INTERVIEW: Brooks Nielsen on His Solo Work and Stepping Back Into The Growlers' World

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Running Man Press - Vol. 1 No. 5

Brooks Nielsen is the frontman of the influential California-born band, The Growlers. Their sound has been described as surf rock, garage rock, psychedelic rock and several other labels which have simply been boiled down to “Beach Goth.”

Over the past couple of months, Nielsen has released a ton of music, including his solo album, Grain of Dirt. With The Growlers, Nielsen has put out several EPs, remixes and demos. The most recent of these being Feel my Funk and Crisis–released in late October.

Nielsen is known for his distinct voice and his ability to write strong and thoughtful lyrics. RMP was fortunate enough to talk with Nielsen about his solo career and his upcoming plans with The Growlers.

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RMP: You’ve released a lot of music lately, with both your solo career and The Growlers. I read that with The Growlers, the band would pump out a ton of songs, and you would then go through them and write the lyrics. With solo albums, like Grain of Dirt, what’s the process?

NIELSEN: I think it’s always been, you know, I’m always collecting and thinking and dreaming, and it’s like it gets kind of bottled up and then when it’s time to go... it’s pouring out of me and I’m just excited to write. I’ve written with so many different people, and it can start with being in the room with them, which happened a lot in the early days with instruments all over and everyone’s moving around and trying things.

But mainly, it is a little bit… for me, it’s the stuff I’m listening to, you’re communicating back and forth. People bring a musical idea, even if it’s just one part or two parts and I start to conceptualize an idea; it kind of just pours out of me, and then, O.K., I’ll think of a melody for another part and there’s a back and forth. But it kind of starts with me having to come up with something lyrically to make a story start to happen, but not a lot’s changed from the beginning.

RMP: And do you write with/play any instruments? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you play an instrument.

NIELSEN: I dabble, I don’t think I’d ever have the courage to do it on stage. I don’t know, I really daydream when I’m up there, you know. What I’m trying to do, I’m trying to start singing the song and forget about trying to remember the words and just get into a weird, kind of hypnotic mood where I forget that I’m remembering words and just kind of drift off. So to do that with a guitar sounds scary to me [laughs]. It’s like you’re driving in a car for a while and go, “I forgot I was driving,” you know?

RMP: When you get on stage, is it kind of automatic for you? Can you always get to that place?

NIELSEN: Yeah, recently I think I’ve gotten more nervous because I think I’m trying to do a lot more than I ever did, just doing so many different songs and changing it as much as we can each night. I’ve got a whole new gratitude for the thing; I just treat it more seriously.

Back in the day it was just, I don’t know, getting wasted and more, whatever happens happens. Yeah, I treat it more seriously and I can get nervous sometimes, but it’s not enough to cancel or not get up there, you go for it.

RMP: In Chinese Fountain–it was over ten years ago now–you say, “The internet is bigger than Jesus and John Lennon,” and now there’s AI. Maybe you don’t know much about AI though, if you’re not on social media.

NIELSEN: No, I like to read about AI, it’s horribly depressing and terrifying. But yeah, it’s the same thing, I mean, it’s funny, when I grew up it was a strange time, the internet was just coming and we quickly had to adapt. I was in high school and O.K., what is this AOL? Cause we had to learn how it worked… a real human experiment to see all that transpire. And yeah, it really was: “What is the internet?” [laughs] …is what I was thinking and before I knew it, it was everything in a way and it’s still changing rapidly.

So, I do read about it, and I am connected in some way–obviously it’s all around me–but, I don’t like to partake because it just seems very unhealthy to me. Yeah, I think that’s gonna be an ongoing theme for me, forever, writing about, you know, coexisting with it.

RMP: I read that with the earlier albums, you would record digitally and then throw it through a tape machine until you get that more raw sound. How has that changed today–the way you record?

NIELSEN: I mean, we did everything. The first recordings, it’s a cassette tape on a karaoke machine and we’d sing into the mic and we’d record direct. A lot of ideas were just playing songs through loop pedals and recording it on a simple one-track tape.

We did everything, and I think we had a dream of working with tape machines, and then because it was so difficult and we didn’t know what we were doing, we had many problems. Sometimes it would be, oh let's just record it with ProTools and run it through tape to get the sound, but we’ve done everything.

