Brandon Curtis
(The Secret Machines)
April 2004
New York

Many reports about Secret Machines tell how the trio originated in Dallas, then relocated to New York. Originally, though, they came from Oklahoma. But as a Texan, I proudly claim Secret Machines for my home state and Brandon is bemused by this peculiar brand of loyalty. He asks how long I’ve been living away from Texas (answer: ten years) then inquires, “So at what point do you stop being Texan? Because we’ve been in New York for four years and we’re still Texans.” Easy, I tell him – you’ll never stop! After a good laugh he says, “Nobody else does this. It’s funny; like if I was from Ohio, I’m not sure that it’d stick with me quite as much as Texas.”

The Secret Machines have seemingly come out of nowhere to most people, but those who’ve had their ear underground for the past few years know Brandon Curtis (vocals, keyboard, bass), his brother Benjamin (guitar), and drummer Josh Garza from plenty of previous incarnations. During their years in Dallas they participated in groups including Captain Audio, Comet, Tripping Daisy, and UFOFU. When they decided to form Secret Machines in 2000, they also chose to leave Dallas behind and relocate to a new place to cultivate their new entity.

On the way, Brandon, Ben and Josh stopped in Chicago to record an EP entitled September 000. To this day, that calling card (which was picked up by Ace Fu Records in 2002) still circulates as a perfect manifestation of Secret Machines’ complexity and daring – a nature that embraced possibility rather than sticking safely to one shtick. Upon their arrival in New York City, they lived the lifestyle of typical penniless musicians but due to unwavering dedication to their instruments and songwriting, the band’s reputation grew.

It’s a month after my first exposure to the trio, where they packed the house of a small L.A. club just after South By Southwest. Afterwards, I felt lucky to have been at such an intimate show as it was obvious the band was destined for bigger venues with ever-growing numbers of clamoring fans. This isn’t to say that Secret Machines definitely appeal to everyone. However, anyone who appreciates powerful musicianship, strong songwriting, and a jaw-dropping live performance will find this is the band for them.

When Secret Machines last performed in L.A. in late 2002, it led to a deal with Reprise Records. The trio then spent the next year recording their debut album, Now Here Is Nowhere, which they produced themselves with Jeff Blenkinsopp. Cleverly taking advantage of the Internet’s broad reach, the band groomed who knows how many new fans by offering the chance to listen to then purchase the album online months before it became available in stores. It was a daring move in an age where so many labels and artists viewed a pairing of music and the Internet with fear and negativity. And it’s a move that has paid off handsomely for Secret Machines, who are reaping the benefits in sales and packed shows.

The magic of their music, whether listened to on CD or experienced at a live performance, is the fact that you can feel it coming through the speakers or washing over you from the stage – the sound truly has textile qualities to it. In the vein of all-embracing possibility, this is music that is not merely sound – it stimulates the other senses as well. If anything, The Secret Machines embody the quest to find your own voice, not forcing it but spending the years of living and experimenting necessary to let it come out uniquely, powerfully, and just right.

And behind the creation of such powerful stuff are three very nice guys happy to be doing their thing. Today, Brandon is calling from New York City, where the band is booked to play a show tonight as part of their tour with Blonde Redhead.

How is the tour with Blonde Redhead going?

It’s going really great; they’re such nice people and it’s actually been pretty inspiring. They’re just a great band.

I hear that you guys have this nefarious reputation of upstaging the bands that you’re opening for. Has that been the case on this tour?

Um…if that is happening or if that has ever happened it’s probably best left to the people making those kind of judgments. I mean, I enjoy watching them play every night and we’re having a really good time playing, too, so it’s mutually inspiring. I like watching them and it helps me want to do better and play better, and hopefully we do the same for them.

That’s very diplomatic of you. Does playing in New York feel like a homecoming to you?

Yeah – it’s always nice because a lot of our friends come to our shows here and they actually know the songs. It feels different when you play in front of people that are familiar with your music, for some reason. It’s hard to describe or even quantify, but it’s like everyone’s on the same page. It’s been the case that when we’re playing for people who are pretty unfamiliar with our music, there’s a feeling of uncertainty and doubt, like, “Who are these people? Do they like it? Are they getting it? What’s happening?” – because it’s really hard to judge by looks.

I think you guys live are a force that’s pretty overwhelming to take, especially if you don’t really know what to expect musically. I can see from your standpoint how it might be confusing. But because you guys chose to release the album online before it came out in stores, do you think that’s helped a bit? Have you noticed that there are more people who seem to be familiar with the music?

