Making their UK debut this past weekend, The Red Clay Strays played a zeitgeist defining ‘where you there?' set at the Long Road festival that was a pure joy to watch. Touring off the back of new album, ‘Made By These Moments' lead singer Brandon Coleman and his Alabama sensations raised the roof of the Interstate tent and put down a marker for the ensuing run of headline shows to come. We were thrilled to catch up with Brandon and guitarist Drew Nix to talk all about it.
Thank you, both, for your time today, we do appreciate how busy you guys are, particularly during a festival appearance too. We're loving ‘Made by These Moments' – was it a relief to finally get these songs out? I interviewed Andrew (Bishop, bass) and Zach (Rishel, guitar) in April and they were a little frustrated that you had to sit on the songs for a while.
Brandon: Yeah, those two are just antsy, you know? (chuckling) We're very proud of the record, we love the way it sounds and we love the messaging on the album too, so we've been super-excited for it to come out and for people to be able to hear it. It is a relief to finally have it out.
You've been playing most of the songs live for a while now………
Brandon: Yep, as soon as we get new music we start playing it in front of a crowd to see how it works live. Whether it's released or not. Then people put it up on Youtube and that builds an audience for it which lets us know how popular and how good the song might be. It creates more demand for the album to come.
Were there any instances of songs being tweaked after you've played them live at all, as they begin to bed in and breathe?
Drew: By and large, once they are recorded, they are done.
Brandon: When you play them live that's how you figure out how the song should be. It takes a form all of its own and you can see from there what works and what doesn't work. We have ideas in the studio that just pop up when we are not in front of a crowd, right? What if we did this….
Drew: We tweak the songs as we go, listen to them a million times and we record them as soon as we work them up. If a song grabs us or holds our attention long enough we bring it into the studio where the producer can then come into the picture, Dave Cobb in the instance of ‘Made by These Moments.'
What did Dave Cobb bring to the process of recording this time around because Zach and Andrew weren't particularly happy with the way chunks of your previous album, ‘Moment of Truth' sounded?
Brandon: In my opinion ‘Moment of Truth' just isn't done. There was a lot of stuff we wanted to continue to work on with that album but it had to come to a stopping point for several reasons…….
Drew: We were broke!
Brandon: Yeah. Broke and not enough time. We had to stop before we wanted to on that record but ‘Made By These Moments' ended up sounding just how we wanted it to. We got to do everything we wanted to do on it and Dave was awesome in terms of guiding us. We wrote ‘Ramblin' and ‘On My Knees' with Dave too. He likes to stay on the southern side of things whereas we not interested in staying on any side of things! (laughing)
Drew: He's got a real talent for the way the words should sound in a melody which is why he is so good. Sometimes in a song, the lyrics don't always have to make literal sense….
Brandon: One of the best lines in ‘I Wanna Be Loved' is ‘I need somebody to pick up the phone…' Dave wrote that, which is what that song needed at that point. He brings a lot to the table as far as the music but the riffage too, man……
I wanted to talk to you about the riffage on this album!! It's a rawer, rockier album than ‘Moment of Truth' was. Was that a deliberate intention or did it emerge organically during the writing process? ‘Wasting Time' sounds like AC/DC meets Black Stone Cherry.
Brandon: We had written that one before heading into the studio and Dave tweaked the riff a little but we had that one all ready to go for quite a while!
Drew: Brandon wrote the way that it starts and I wrote all the words on the back end. Brandon was in the bathroom of the crib where we were living at the time and he was just calling out the riff you can hear in that song!! I recorded him whilst he was in the bathroom because I thought it sounded cool…
Brandon: Those bathrooms have good reverb, man….(laughing)
Drew: And then about a year to a year and half later I started putting some words to it. I always go back and listen to ideas and recordings that we've made.
When the two of you and Matthew (Coleman, Brandon's brother) are writing these songs are you primarily driven by melodies, lyrics or does it just depend on the song?
Brandon: For me, it's mostly melodies but I do know that for Drew and Matthew words pop into their heads and they use phrases, words and titles to generate song ideas.
Drew: It's just the soup of the day for me! (laughing) It just depends. Some days both the music and words come at the same time……that's probably where my best ideas have come from. Sometimes I'll force myself to sit down and really focus in on an idea that has been bubbling for a while and get it finished.
I don't think I'm the first person to say this but ‘Drowning' sounds like a Chris Stapleton song, if he released it it would go straight to the top of the charts. Is that your best vocal performance on that song, Brandon, would you say?
Brandon: I can't be the judge of what my best performance is. It's one of the most demanding, I'll say that. If my voice is tired on the day, it can be a tricky one to do live but for the most part we really look forward to doing that in the set. If I can't do it properly and it's not the best version, for one reason or another, we sometimes have to leave it out of the set, which I hate doing.
There's a real thread of faith, resilience and redemption running through the songs on ‘Made by these Moments.' Was that a deliberate intention during the writing process or did it just evolve organically?
Brandon: We went into the studio with probably six or seven songs prepared and then the rest emerged from on the fly ideas, including ‘Moments' itself. We hadn't really even worked that song up at that point. We didn't know there was a thread or a theme until we had got all the songs done and then we were like, ‘Oh snap, we have something here!' (laughing) Me and Drew got together and worked on the order of the songs and the sequencing of the album and we loved the way it ran, from front to back…..
With ‘God Does' the obvious album closer and finishing track, right?
Drew: That was Brandon's idea……
Brandon: I was very adamant about that, I wanted that song to be the last song that I left people with. It's kinda the whole point of the album, in that one song right there.
What's the plan for the rest of the year in terms of getting this music out to as many people as possible?
Both: Playing as many shows as possible!
Do you love being out on the road? Are you just road warriors at this point in your career now?
Brandon: I love being out on the road, I do.
Drew: Absolutely!
Brandon: I miss being home a lot just because I'm not creative out on the road, ideas don't come to us out on the road because there are just too many distractions and it's just too much hard work, if you know what I mean…
Drew: Same here.
Brandon: As soon as I've been home a couple of weeks I start to enjoy singing again and the ideas start to flow. New tunes emerge, I want to go and play the piano again and work on the creative side so I do miss being at home for those reasons.
Check out The Red Clay Strays fabulous new album, ‘Made by These Moments' on all the usual streaming and shopping platforms right now.
