Photos by Lucy Blumenfield. Find more of her work here.
One week ago Bambara released Stray, their full length fully Southern Gothic record. It’s 100% set in Georgia, which is teeming with gothic imagery according to the band. Everything from the moss to the family structures. A little before the album came out we met up to take some pictures at The Broadway, the most Brooklyn place there is. The Bateh brothers Reid and Blaze and their fellow Georgian William Brookshire blend in perfectly well here, but there’s something about them that doesn’t scream — maybe quietly creaks like floorboards warped by a humid southern summer — that tells you they’re coming from somewhere else.
The album itself is intricate and precise, each song a chapter telling another character’s part in the bigger story. It could come off a little theatrical if you’re not used to it but that’s kind of the whole point. There’s nothing more dramatic than death, and this record is death-obsessed, mainly dark but never dull. The characters were created in a concentrated bout of writing, with Reid calling away from work and submerging himself in this place he was creating. That frantic energy comes out on track 2, “Heat Lightning,” after a super moody opener, “Miracle.” From there it takes you wherever the characters need to go.
When we meet, Will is on the tail end of the flu and Lucy our photographer is about to catch a nasty cold, too. Everyone seems pretty generally beat down by the winter and the grind. But beyond that they’re able to laugh over the absurd fact that buying artillery cases, like, for machine guns, is cheaper than buying actual guitar gear for their upcoming tour. So, before they take this record to the road toting their instruments in shotgun cases, I tried to bring the guys out of their element with some tacos and guacamole as props to lighten the mood. Unsurprisingly, the photos from this misty Brooklyn night ended up looking like a scene from a Flannery O’Connor novel anyway.
Humor me off the bat: I know there’s a difference between Gothic literature and Goth fashion, but have any of you ever gone through a Goth phase? (Is it ever really a phase)
Blaze: No. I’m saving it for my twilight years.
Will: My sister dyed my hair blue once, and I got sent home from school. That experience stomped the Goth right outta me before it ever had a chance.
Reid: I had a huge crush on this Russian goth girl at my school. She talked to me about her favorite serial killers once. That’s probably the closest I got to a goth phase.
Reid, you’re a fiction writer outside of Bambara. Does your prose have similar themes as these songs? What would you say the major defining difference is between what you write for yourself as an author and Reid in Bambara?
R: The themes in my prose are more or less the same as the themes in the songs of Bambara. Their inspiration is coming from the same place. And they also tend to affect each other heavily.
I’ve recently finished a novel and in many ways I see it as an extension of Bambara’s themes. Kind of like another record in the discography, but in a different medium.
The difference between the two is form.
Have you ever found it to be a blurry line, or is it pretty defined between the two?
R: If there is a line, it’s too blurry to see.
Is the obsession with death something that belongs to the characters in these songs, or are you as a person equally obsessed?
R: I think it’s safe to say that the Characters of Stray have this relationship with Death because of my relationship with it.
Gothic novels can go on for pages and pages just describing something. How do you cut it down to a song and keep the same feeling? How much of a driving force is the instrumentation and what specifically did it do for you here?
R: The music is always recorded before I write the lyrics. So, I know exactly how much space I have to work with. Having these concrete guidelines really helps me work out how much description I can include in a song while still being able to get a narrative across.
Have any of you ever acted?
B: I was in a Nickelodeon commercial with Amanda Bynes when I was 11. I only saw it once.
W: Fred Casely, high school production of Chicago. Sup?
Is playing live kind of acting in its own way? Why / why not specifically?
B: Only in the way that you are on a stage in front of an audience.
W: If the show is going really poorly, I act like it’s not.
Did you outline the characters first or did that happen as you went along? What was the process like?
R: I didn’t outline the characters. I just let them come together how they wanted to.
Which specific details about Georgia as a place scream Gothic novelas to you?
B: Idioms. Magnolias. Dark history.
W: Spanish moss and family names.
R: Flannery O’Connor, Harry Crews, Carson McCullers,
Are you happier to be living here in Brooklyn now, or no? Or neither?
B: I wouldn’t say I’m happier to be in Brooklyn. I love it here, but I do miss the space and pace of the South. One thing I like about Brooklyn is that I never hear lawnmowers.
W: I miss warm weather and cicadas.
How would this album be different if you had written it based in Brooklyn?
R: Lyrically, I think it would resemble the songs on our record Swarm a lot more.
What would you pinpoint as the thing that makes you worth the hype you’ve received? Do you think people are understanding you correctly?
B: I think people are pretty good at detecting bullshit, and hopefully our sincerity has shown through. We agonize over every split second of every recording and we put all of ourselves into every live show.
Do you think it matters how people react as much as if they react?
B: I think getting a reaction out of anyone in such a saturated culture is pretty special. But keeping their attention is the really impressive thing.
Your live show is super loud and animated while some of these songs on the record seem a little more calculated with elevated drama – these songs are theatrical in a slightly different way than I’m used to thinking of you guys as a band. Is this record going to take on a new life when you play it live?
B: Totally. When we make records, and with this one specifically, we never want to consider how to pull it off live. We just want the record to exist in its finest form. So when we start fleshing them out for our live show, it’s pretty much reworking the song entirely which is super fun and breathes new life into the music. Sometimes you come up with really cool new parts due to the limitations of the instrumentation at hand.
You mentioned you’re going to have a bunch of horns and strings onstage for your record release – how will that change the show?
B: Yeah we’re really excited about that. Our friends Ani (Shimmer/Palberta) and Drew (Public Practice/Beverly) sang all the backup vocals on the album so we’re stoked to have them join us on stage. Our friend Sean who played trumpet on the record will also be joining us with some other players. It sounds so powerful all together and bolsters the most intense and prettiest moments of the set.
What else is next? What are you the most excited for?
B: Excited for people to hear the record and to go on tour for the majority of this year.
W: Same. I really can’t wait to see how it’s received and to get out and start playing these new songs.
Listen to Bambara’s Stray here, follow them here, and catch them live on tour right freakin now.