Well, every place we’ve been to, we’ve run into people that have already downloaded the album, which, obviously, if we hadn’t released it that way, that wouldn’t have been possible. It’s been a really great thing. The fact is it’s cheaper than buying a CD and it’s available for people who are out there scouting the web looking for music, or who just have enough of an interest in the band, or are curious enough or have seen the website. I personally don’t download music so I’m not sure what type of person does or what the attraction is, but the fact that it’s happening and people are doing it definitely helps with what I was just talking about, the familiarity.

Yes, that’s true. And the idea for releasing it online before being in stores, was that yours or did Warner Bros. suggest it? It doesn’t seem like a very corporate thing to do.

Our manager and Robin Bechtel – she works in the new media department, the web department of Warner Bros. – were talking about doing some kind of campaign introducing people to the music. From the very beginning when we first started, we as a band have always been giving our music away. Our first EP – before it was released on Ace Fu – we gave it away; we would just hand it over. Just having music available and accessible to people who are interested has always been the way we operate. And so we suggested, “The record is done, we have a website, just put it up there – make it stream so that you can hear the album” Bill and Robin like I was saying had this idea that if we’re going to start doing press and introducing ourselves to the world through the medium of the Internet, why not make the record available for sale? Otherwise, if it’s not available for sale, then maybe people will download it on Kazaa or something. It’s almost like making it available for legitimate purchase gives you the option to buy it versus having to steal it – especially when people are first hearing about it and are curious. It suits us as a band ideologically but it wasn’t necessarily our idea, to answer your question specifically.

I think a lot of people do want to spend their money, and this is a happy medium for a lot of people who are thinking, “I’m gonna rebel against the big labels and just download this stuff, but the artist suffers.” So until things get more ideal or more balanced, it’s a good way. It makes you feel like you’re giving more money to the artist, to the people who deserve it, and circumventing all of the bureaucracy and the greed.

Yeah! I just think making it available, just having it out there as a choice…more choices obviously are better. Though from an aesthetic standpoint, I don’t necessarily like the way albums are presented because it’s not presented in the album context – it’s songs. And even the best players – if you put it on your iPod as an album or however you chose to store it – there’s glitches between the tracks, little moments of silence, even if they’re like fragments of seconds. And the album that we put together was put together with a particular sequence and a particular feeling, and it’s disruptive. So aesthetically, I don’t think it’s perfect, but I do think the benefit of having it available and letting people hear it outweighs that.

There are always kinks to work out but you never know until you try. Speaking of the production of the album, I heard that stream online first and like you said you can only get a certain amount of quality from a stream and little computer speakers, but that was enough to win me over and to get me to see you guys in person. Then the conversion was instantaneous – that performance was absolutely mind blowing. Then going back and listening to the record after that show, I realized how true it was to your live performance; it’s very immediate and very dense. There seemed to be a pretty deliberate process to achieve that, so how did you make that happen? And am I right – were you guys aiming to capture it as live as possible?

Well, when we were first talking to the label about making this record, we were pretty convinced that the only people who would be capable of translating the ideas that we had in our heads sonically would be ourselves. We were pretty much from the very beginning unwilling to work with a producer. For whatever reason, we needed to have that chance to do it ourselves, at least the chance to try. The problem that they put before us or the challenge that they gave us was, “Can you capture what you do live on a record?”

It was really cool because they said to us, “Go to the studio and do two songs, then we’ll talk about it and see if it’s working.” They didn’t give us a bunch of money and lock us away in a studio somewhere; it was like they didn’t fully trust us, but by the end of the process we had won them over. I guess they realized we weren’t trying to make something esoteric and alienating or difficult, but really our whole idea was the same as theirs, which you caught on to – to try and translate on two speakers what we do live with fifteen speakers and live drums.

It’s kind of an intangible difference. The real problem with translating live music to recorded music is the movement of air. I think that’s something that’s impossible to totally reproduce, so you have to kind of hint at it or allude to it. We had some specific ideas with sonics, and a friend of ours who co-produced the record with us built some filters that we used and treated a lot of the instruments with, with the idea of kind of sculpting the sounds so that it sounds to your ear like it’s a live performance.

It sounds like it should be easy to do, like you just put a microphone in front of a speaker or you put it in front of a drum set, and it should sound like a live performance. But it just doesn’t work that way for some reason. You have to really go out of your way and process it and treat it in order for it to sound natural. We had a particular idea of how we wanted to do it and we were glad to get the chance to do it.

