Alice Chapter 3

Most up & coming artists today have quite large digital audiences, but most struggle
to fill small clubs and bring people out to shows. However, The Britanys, a four piece
rock band from Brooklyn with just over 1,400 Instagram followers, have generated
quite the buzz since their formation in 2013. In comparison to most other artists
today, the quartet has already sold out venues such as the Williamsburg hot spot,
Baby’s All Right. I met up with Lucas Long, Steele Krat, and Jake Williams after their
set at Le Poisson Rogue on May 7th to catch up with them and find out a bit more
than who the band had on their most recently created Spotify playlist; here’s what
went down.
ALICE MAGAZINE: Most of the music listeners and industry reps out there today
use Spotify, Twitter, Apple Music, or some other type of streaming service to discover
new artists; With social media playing such a heavy hand in today’s rapidly growing
industry and community how do you think your music gets heard most when you’re
only on soundcloud, Facebook, and Instagram? Do you think there are any disadvantages
to being a band now when everyone is so reliant on social media to find out
what’s “cool”?
Lucas Long: Since we’re still in the beginning stages of the band we figured it best
not to over-saturate everything. Sure, we would love it if everyone would pick up a
vinyl and CD at every show, however, unfortunately that’s not the case in the current
industry that we’re a part of. When the time is right, we’ll be expanding our accessibility
and make the songs available on streaming services and on all the online stores
but being in the beginning stages of the band we just want to hold off until the time
is right. Everything is so permanent now, sure there are people who record a song
and put it out everywhere the next day but what if six months later you want to sound
different or want to change part of the song and put it out then?
Steele Krat: That being said, once we release our fourth single, due out in early June,
we’ll most likely be packaging that with the songs already on Soundcloud and putting
it out through streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, etc as some type of
“Demo’s Collection”.
Lucas Long: And in the Fall we’re hoping to be able to release a more official EP,
hopefully around October.
of the spectrum. A few months prior to Jake joining, we started writing a lot of
second guitar parts for the newer songs and starting talking about how adding
another member would help round everything out and add to the vibe that we were
going for. Since Jake joined last September, it has really opened up a whole new
world of possibilities.
SK: As afar as the writing goes, with a second guitar becoming part of the process, it
makes us much more aware of what we’re writing because of how heavily a lead
guitar line can influence the direction and vibe that a song gives off. I also feel that
from where I stand, as the drummer, it’s helped me focus on the tightness of everything
in a way that I definitely hadn’t anticipated.
JAKE: I had know the guys pretty loosely for awhile through a recording studio we
all hung around out in Brooklyn. It’s funny, I actually wrote the first press release
for them because I really liked what they were doing and was very interested to
see where they would go with the project. As far as getting in goes, it couldn’t have
worked out better. I had a lot of free time and wasn’t really playing with anybody else
seriously when Lucas got in touch with me.
SK: Yeah, didn’t he slide into your DM’s with a photo of Sasha Berin Cohen drinking
of bottle of Perrier with the words “come shred”.
JW: (laughs) Yea! It was rather serendipitous too; I had been out of the city for a few
years at school, and I knew all their music from listening to it so I said, Why not! I felt
I already knew where they wanted to go with everything in terms of musicality and
the idea they had behind it and it’s worked out great since.
AM: Although you’ve been playing together since 2013 you’ve recently added Jake to
the band; and more recently released your first single as a four piece, “Basketholder”,
was there a large shift in the writing dynamic when he joined or was it more like the
missing piece to the puzzle that you always needed? Also, Jake, could you briefly
discuss how you met the rest of the guys and came to be a part of the band?
LL: When we first started the band we were just looking to play shows trying a lot of
different sounds out; there wasn’t much focus on a specific sound and some of the
songs we were writing weren’t very cohesive and kind of came from all different ends