Now, living in the land of studios, Los Angeles, it’s exciting. I’ve done so many different studios. Yeah, it could be in someone’s backyard, but a chance to get into a real studio–we always wanted that. We were just poor and didn’t know how to get into them. We didn’t even know what garage music was. We didn’t want to sound garage, we were just trying to record ourselves, we found out later, “Oh, you guys are garage and you sound like trash.” It was like, oh, we weren’t trying to. And so, I keep experimenting with different studios, and I think it’s more about getting in with people who are passionate and excited about it and that’s what matters. Really, every studio can make it sound shitty, too digital or whatever it is. It’s really up to us being in there and… I don’t go to one studio and go, “I gotta go back.” Anywhere can be special, you just gotta bring the heart.

RMP: And with some of the new Growlers music, you were working with Jarvis Taveniere from Woods right? He was the producer?

NIELSEN: Yeah, we worked with Jarvis at The Ship… or no, it was the studio next to The Ship.

RMP: How was it working with him?

NIELSEN: We love working with him, he’s great, he’s a great bass player and I see him all the time. I keep running into him every Thursday at the farmer’s market.

RMP: So eventually, you have to work with him.

NIELSEN: His wife actually sings some back-ups on one of the songs which is pretty cool because I heard she’s never done anything musical before.

RMP: That’s a good start.

NIELSEN: Yeah [laughs] I think that’s why it came off cool, you know, cause that’s kind of the spirit of The Growlers, she’s not some trained musician, she just kind of felt it and went for it.

RMP: Do things change in that way when you become better at what you’re doing, you know? Because with The Growlers, none of you knew what you were doing at first.

NIELSEN: Yeah, for sure, I think it’s hard to unlearn things. And for us early on, you can have this feeling of, oh we’re not very good, do we even want to share this? And I think me, being the person who was always trying to push people and get them inspired, it’s like yeah, lets do it. One day when we’re dead, we’ll look back at it and go “That’s the most pure form of us.”

I’ve got a son, he’s naturally gifted on any instrument, he’s really musical. And I went to the band that I have now–these guys have worked their whole lives and some of them have a doctorate for music–they’re very very skilled musicians. I said, “Hey, should I get this guy lesions? Should I put my son into lessons?” and these guys go, “No, absolutely not! [laughs] Don’t do it. Later on if he wants to do it, if he’s passionate, fine but as of right now, don’t do that. You might take it out of him.”

And they still think about, “Well, maybe I’m learning too much,” because once you burn it into you, you engrave it into your brain and your fingers just know what to do. I think it’s hard to unlearn it to kind of make mistakes accidentally. There’s a beauty in it, there’s a charm, and I think it comes out through the music, just being ignorant, and exploring.

RMP: What prompted you to start putting out music again as/with The Growlers? It’s been six years.

NIELSEN: Yeah, six years, and you know, it’s a weird thing stepping away from The Growlers. It was my baby, and it was all I cared about and thought about in the morning when I woke up and when I went to bed. “What do I do next?” You know, you get off tour and out of the bus and you go, “God, I don’t even want to be off tour, but I guess, what’s next? Monday morning. I gotta make a record. What am I gonna write about?” You’re just obsessed, and to walk away from it and stop and to look back at it… this out of body experience… It is strange. And it really was a moment for me to go, “God, I can stop judging myself and being hard on myself,” and appreciate this and respect it and go, “This was a really awesome thing.”

And I’ve been playing Growlers music… I’ve been playing these songs from a different perspective, and I just really have a whole new appreciation and love for it and I want to get back into my world, you know, it’s a different spirit. It’s a different thing than what I’m doing with Brooks. I like that it has some format to it; it’s not as much of a blank canvas as it is with Brooks, where I can do absolutely anything. This is like, “Where was I? What ideas did I have that I didn’t get to finish? What was I trying to get across?”

So I’m excited to relive it, and it’s a big audience. I meet the fans, I’m with the fans all over the world and I see how much it affected them, and I can relate to them a little more now. Like, “Oh yeah, I love it too,” and getting to be able to take the reins again and having my baby back and share it with everybody… It’s pretty exciting.

RMP: And do you know what direction you’re going to go, or are you going to play it by ear? With The Growlers.

NIELSEN: Yeah, I mean, I could talk your ear off, but I’d really be spitballing because that’s how it is, it’s creative, it’s not a business like “Oh, this is the agenda that I have planned and is how I’m gonna hit each thing.” But yeah, it’s gonna be getting in a room and doing what I’ve always done, which is getting people to believe in themselves and to inspire them and keep throwing ideas at them and going “What if we do this? What if we do that?”

