“I had the riff for ‘Dirtbag’ since college,” says Brown. 7 on the Billboard alternative rock chart and was chosen as the opening song to the Jason Biggs-Mena Suvari 2000 summer comedy, “Loser.” The actors even appeared in the video where Brown proudly wore a Commack T-shirt. The first single, “Teenage Dirtbag,” made it to No. I don’t think they could have told us what producer to use if they wanted to.” “They fell in love with something that was alien to them. “It was a weird combination of Columbia loving the songs and not really getting it at the same time,” says Brown. “We were very fortunate with the way things worked out by just being allowed to make the record we heard in our heads. “We had been working in the laboratory for such a long time that we didn’t want to have anybody else’s stamp on it,” says Brown. Surprisingly, Brown insisted on self-producing the album and even used their budget to buy equipment to record themselves. The band, which was named after Brown’s father’s nickname for his children, caught the eye of Columbia Records, who signed them in the fall of 1999. The music was ahead of itself and even our ability to play it.” “We seemed like a bit more developed than we actually were. It was a good trade of energy.”īy adding his brother Pete on drums and Rich Liegey of Floral Park on bass (who was later replaced by Mike McCabe of Smithtown), the band started playing gigs at Mercury Lounge and Luna Lounge in Manhattan from 1998-1999. “Phil would correct the things I was overlooking and I would suggest things neither one of us considered. “We really loved being in the studio together and feeding off each other,” says Brown. But when it does work, it’s super fun and it doesn’t sound like anything else.”īrown began building a band when he partnered with multi-instrumentalist Philip A. You tend to make a bad recipe more often than not. “I like to take all my influences and melt them down. It sounds as if Metallica, Cheap Trick, Talking Heads, LL Cool J and Prince made a record together,” says Brown. The results were a blend of his wide variety of influences. I started messing around putting heavy overdrive distortion on an acoustic guitar.” He played a Martin acoustic guitar through an amplifier. “I went back to my first favorite guitar player Willie Nelson. “I was trying to get past shredding into the songwriting world of guitar,” he says.
However, Brown's approach was to play heavy riffs through a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar. “I had been in and out of the studio enough to see what it took to make a quality song and a unique recording that sounded like nobody else.” “I was finding my voice in the music and using a lot of hip-hop undercurrents in the way the drums and bass are used mixed with thick AC/DC-Metallica style guitars,” he says. Next time around Brown started to develop his own project with a signature sound all of which he would control. It wound up being something I wasn’t a part of anymore.” “My lyrics were replaced by stuff I wasn’t really feeling.
“I got cut out,” says Brown, who worked a day job at Morse Micro Solutions in Syosset at the time. By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy.