Brace Have Twenty Years Of Pent Up Energy To Expel At Necrosonic Festival

‘We’ve got twenty years of pent up energy to expel on the stage!’

Brace’s founding member, bassist Rod Yates, lays the law down on his bands’ return from the dead at this month’s Necrosonic Festival. Brace also have some new stuff to whet the appetite before they hit that stage.

‘I would love for people to check out the song we put out today, which is called ‘Break The Sun.’ I’m really proud of that song, it’s the first new music we’ve put out since our EP. So, all the songs which we’re doing now come with hundreds of shows behind them in terms of playing together as a unit.’

The band members themselves have not been idle while the band lay dormant, hidden away in a dark dusty attic. Rod himself has worked with Kerrang! and Rolling Stone, as well as a pretty juicy podcast and live Q&A’s with bands like Swedish superstars The Hives.

‘I love doing that kind of stuff, the Q&A’s. I love talking to people. Doing the podcast has been great. We haven’t actually done that podcast for a little bit now. It’s sort of taking a bit of a breather but just being able to spend a good hour speaking to people and really getting into the nitty gritty of their life. I love doing the research, that’s probably my favourite part of the whole job, talking to people and really trying to have good conversations. There’s real energy when you’re doing it in front of an audience and you get the audience involved as well. They get the opportunity to ask questions and that’s when the whole thing comes alive. I ask my questions, but really the audience’s questions are much better and I think the band engages with that as well. So yeah, I really love doing those. They’re really good fun.’

So, while Rod was interviewing luminaries like Slash and Taylor Momsen, what really happened to Brace that they can drop a highly respected record, tour with some big names, then go into hiding?

‘I guess it may have seemed from the outside it was quite quick when we finished in 2005, but with all these things, there’s a kind of a slow chipping away at why it sort of disintegrates and being in a band with five distinct personalities. That in itself is a challenge. When you can find five people you can work with and you’re mates with, which we are still to this day, which is great, but that in itself is tough to find that right makeup of people. Then you’ve got to keep everyone on the same trajectory in terms of what they want to achieve and that can start to diverge. By the end of the band we were just, again, we were all still mates, but it just had stopped being as much fun as it was. It had chipped away for a little while, becoming less and less fun. Then it just got to a point where negative internal band stuff overtakes the positive internal band stuff and you just call it a day. So yeah, we quit, but we stayed friends, which is great!

‘I guess for the last twenty years, I can’t believe it’s been twenty years for starters, but for the last twenty years we’ve just all gone off and Lachlan, our keyboard player, he’s a producer by trade, so he’s been nominated for ARIA’s working with bands like The Jezebels and so he’s always kept his foot in the industry. Tim, our drummer, lives in Canberra, but he’s kept drumming with bands down there. Jamie lives up in Lismore, but he still sees sings in bands up there. Ben, our guitar player, he’s really active, more behind the scenes of music stuff as well. I’ve sort of still stayed in the industry through the journalism part of things.’

Which brings us to Necrosonic and the resurrection of the band, which bares an eerily similar feel to other bands stories of a magician working his tricks behind the scenes.

‘The reason we’re back is because Jamie, our singer, ran into Kent Bartley out of the blue. Kent said, ‘would you guys get back together?’ Jamie asked us and we were like, yeah, we would, that’d be fun! We had these songs, which we started recording twenty years ago before we split, that never got finished. Maybe this is a chance to finish them, we can get them out and we can reconnect as friends again, get back in a room together and play some shows in front of people. So Necrosonic was a real blessing in that regard. We put out a new song today, that’s because we got back together for Necrosonic! Lots of really fun things have been happening and there’s a real enjoyment to it again. That’s kind of it in a really quick nutshell what the last twenty years has been about.’

Kent Bartley is the mogul behind Necrosonic who seems to have an uncanny way of getting bands back together.

‘Kent’s been back when we were playing in the early two thousands. Kent would bring us up to Queensland, book shows for us up there and has always been such a great supporter and such a linchpin of the scene. Just someone who just loves what they do and is so vital to keeping the scene alive. We’ve been lucky and really thankful to Kent for his support over the years and it’s incredible what he’s doing with Necrosonic as well.’

As well as new single Break The Sun hitting all platforms last week, Brace do have a treasure trove of more quality hidden away.

‘Oh look, you’d never say never. There’s definitely more songs. I think we’ve probably got about seven or eight. They just need little bits and bobs here and there and obviously we’re very lucky that Lachlan’s in the band and he can handle all this, but he’s also got a lot of other commitments. It comes down to time at the end of the day. We definitely have another song almost ready, which will hopefully come out before Necrosonic and certainly the idea is to at least have an EP or a mini album ready at some point. We are doing a couple of headline shows in Sydney and Canberra after Necrosonic and the idea was that they would be launch shows for this next EP.’

Some of these new songs will appear at Necrosonic so brace yourself, err, Brace fans.

‘They’ll definitely be sprinkled in, we’ll play all the songs off the EP, which we put out, and then we’ll put some more of these other songs in there as to what to expect. I’m interested to see myself, as you said, it’s been twenty years, the shows were always high energy and pretty intense and tight. It’s sounding good in rehearsals, it’s interesting how quickly it all the muscle memory came back and everyone’s been playing. It’s been pretty good how quickly it’s come back together.’

Interview By Iain McCallum

Catch Brace at Necrosonic Festival on Saturday August 23. Tickets and further information HERE…