But I’ve been listening to so much Growlers and I think I’m gonna continue doing that. You know, I’ve got two big shows coming up. I’m gonna play over sixty songs; two different shows each night and completely different songs. So much of it is old Growlers songs. Last night I was listening to them and I was like, damn, I don’t know how to say it. Once you start listening to an old song, you start daydreaming, and glorydaysing of where you were and what you were into. I think I’m gonna go back to those early influences, I’m not really out there trying to find new music, naturally. I kind of gravitate towards the thing that first inspired me.

RMP: What were the early inspirations?

NIELSEN: I mean, early days at the very beginning, I think the other guys in the band were into The Grateful Dead and The Doors or something, and I was really into 70s punk. I was like, I want to sound like Iggy Pop covering a Johnny Cash song, I think that’s where I was because I was so into lyrical people and early punk. And I think I’ll go back to all those things. My biggest influence was probably just a homie showing you something that he just came across and it comes across me, and I do a deep dive.

It’s funny thinking back about that. It’s like, how the hell did I even find music? How did I go and listen to it before it was so easily available [laughs] because it was a tangible thing. Someone handed me a vinyl record and I brought it home and put it on my record player.

RMP: For the new Growlers releases of the older songs, you must have gone through a lot of old music and recordings.

NIELSEN: Yeah, there was a time before I made the Brooks record before this last one, A Ride I’m Waiting For and before I went to write, I was like, I’m gonna go through everything I have, and that is a ridiculous torturing process. There were hundreds of digital cards that you would put in a digital 8-track. It was cassette tapes I had to, you know, put the tape back in and wind them up, and I went through each thing and categorically wrote down what is on them. And the other day I went to look for those notes and couldn’t find them so it might have been a waste but, through listening to it all, it was such a trip, “Oh my God, forgot about this and forgot about that” and of course I hear when fans sometimes say, “Oh, you gotta rerecord this song, or how do I find this song” I think I made it through all of that, it was kind of fun.

Then the last one, “Crisis,” was my mother. My mom texted me, [mom voice] “Hey, you know that song I really always loved was ‘Crisis,’ I think it was the Chinese Fountain record you were going to make it on or something. I always liked that”

RMP: Really?

NIELSEN: And I went holy shit, let me find it! I went through my email and found the demo and thought, oh, that’s pretty damn good, Mom was right. So I went in and I tried not to change it–some of the lyrics, I was like, what is this about?–trying to put myself back into that headspace and I don’t really know but I’m just gonna let it be a little nonsensical, cause I kind of always loved that part of writing songs anyway. Someone’s gonna say, “Is this song about this and that?” And I’ll say, “Sure, whatever it is to you.”

RMP: So, you hadn’t recorded the final version yet for Chinese Fountain?

NIELSEN: Well, we had made a bunch of attempts. I always brought too many damn songs. I’d write sixty to seventy ideas, get to the studio, the producer’s like, “Are you insane? Cut it down to an actual twelve songs.” I’d say, “O.K. how about twenty-five?” and whittle it down please lord. And finally, we’d get it down to too many, here’s sixteen. And so inevitably some are going to get cut, especially because you’re running out of time and some of them didn’t have enough time to be seen through or thought out well, so stuff’s gonna get scrapped.

So there are some scraps from every record, and it’s kind of a cool thing, how prolific The Growlers world was and that there is a lot of unknown stuff, unreleased stuff, and to be able to go back and to bring them back to life is a fun thing. The Growlers thing is so fun, I’m just trying to get people excited, and gift everybody. Now that I’m here and I’m doing it, it’s been a long gap and I’m trying to gift everybody as much music as I can and get people primed for what I’m about to do which is really bringing the Growler’s world everywhere.

RMP: Who is in the current Growlers lineup?

NIELSEN: I’m working on it, and I’m excited to share it, but I’m not letting it be known yet.

RMP: I also wanted to ask about lyrics because I think that’s a big draw to your music. Do you read a lot or go through other forms of writing, like poetry? And what makes you take so much care in writing your lyrics? Because that’s not so common, today especially.

NIELSEN: Yeah, I’ve always loved people who don’t care about lyrics. You know, a friend who–I’m pointing out the lyrics–and they go, “What are you talking about, shut up, I don’t care.” It’s the music and the vibe for them.

For me it was different; I think that’s what finally made me want to do it. I’d started gravitating more and more to people who were lyricists. I’m like, “Oh, I like Bob Dylan, I’m gonna try to find every single thing he made and listen to it all. Oh my God, I love this Woody Guthrie song in its simplicity. Has this guy written a book? I want to read it.”

