Eddie Brnabic - Hippie Death Cult Interview
When and where were you born? What was growing up like for you? When did you first begin to have a fascination with music? Was music relevant around your household growing up? Do you have any siblings?
I was born in a town called Hamilton, Ontario in Canada. Just outside of Toronto. Looking back now with some perspective, I’d say I was pretty lucky to have grown up the way I did. Hamilton was a chill town with lots of nature surrounding to adventure in. My folks were working class, mom was a school teacher and my father was an iron worker, both are retired now. We never had too much or too little. They both came from nothing and had to work hard for everything they had, so they instilled a lot of valuable traits in me, even though I wasn’t even aware of it at the time. I always hated school or doing anything that was popular. When I was real young spent most of my time adventuring on my bike with friends or playing street and ice hockey. Hockey was probably my first obsession. Until music came along… My real fascination with music began when I was around 10 or 11. Someone on my hockey team was blaring a cassette mix of Guns N’ Roses and Black Sabbath in the dressing room as we were gearing up for a game. Something about it really caught me… It had awoken something in me and I was never the same after. He let me borrow the mixtape. I was obsessed. As soon as I saw footage of Slash playing live, it was over… To me at that moment, that was the coolest anyone on this planet could possibly be. I HAD to get a guitar. Music wasn’t really relevant in our house. My dad wasn’t into music much at all, but my mom would listen to Elvis Presley often in the car. Rock N’ Roll wasn’t really exposed to me very much when I was younger. No one in my family ever had any musical background or interest that I know of. I have a younger sister named Andrea. We are about 4 years apart.
What groups/artists left a huge impression on you early on? Did you participate in any groups prior to HDC? How did you initially meet the other guys? What were your first impressions of them?
In the beginning, my original obsession with music was wit, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne solo stuff, Guns N’ Roses and Megadeth. Many came later, but I would say early on those were the most impressionable. I have been forming bands since I learned guitar enough to play a few chords. I’ve never really joined any though. It went from high school jam buddies to full on moving out to Los Angeles at 19 with a guitar and a suitcase on a mission to form the ultimate Rock N’ Roll band. Fucking hell, was that ever a task. Especially in 2001, when Rock N’ Roll was pretty much dead. I managed to get a couple of incarnations of a band called Beggars Ball together, which got pretty well known around the local scene and did a bit of touring. We released two albums during that time. I had attempted several projects after that, some released, some not… And also put out a solo record in 2010. After that album came out I started another band with “The Cosmic Fellowship”, which became my rhythm section. We made a psychedelic instrumental record that was eventually released in 2013. I decided around that time that I was going to move to the Pacific Northwest and hoped they would follow and we would become a touring entity, but that didn’t pan out. I then played bass in a Psych Surf band called Granrojo for a bit while in Eugene, Oregon while begging to attempt putting Hippie Death Cult together, which ended up taking over 4, or 5 years. I had been dating Laura for just a little while when I was telling her the story about how hard it had been to find the right people for this band after years and years of searching. I was in the brink of giving up on it, honestly. She told me she was going to be my bass player. I didn’t know if she was joking or what, but it turned out that she had had a history playing bass in the Portland music scene and was wanting to get back into playing. She really took it seriously and learned all of my songs and was kicking ass. She put the same effort in a couple years later when she also unexpectedly became our lead vocalist as well. She had mentioned Ryan to me as a drummer suggestion and as it turned out we ran into him a little while after that when buying a bass from a mutual friend who turned out to be Ryan’s roommate. We jammed shortly after and are still jamming together 4 years later.
What led to the decision to form the band? When and where did you guys first begin practicing as a group? What was the chemistry like right off the bat?
Honestly, I’ve been ready to give up on the idea of getting a band together so many times…. It’s always been so fucking hard, and even harder to keep one going. But I came to a realization at some point that I don’t give a fuck anymore. I am going to keep playing and doing my thing no matter who is around me, or how hard it is. It’s just what I do. I first got the inspiration to start this band after taking a hit of weed after a taking a long break of several years. Musical ideas were flooding in immediately and they were all cohesive to a particular sound. Pretty much all of the riffs on 111 all came in that night. I was living in Eugene at the time and hiking in the hills almost every day. It was very inspiring and the vibe was pushing my creative juices again as I was reinventing my next musical moves. I started recording demos, playing all of the instruments and coming up with song structures. I cycled through a lot of people in Eugene until it became obvious that I was going to have to move to Portland to really get this thing together. So that’s what I did. I had one other lineup of the band together in Portland before the current one, but it wasn’t until late 2017 or early 2018 that we started jamming together as the current foundation of the band. It seemed pretty rad. Everyone was really into what we were doing together and there was definitely a palpable level of excitement and inspiration.
