Foxtails Brigade
Laura Weinbach of Foxtails Brigade; still from the “No Fate” video photographed by Anton Patzner.
Bay Area group Foxtails Brigade’s self-titled album is out via OIM Records, presenting us with the world premiere of their single & video for “No Fate” directed by the band’s arranger featuring animated artwork from the Bridgade’s lead vocalist Laura Weinbach. A group rounded out by Josh Pollock (a multi-instrumentalist), Joe Lewis (bassist extraordinaire), & Dominic Mercurio (film maker & percussionist); the group has become a staple of the Bay’s musical fabric as a group of artists with many talents and rich local roots. For their third proper album, the band pulls out all of the stops employing the esteemed Jeff Saltzman on production to bring Foxtails Brigade’s ecstatic visions of that run the continuum between adversity and absolute hysteric euphoria.
The band’s video for “No Fate” balances b/w performance visuals of Foxtails Brigade playing in front of a blank while with Laura’s animated drawings from Laura. “No Fate” is one of the more tense and motorik moments on the group’s self-titled, where things begin to unravel rapidly in a sequence of events that allude to this idea that our own collective of futures are histories that have yet to be written. Wisdom from the moon and lyrics like “watch your back, you got only one” are delivered by Weinbach in tales of apprehension, the onset of fears, int and all kind of cryptic messages relayed through acts of nature—and the supernatural. Between the chord strums of river brook running notes that play out alongside the rhythm guitar, we witness the active energy of the band in between Laura’s drawings that spring to life. Cris-crossed design patterns, frightening faces, various characters, and the odd adventures of a woman who is a heavy smoker are introduced throughout the course of “No Fate”. The intensity of Laura’s delivery here can be seen by the band’s big presence, along with the added ink & paper animations that contribute to the song’s frantic jog of jumbled emotions.
Director Anton Patzner said this on the making of the video for “No Fate”:
We love making videos and we try not to ever do the same thing twice. Our last video was shot in a mansion with the camera from Jurassic World. This one was shot in a bedroom with my mom’s old phone. Laura hand-drew all of the animations herself.
Some of the Bay’s finest—Foxtails Brigade; photographed by Odell Hussey.
We had the chance to catch up with Foxtails Brigade’s Laura Weinbach to talk about their self-titled third album and more in the following interview transcription:
Describe how the planning, arranging, and writing first began for Foxtail Brigades’ new self-titled album:
Some of these songs had been in the works for years. A lot were spawned from my experiences as a substitute teacher in the deep East Oakland and South Central LA scenes. Others were more just reactions to failure, rejection, and disappointment in general. Anyway, whenever a complete song would emerged out of my two instruments—nylon guitar and voice—I’d take it to Anton and he’d begin the arranging process. There was no real formula for how we went about the arrangements for each individual song on the record. Every track is pretty different and had it’s own set of needs and direction. Mostly we just messed around with all the fun toys at the studio where we recorded ’til we found stuff that sounded cool and made the song more enjoyable to listen to.
Tell us about the band dynamics, how you all find a communicative forum for sharing everyone’s respective contributions?
Anton is the designated boss of the arrangements department, and writes all the strings, horns, and synth parts. If we let everyone be in charge of the arrangements equally, we’d be like five blood stained albino pitbulls in a Russian headlock—a sweaty mess. He also helps the rest of the band members write their parts which are generally designed to support my completed guitar and vocal parts. I guess it’s a little weird, because a lot of bands will often start with drums particularly in the recording process but when we recorded this album, we recorded my guitar parts first.
Laura Weinbach’s art featured in the Anton Patzner video.
Interested in hearing too how Jeff Saltzman helped you all shape the new record.
Jeff was great producer and an absolute pleasure to work with. He really encouraged us to feel free to try every option for finding tones we loved and instruments that we may never have thought to include otherwise. He genuinely wanted us to just love the completed tracks and was willing to work until we did while also serving as a much needed guide for keeping things moving and helping us realize when we were actually done with a track or part.
Love that OIM has risen up as a much needed Bay Area imprint force for good, how did you all come into the OIM fold?
The label put out their first release last year which was a compilation of all their favorite bay Area bands and luckily (for us) included us. Jeff recorded/produced one track with each band they chose and put that on the compilation. I think that was their way of figuring out who they’d like to work with for a full album. Eventually they approached us to record our LP to be released on their new label and we said yes.
Strange smoking creatures drawn by Laura Weinbach.
Describe the altered fates and alternate roads less traveled that informed songs like “No Fate” & “Long Route”.
I’ve been told by people whose opinions mattered much to me that Foxtails Brigade was “a slow burn”. I guess at the time I didn’t quite know how to take that or what it meant. Eventually I equated it to the qualities of an American Spirit cigarette: long-lasting, “natural”, un-satisfying, “acquired taste” that eventually you’ll want to put out before it’s even done and reach for the much more fun and instantly amusing Marlborough 72 in place of.
But I guess that’s not all that’s true about us. More recently Josh (our guitar player) was talking about that show The Leftovers and referred to it as an amazing slow burn. I said “slow burn? So I guess it sucks…” But he then explained that slow burn was really a great thing. It meant that it takes a minute to get into, but once you do give it enough of a chance, the rewards will be much greater, deeper and more meaningful than a Marlborough 72. I guess that could be us too.
I reckon the song “Long Route” was written out of a kind of ingrained idea that Foxtails Brigade would never amount to anything more than a long lasting un-fun, non-addictive “natural” ember that would maybe appeal to a very small odd handful of other losers who were basically in the same boat. See we’ve never really been given any breaks. Every thing we’ve ever gotten we’ve gotten because of vastly more hard work than the reward was maybe worth and often times those rewards are cancelled out by whatever. Anyway, I forgot what the question was. It’s all good though.
Rocking with Foxtails Brigade’s Laura Weinbach; photographed by Anton Patzner.
Other incredible things happening in the Bay Area these days?
I guess it’s pretty incredible that a bunch of my friends are getting evicted from their SF homes all at the same time. But it’s cool, we’ll all just party in the East bay now.
Parting words of learned wisdom from the Foxtails Brigade camp?
Why must we part?
Foxtails Brigade’s self-titled is available now via OIM Records.