I don’t know why people tend to think that sound is so much easier to manipulate than other things. I mean, in making films, you take such care and so many processes go into a scene. You think, “Why can’t you just put the actors outside and put the camera on them?” But no, you have to put them inside to make it look like it’s outside, and there are special lights and make-up and shadows... Controlling vision is just as difficult as controlling sound.

Totally! I think your eyes and ears – basically all of your sense perceptions – they’re very tuned in to anomalies and things that stand out, little inconsistencies like you were saying like shadows, so you have to really go out of your way to sculpt or shape images or sound so that nothing distracts and nothing takes away from it. Basically, you’re just creating suspension of disbelief, you know what I mean? The idea is to create a record, or a film like you’re saying, so that you don’t think about the fact that you’re listening to a record or think about the fact that you’re watching a movie.

The highest compliment that can be paid is like, “I forgot that I was at a movie – I was there with you watching the scene.” And it’s not easy, and it’s not to say that some people are more talented than others – there are obviously directors and producers and musicians that are capable of making it look easy – but it does take a lot of work. And I think sound is something that, like you said, people don’t really give it the benefit of the doubt the way they would a film. It does take a whole lot of work to make it sound natural. (Laughs)

Speaking of that, I take it when were taking about building the filters before you meant Jeff Blenkinsopp, is that right?

Yeah!

How did you guys find him?

We just ran into each other. He owns a repair shop in New York and my Fender Rhodes was in pretty bad shape at one point so I brought it to him because he was pretty reputable. He worked with Pink Floyd in the 70’s – he worked for Brit Row, actually, which is Pink Floyd’s sound company. So it was like, “He’s gotta be the one who fixed my stuff because he worked on Pink Floyd’s stuff!” You know, a little bit of a romantic ideal. (Laughs)

Anyway, we started talking about music and it just turned out that we shared a lot of mutual inspiration. He watched Roxy Music with Eno, he saw Hawkwind in the early 70’s – bands that to me exist only on CD as and as like a myth. He actually witnessed it, and having a presence like that in the studio and as a friend demystified some of those things. I think his biggest role was giving us the confidence that we needed to just go for it, because he would always remind us that that’s what the bands that we look up to were doing; they were just there going for it and following their hearts. Sometimes you just need someone to tell you that – “Go for it” or “You’re missing it, it just isn’t working.” That was his role and we were lucky to have him.

It was almost we were brought together by some weird fate…the fact that he was the one who fixed my Rhodes and up being this somewhat mad scientist character who builds these synth filters but with no one to use them, he just kind of had them…

He was just waiting for you.

Yeah, and we were looking for something like that; we had these ideas of shaping sound with no real idea of how to do it. So it was weird. We found each other. (Laughs)

Well, everything happens for a reason, if you believe it that way. Speaking about Pink Floyd and Eno: the first thing that popped into my head – the journalist looking for the snappy line – while watching you guys was, “Oh, my god, this is the spawn of Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Brian Eno!” Those were the three that immediately popped into my head. For somebody to come from that era and connect you back there like Jeff makes him like a bridge to that era, but he’s also grounding you back to basics, which is what you were saying – doing it for the love of it, doing what you want to do, and just trying things. People don’t try stuff anymore; they’re just going for what’s easy money.

It certainly looks that way. It’s hard to say until you’ve really been in anybody’s shoes what their motivation for doing what they’re doing is, but something that Jeff did for us was to constantly remind us of what our motivation was. His enthusiasm and love for music gets in your blood; just having that presence is a powerful thing, just being reminded, “Why are we here? Why are we doing it?” And there’s the fact that he kind of dropped out of music in the 80’s; he stopped working for Brit Row and I think ended up working some other jobs like construction for whatever reason. His reference points stopped in ’81; he had no concept of “indie rock”.

I think some of the slacker mentality of the 90’s fed the idea that you can’t be too good. There’s almost an embarrassment if you play too well, if it sounds a certain way. There’s that kind of self-awareness that existed in the 90’s that didn’t really do anybody any favors, that kind of feigned humility but it’s actually such an affectation. Pavement is a good example – I love that band, I think they’re great, but it’s almost like they went out of their way to make it appear like they didn’t care. They took such care in presenting that apathy. (Laughs)

Whereas Jeff was totally unaware of that, he just missed it; it was just lost on him. So his enthusiasm was very real with a total lack of irony. He’s a relic from the 70’s. (Laughs) It was good; it was like a real time capsule.

True, and it was important that he wasn’t going for any sort of trend like you said. That’s a gift. How many years have you guys been playing together, both as Secret Machines and with other bands? I’m wondering where your live prowess comes from.