So reading has always been a passion for me, but the lyrics thing, that’s what I gravitated to in music, and I still do. I like the person who doesn’t care about it because they can listen to so much more. I can get a little snobby on a song and go, “What the hell is he talking about? I’m out.” I’m throwing away music because it’s not lyrically satisfying to me.

But I like to read books, and I always have, and I try to continually do it to keep a vocabulary and keep me interested. I’m not on social media, I need something. So that’s a passion, but I’ve never really been a poetry guy. I try, I still try, I want to but it’s not easy for me to read–in the same way I can’t read a page in the Bible, “Thou what? I don’t understand this.” Or like, I want to love Shakespeare, but my brain doesn’t work that way.

RMP: Speaking of good lyrics, you covered “Psycho” by Eddie Noack. Is country a genre you often listen to?

NIELSEN: Yeah, I think that was an early learning lesson for me, you know? As a kid you try to develop these opinions and you want to be tough about them and the easy one growing up was that country is stupid and for rednecks. But I wasn’t actually listening, and I kind of made that discovery on my own and I was like whoa, these guys are incredibly cool and sensitive and these old emo men have an incredible perspective. That was a nice slap in the face, kind of woke me up, and I really got passionate about country.

But I had this feeling the whole time that these are great, but I don’t ride a horse, and I’m not this kind of man’s man, and I want to write music like this, but I think I’m not gonna be able to do it until I’m older, until I get some perspective. As much as I want to be Johnny Cash right now, I’m not gonna pretend to be Johnny Cash right now. Hopefully, later on in life, I can embody that, but I just knew it wasn’t the time. It would sound silly to me if at twenty years old, I were doing that, so I’m glad I had that perspective to know that it takes time. But, yeah, I love country and I still listen to it regularly.

RMP: So that could be down the line, a country album?

NIELSEN: Yeah, for sure. At this rate, it’s so expensive to be in California that I think I’ll be forced over to a ranch in the middle of the country and I’ll get me a big hat and I’ll start writing some emotional old man songs.

RMP: Have you heard of Ernest Tubb?

NIELSEN: Yeah, we were just in Nashville and we had a guy in the band, Alex Minney, he’s green, he hasn’t been to many places, “I haven’t been to Nashville before.” Alright, you go down, you gotta try a bologna sandwich at Robert’s, go to Ernest Tubb [the record store], look around, enjoy it. If you can’t afford anything, they’ve got great bumper stickers. And he went and it was closed; they were remodelling. But yeah, he’s one of my favourite voices, Ernest Tubb.

RMP: Yeah, and his lyrics can really

be funny.

NIELSEN: Well there’s that too. I’ve always been attracted to people who can be funny and not take themselves too seriously. I catch myself getting too poetic or too deep and I have to kind of sabotage myself and throw in a weird word or line to ground myself.

RMP: I was listening to “Spider-Eyed” and I noticed a lot of your lyrics are about controlling your own fate, which you directly refer to in that song, but there are also old songs like “Nobody Owns You” where you talk about this. You guys also created your own festval and put in a lot of work into charting your own course with The Growlers. Is having this kind of mindset the way you were wired, or is it something you had to work at?

NIELSEN: Yeah, I had an upbringing that was like, you don’t have to be a certain thing, you don’t have to go to university, you don’t have to have these accomplishments, but you better work hard and know what you want and get after it. I was expected to work, and that’s kind of it. I’ve never really asked for anything, you know, it’s a weird thing. My goals are pretty simple: I want to be genuine, make things that are genuine, I want to love it first and then choose to share it with people. But I’m not dreaming of... ten years down the line, I want this house and that vacation home and I want to travel, this and that. I just focus on–I can make it, I can do it, but I want to do it right.

RMP: I also meant to ask specifically about “Nobody Owns You.” It sounds like you wrote it to yourself. Would you say that?

NIELSEN: You know what, with most of the songs, I’m talking to myself. I’m convincing myself or reminding myself. I hope it doesn’t come out that way, it’s like, this guy’s always me, me, I, I. But a lot of people haven’t really clocked that part of it.

You know, my wife gets to ask me every song, “What’s this about? Is this about us? Is this about who?” And I think that’s a pretty boring answer for her. She wants to know, “Who’s this about?” And I’m like, “Oh, I’m just talking to myself again.”

RMP: I think it works though, for other people as well.

