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In 2018, Jeremy Hrdlicka went on a pilgrimage to Music Metropolis.
The Calgarian had recorded backing tracks in his hometown, however it was a dream to go to Nashville to file. So he had guitarist Tom Mogan, his long-time writing accomplice within the Brother Bicker Band, file some guitar tracks to take with him. He went to town’s well-known Music Row and recorded vocals for the songs.
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“I wished to be a Nashville recording artist, in air quotes,” says Hrdlicka. “So I booked some studio time after I was there. I used to be there for an extended weekend and one morning I booked studio time. Tom reduce the guitar elements and I went down and simply laid down the vocals. They’ve by no means seen the sunshine of day, however I simply wished to do it for the expertise.”
The expertise might have been short-lived and the recordings largely unheard, however Hrdlicka says it impressed most of the songs on Brother Bicker Band’s freshly launched third album One other Sort of Prepare. Whereas it might have a status for producing formulaic music, Nashville can also be a metropolis with hidden depths that aren’t laborious to seek out.
“There may be undoubtedly a canned Nashville factor,” Hrdlicka says. “Each bar has a band and it’s normally five-piece with a feminine singer and she or he sings all the feminine elements and when the male elements are sung by the lead guitarist, she walks round and collects ideas. So there was numerous conformity in that. A variety of the songs have been the identical. However you can discover some locations that have been off the crushed monitor and there was one thing slightly bit completely different and I used to be capable of finding a few these locations after I was down there.”
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That stated, Hrdlicka doesn’t harbour ambitions to make Nashville his new dwelling. Brother Bicker is a Calgary band, by way of and thru. Scratching a Music Metropolis expertise off of a bucket record is one factor, however the singer-songwriter stated being within the metropolis and seeing the limitless parade of proficient musicians ready to be found affords a dose of actuality.
“I’ve a buddy from school who lives in Nashville and he says it’s the one place the place you will get your garden reduce by a three-time Grammy Award nominee,” he says. “There may be a lot music and it’s so inspiring if you get down there however, on the similar time, in some methods it’s additionally unhappy. All these people who find themselves enjoying in bars are in search of their massive break and the quantity that truly make it’s a very small proportion.”
It’s maybe no shock that Hrdlicka maintains a realistic strategy to music. Whereas he has been enjoying for greater than 20 years, he had a comparatively late begin. It wasn’t till the start of his oldest son, who’s now 23, that he started instructing himself guitar and the way to write songs. His early experiences have been pretty typical. He went from practising alongside YouTube movies to enjoying with pals to going to open-mic nights earlier than forming early predecessors of The Brother Bicker Band. He met Mogan in a Monday evening ball hockey evening of their neighbourhood, though it was fairly a while earlier than he realized he was a proficient musician/songwriter.
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In 2015, they shaped an early model of the Brother Bicker Band and launched their debut, Bucket Checklist, in 2016. Hospitality and Northern Appeal adopted in 2020, an album that produced the slow-burning, YYC Music Award-nominated rocker Breaking Glass. If Hrdlicka’s Nashville experiences confirmed his pragmatic streak, it additionally suggests a eager ear and skill to take in the deep wells of roots-music influences within the metropolis. It doesn’t take lengthy into One other Sort of Prepare to listen to Hrdlicka and Mogan’s straightforward fluency in a number of shades of roots music. For his or her third album, the act expanded right into a seven-piece band that included including vocalists Jennele Coulson and Claire Wilkes. They assist create big-sounding, raucous gang vocals when combining their voices with Mogan and Hrdlicka’s.
The target was to present Brother Bicker the form of unhinged, shouty harmonizing discovered on songs such because the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. It’s simply one of many influences that shines by way of on One other Sort of Prepare, which finds the band’s two most important songwriters mining an analogous soulful nation and rock territory just like the Black Crowes and Tom Petty and the twangier/bluesier moments of Bruce Springsteen. Tunes such because the rollicking, blues-leaning I Simply May, funky-blues of No Straight Traces and slow-building ballad Bottles recommend the seven-piece act is adept at negotiating various roots sub-genres. Most of the songs on the album, which features a reverent run by way of The Greg Kihn Band’s power-pop 1981 gem The Breakup Tune, sound custom-built for the stage.
“It’s the place we shine,” says Hrdlicka concerning the band’s stay act. “We’ve acquired numerous power.”
Brother Bicker Band will play The King Eddy on Jan. 6 at 8:30 p.m.
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