When did you guys make your live debut and what was that experience like for you? Tell me about writing and recording the band’s debut record “111” in 2019. How did the deal with Cursed Tongue Records come about?
Well, we’ve kinda had two… Ha! The first show back when we were a 4 piece was in May of 2018 I believe. With High Priestess, Salem’s Bend and Ape Machine. It was a great experience, but we still had a lot of kinks to work out at that point. The first show with our current lineup was in September of 2021 and Laura had just stepped in on vocals with just a couple of weeks notice… We were all a bit nervous about going on a tour right after putting out a record with a different singer on it, but it went extremely well. People were really into Laura taking over on vocals and our new sound as a 3 piece. That was by far our best tour to date. For 111, I had given everyone structured instrumental demos of each of the songs to learn and manipulate. Everyone came up with their parts pretty quickly and we recorded our own “demos” shortly after. I think it was like 3 months or so of being a band… We started releasing some of the songs on YouTube so we could start getting some gigs and it started catching the attention of some underground stoner metal labels. Niels at Cursed Tongue Records was one of the first that showed some real interest and support. He seemed genuinely excited about the band and we really liked him and what he was doing with his label so it was a no brainer to work with him. When he heard the demos, he encouraged us to release those as the album… So I went ahead and mixed them as quick as I could for the release. It all happened pretty fast.
When and where did recording begin and how long did it take to write that record from start to finish? What was the first order of business once the record was finished?
We recorded those songs in our rehearsal room in Portland. I want to say they were done around the summer of 2018? It was all recorded pretty quickly. We wanted to tour tour tour. We got to do a really cool release show at a local record shop and a couple of short west coast tours, but by the time we were starting to get offers for festivals and overseas tours, Covid hit… The release show at Music Millennium was pretty special. Portland really showed up and packed the place. I remember that feeling really great.
Tell me about writing and recording the band’s second release “Circle of Days”. How much had the pandemic played a role in how this record not only functions, but the impact of these current dark times as well? Did you guys continue to play together and rehearse during that time?
The writing process was similar to 111, but the vibe in the band was different and the pandemic certainly got in the way of our flow. Honestly, I think it prolonged our involvement with our old vocalist in a weird way because we didn’t see much of him for over a year. If all of that time away from each other hadn’t happened, I doubt we would have kept him around long enough to finish that album with him being involved. He had become increasingly more difficult to work with or have any sort of common respect for once we’d the had time to get to know him more. As far as the writing went, once we had gotten to the point where everyone had heard the demos, we were starting to hash out the songs in rehearsal between gigs and even starting to play some of them live up until the pandemic hit. We were almost ready to record at that point... Laura, Ryan and I finally started to get together again to finalize our parts after the first couple of months of social distancing while our old vocalist worked out his parts separately, at home up until we started tracking. We recorded it at our rehearsal spot again and had the luxury to take a bit more time with it because we couldn’t gig or work our day jobs at the time. We didn’t have any time or studio budget restraints either because I was recording it all on my home studio rig. Mainly, because we didn’t have a budget to start with. After all of that, I think we took about a month to record it and it was done around the summer of 2020. After that I took it home to mix & master it.
How did the deal with the guys over at Heavy Psych Sounds come about? Are you guys currently working on anything now that things have somewhat calmed down? Any new music, shows, tours in the works as Fall creeps around? You guys did a split release with High Reeper last year, correct?
I reached out to Gabriele specifically because I was really into what he and his label was doing and it seemed like the next logical step for us to be working with a label like that, especially because of the strong network they have in Europe. We had some conversations and he really wanted to make sure we had the blessing of Cursed Tongue, which we did, so we started working up a plan together for the next album. We are always working on new shit. We’ve already recorded the bulk of a new album and as soon as these tours are over this winter, we are gonna finish it up! We’ve got a month long tour going on in Europe for October, then it’s back to the studio in November! That is correct. They are a really rad band. They were also supposed to tour Europe with us but unfortunately had to cancel last minute…
Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
Just want to show some gratitude to you for having me, and to anyone who is reading this for reading this.
https://www.eddiebrnabic.com/?fbclid=IwAR199ka4Dglmhw8mvJEXBghKTobtR46BrEhD7_E-muqhzwLqrJuuwzett2A
https://www.hippiedeathcultband.com
