Brother Moses, popular indie-rock band played three shows in two consecutive days, despite their exhuastion.
Band members James Lockhart and Moses Gomez sat down to talk at 7:30 in the evening. “We feel a little better now that the stage is up and the lights are plugged in, but we’ve still got eight hours left in this day,” James said.
“We don’t have a crew, so it’s pretty much the five of us. I mean, we’ve got a great lighting guy and two great sound engineers, but we’re not making them break down the show,” James said.
“Yesterday caught up with me,” Moses, the band’s namesake, said. “Yesterday was the acoustic show, so we didn’t have any PA, we just brought in our stuff and moved some couches around.”
“You just try to get as much sleep as possible, and if you can’t, then coffee,” Moses said.
There’s no clear description for Brother Moses’ style. The band is best described as an indie-rock outfit, but that label is blatantly insufficient. “Indie” just doesn’t describe their crisp, energetic sound, or their anecdotal lyrics that somehow remain relatable. The band really has an aesthetic that’s all their own.
Brother Moses currently has five members. Moses and James both play guitar, and James does lead vocals. John-Lewis Anderson plays guitar and keyboard and does all the graphic design for the band. Matthew Heckmann plays guitar and sings, and Corey Dill plays drums. Although, before Brother Moses was really Brother Moses, it was just James and Moses.
“Moses and I have known each other for like ten years now. When we moved up here for college in 2013, Matthew and John-Lewis were in a band and they were doing music we were pretty jealous of,” James said.
“We started churning out demos and those guys [Matthew and John-Lewis] heard those demos and were like, ‘Oh wait, we’re jealous of these songs,’ and we both said, ‘Oh, well that’s funny, ‘cause we want everything that you’re doing.’ So, we thought, let’s just fix this problem right now.”
James and Moses have been making music for a while, but still learn from each other’s style. “It’s funny, ‘cause we’ve known each other for a really long time, and we share a lot of bands we like, but Moses and I are always listening to different things,” James said. “It’s like we’re trying to not listen to each other’s stuff.”
The trend carries with all members in the band, which keeps their sound from becoming too trite and static. In a conversation after their show on Mar 5, other members of the band weighed in on their diverse music tastes.
“We all kind of listen to different music. Every single one of us has stuff to show to other guys,” Moses said.
“I think we all have music we listen to that people in the other band don’t like,” Corey said to Moses.
“That’s what I was trying to say, yeah.” Moses responded.
James said in reference to their latest album, “This album is about love. It’s about finding love in your heart for people who are hard to love. It’s about accepting things within yourself. It’s why we end the record with that song ‘Try’, because it’s about really, really putting everything you have into loving people, because that’s ultimately what we have.”
Brother Moses will be moving to New York City at the end of the year, pursuing new avenues in their personal careers and new opportunities for the band. Their newest album, “Magnolia,” is out now.