finalize the general form and lyrics together, often co-writing verses or choruses and manipulating the form. But it doesn’t truly become a Mighty Brother song until we bring it to a rehearsal with the band and let Solnick, Quinn, and Jonah work their magic on it. We try to maintain flexibility in the form and arrangement so that they can really thrive and show-off their own musical ideas.
Q: What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?
N: Going to be cliche here and just say the pandemic. It was incredibly hard to navigate as a 5-piece band that had made most of our living from being road-warriors (In 2019 we played around 100 shows). We had a double album release already scheduled for 2020, and it really hit us hard to have to cancel all the support dates and pivot to online release only.
A: We like to be out on the road, doing the thing, connecting with people where they are, so that was a big blow and setback for us as a band. We are excited to have gotten through the roughest parts of that time, begun touring again this past year with single releases and our album release tour, and are looking forward to a brighter 2023 filled with more opportunities to do this in person!
Q: On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?
N: I’m sure we probably have 2… Number 1, I’d say, is putting out this record, Azimuth, on vinyl. This isn’t just to plug it (but consider it plugged), but it also represents a real milestone for the band. We’ve always wanted to have something you can really physically hold, and we are so grateful to our fans for showing up and helping us fund it on Kickstarter to make it a reality. It was such a big moment to see all that support flow in even after being mostly on hold through the pandemic, and really gave me a lot of faith in what we are doing. A: Number 2 is every moment of tour magic we’ve experienced. There’s just something special about being out on the road that allows things to happen that otherwise wouldn’t, from an impromptu block party show to 100+ folks back in Montana on our last national tour, to a weather-canceled show pivoted to a new venue on our most recent tour to Austin, TX that ended up being a packed house, I always feel inspired and successful when we are out making it happen and special tour moments just fall into place. We lovingly refer to this phenomenon as tour magic.
