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Photos courtesy of The Brook and The Bluff.
The Brook and The Bluff is named after the two hometowns of its members: Mountain Brook and Bluff Park.
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Photos courtesy of The Brook and The Bluff.
The album cover art for The Brook and The Bluff’s “Bluebeard.”
After 10 days spent together in the same house, the five members of The Brook and The Bluff emerged with their third album “Bluebeard,” which was released Sept. 15.
The band is named after the neighborhoods of Mountain Brook and Bluff Park where its members grew up. The Brook and The Bluff officially began recording and releasing music in 2018, but frontman Joseph Settine and guitarist Alec Bolton started playing together as freshmen at Auburn University.
After college, they moved back to Birmingham and kept playing music, adding bassist Fred Lankford and drummer John Canada along the way. Canada’s brother, Kevin, was the last to join the band as its keyboardist.
The band released “First Place,” their first official studio album, in 2019, followed by “Yard Sale” in 2021. Settine said the newest album, “Bluebeard,” is an extension of the first two albums, and listeners will be able to trace their patterns of thought from older songs to newer ones.
“Bluebeard” is the first of the band’s albums to be recorded somewhere other than a studio. The band recorded their album in the Canada brothers’ family mountain house in Sky Valley, Georgia, where they had previously held songwriting retreats together.
“It’s always represented this place of escape for me,” Settine said. “I think that, for me, the goal was to try to create that feeling that we have when we’re together in the house in a record form. And I think that’s what we did.”
Every morning during writing and recording, the band woke up to the mountain view that is pictured on the album’s cover. Because of the peace they felt at the house, Lankford said they never felt burnout or exhaustion, even after recording and living together for 10 days straight.
“There was an extra element of creativity in the house,” Kevin Canada said.
The band shaped their album around the Kurt Vonnegut novel of the same name.
“The book itself is kind of about art and the nature of art, which is why I think we felt, as a band, really compelled to it,” Lankford said. “We definitely encourage anyone who wants to listen to this album and really dig into it, to read that book.”
Settine said he and Lankford began talking about the book while brainstorming for the new album, and eventually the entire band had read “Bluebeard” and agreed to shape their album around its themes and tone.
“There’s like a weird, nostalgic melancholy [to the book] that’s also a little joyful,” Settine said. “This melancholic joy was kind of the inspiration for the songs, which is the best kind of music: happy music with sad words. It’s like our brand.”
The band members said they love each song on the album for different reasons. They expressed both excitement and nerves over their U.S. tour, which launched just three days after their album release and will be their biggest yet. The tour will include venues in 24 states, plus Washington, D.C., three Canadian provinces and a festival in Mexico.
“I feel like this tour and the songs and the show itself is probably the biggest departure from the way that we’ve been touring in the past,” John Canada said. “We’re blending our songs that we’ve played before and the classic style of those with a little bit more production.”
Reminiscing over the past five years, each band member said that seeing people respond to their music reminds them of the reason why they create music.
“I feel like a tour is when you finally actually see tangible moments of growth,” Alec Bolton said. “All this crazy amount of time and effort we put in, and now we can see that we played that venue last year and now we’re playing this venue, and that many more people came, and they’re really stoked to be there.”
The Brook and The Bluff will be returning to their hometown of Birmingham to perform at Avondale Brewing Company on Thursday, Nov. 2.
Tickets can be purchased online at brookandbluff.com.