NIELSEN: I’m alone and I’m trying to get things out of myself, I’m trying to let myself do something, you know? The hard part about putting words down is that you’re so judgmental about yourself. “God, that was stupid. God, you sound like an idiot. That’s lame. You’ve said that before. What are they gonna think you’re saying?”

You’re really mean to yourself to the gut. You hate yourself in a way because that’s just... It’s a process, kind of like a crazy person. But that’s kind of what it takes to knock down some walls and figure things out. I think once you put that effort in to just get it out and say something, then you don’t really know what happens. I kind of just lose control at that point and it finally starts to pour out. I think I’m always making sense of it still. I’ll be on stage singing “Nobody Owns You” and go, oh I think I know what I was getting at.

RMP: Yeah, I’ve always liked that song and I think it’s a message that a lot of people can appreciate.

NIELSEN: Yeah, I hope so when I do these things because... it’s hard, you’re vulnerable, it’s hard to be creative and put yourself out there. You’re doing it with other people in the room to begin with, in a room, and even that is a vulnerable position, but then you’re sharing it with the world and you’re singing it on a stage, and it’s a lot. But simply, it’s really just, you have to try. You just have to give it a shot. And that sounds simple. I know it’s not, it’s a difficult thing of course, but it’s very fruitful.

RMP: Do you know what you’d be doing if you weren’t making music? Something else creative?

NIELSEN: Yeah, I don’t know because before I was creative, I was content with just work, you know. I still feel that way. I don’t think there’s a hierarchy in jobs. I don’t think I need to do this one over that one. I can see myself being a landscaper and enjoying it. I can see myself doing construction where I want to do it with the right people and enjoying it.

And those things are also creative. I’m still doing it now. I want to make props for this photo shoot. I want to make props for this festival. I want to make them with my hands, and I’m like, “Yes, I get to use my tools again.” I’m gonna go cut things and draw and think and make stuff. I think I could be content in any type of job... I just don’t think I could work in an office, [laughs] I don’t think I could do that. But something outside and something... getting dirty.

RMP: “Mice to Rat” from Grain of Dirt sounds to me like it’s about people judging your situation or The Growlers’ situation without knowing all the information. Is that accurate, or is it something else completely?

NIELSEN: Yeah, I mean, I know that there’s a dialogue out there. People are fans and they love it and they’re interested and they want to know what exactly happened here, what happened there. And you know, like I said, I’m not on there. I’m not going to go look in the sewers and see what people are saying. I can assume that I know. I can assume that they believe in the dream that I sold. I made this world. This is my band. We’re all for one; we do everything. We’ve lived together in a warehouse, everyone’s doing stuff.

I’m here to protect people too, I’m not gonna tell you everything real about each of my members, you know, we’ve gone through fifteen members, and that’s part of being in a band. And so on the way, it’s still my job to protect the thing, and I don’t get personal about everything. And I know they’re talking and... I’m thinking about it too. And I do care, but my job is still to protect people. Even people who are of the past, exes, even toxic exes. Even people that I don’t want in my life or I wouldn’t have around my family or I’ve moved on and gotten away from.

I try to focus on being creative, being genuine, making new stuff and not going back into that. But I’m still thinking about it, so as I was sitting there writing, it’s coming through my music. I think that’s kind of the best way to do it. For me, it’s very therapeutic and I like that you picked up on that. I wondered if people can hear these things. And yeah, it’s many nods. And really, when I’m singing old music, early Growlers songs, it’s there too because I’ve been going through this forever.

Going through members, going through breakups, ending friendships. The death of a friendship is very horrible; you’re gonna have to grieve. You have to grieve it to move on and I’ve continued to do that as I grow and as I have more respect for myself and want to surround myself with good people who are passionate and aligned with me. So, yeah that stuff’s all, it’s all in the music, and I think that for me that’s my way to do it. I don’t want to start, I don’t know, gossiping or calling people out or stooping low.

RMP: Well, I like what you’re doing and I’m excited that there’s some new Growlers music coming out. So you’ll be touring soon with The Growlers?

NIELSEN: Oh yeah, I’m just getting started. We’re gonna take The Growlers to Australia, Europe, America... There will be a massive hometown show.

RMP: Will there be some shows in Canada as well?

NIELSEN: Oh, yeah of course, of course. Yeah, we’ll be everywhere, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal. Where else can we go? [laughs] Last time I was in Toronto–it was the last tour–it was a beautiful day and I was up early on my bike, just covering so much ground. Toronto’s such an amazing city. It’s like a more approachable New York, you know, it’s got the diversity and the real city vibes, but you can get around.

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