Well, my brother’s the guitar player and he and I started playing in a band in 1993, but he was the drummer then. And then that band broke up in ’96 and I started playing in a band with Josh, the drummer now. We played with that band until Ben joined up with Josh and I in 2000. We’ve known each other for a really long time, and the fact that I’m in a band with my brother and my best friend really helps with the non-verbal communication, the ability to know what’s happening – in a look you can communicate while you’re playing. It’s invaluable. I can’t even say what it would be like to play with other people, because there’s trust and experience and we’ve just known each other a long time.

Those are important qualities, absolutely. How old are you guys?

I’m 32 and Josh is 32 and Ben is 25.

First of all, I have to say it’s great to be speaking to somebody my own age – every musician I talk to these days is like 21, the next superstar bands everyone wants to promote. And secondly, you guys look entirely too young to be those ages.

(Laughs) Thank you, I think! That’s nice. I’m with you, it’s like all the bands are these young people in their 20’s. Yeah, I’m not 21 or 22 but I don’t want to be 21 or 22; I already did that and it’s great, but I think the cultural viewpoint of youth is prized above everything else. You can’t ignore it, that’s for sure, but I don’t think you can undervalue the experience of years of living.

That’s not to say that I’m aged and wise or whatever. But I’ve been playing in bands for 15 years, you know what I mean? At some point you get to this point where you’re like, “Why am I doing this and do I actually have something to contribute? Do I have an idea that’s worth sharing with the world?” It stops being about self-gratification at some point. To me it’s become like, “I have something to present, something to offer, something to contribute!” And I’m recklessly enthusiastic about it.

(Sighs) I guess there will always be opinions and viewpoints of, “You take yourself too seriously,” or “You’re not cool, you’re not young”. It’s not that I don’t care about it or that I don’t notice it. It’s funny how often that comes up, the age thing. We were supposed to do this magazine thing with Flaunt or something like that, like “Hot Young Bands”, and then they found out we were 32 and they were like, “Um…never mind.” (Laughs) Okay, whatever. It’s funny.

That really sucks. When they say young, people literally mean “young” rather than “new”, but that’s just stupid. Seems very closed-minded and negative.

Yeah, they have an agenda and a way that they perceive themselves and a way that they perceive their readers. It’s something they’re trying to do, I can’t really say that they’re wrong; I’m just saying that I’m just a musician and I happen to be who I am and we live in an age that we do and no apologies for anything. I’m from Oklahoma and I’m 32 years old. Is that worthy of them, is that something to be ashamed of…I don’t know! (Laughs) I don’t think so.

It’s all good, don’t worry. Now, about the trio that you guys have formed – it’s so solid and we’ve talked about the reasons why it’s so solid, but I’m wondering if you guys have ever tried it with more members. You’ve managed to pull everything off on stage and it’s amazing because you’re sitting there at the keyboard with the bass and you’re singing…everybody seems to be doing so much at once, and it works! But was there ever a time when you guys thought, “We need somebody else,” or did you at any time pull in somebody else, maybe in the studio?

No, we didn’t really have any other musicians on the record. I mean we’ve jammed with friends, people sitting in with us in our rehearsal room and stuff. But the idea for me of a three-piece and actually performing as a three-piece isn’t so much duplicating all the parts from the album or recreating the record so much. It’s the fact that with three people, there leaves a lot of space and openness to let each voice have its room. It’s like the guitar isn’t competing with a second guitar, so every guitar note has to kind of carry its own weight.

I don’t believe that Brian Eno created this quote, but it’s attributed to him in this book – he says that every new element you add to a photograph or music diminishes the importance of all the previous elements. So when you only have three, it’s a third, but you add a fourth and that divides everything by four. It sounds obvious and kind of trite, but that stuck with me; it really does diminish the importance of it. I don’t know that we’ll always not have five back-up singers and a bass player and a string section and be Spiritualized or whatever. But right now it’s so much fun just to be on stage with three people, being busy doing a bunch of stuff at once, running the lights and playing bass and singing and piano. Ben’s got samples on the guitar and all these pedals, and Josh is beating the shit out of his drums. Until we feel the right person and the right moment or that something’s missing, then I’m sure we’ll add, but it hasn’t happened yet. But it’s early I guess; hopefully we’ll have a lot of records to make and be able to explore all the possibilities.

That’s so true. Tell me where the name Secret Machines came from.

Well, Josh and I were in this band called Captain Audio in Dallas, and the idea started as The Secret Machines of Captain Audio, which was kind of like a one-off thing… Dallas is pretty isolated culturally and there’s a pretty small group of people there who are musicians; you’ve gotta entertain yourself, basically. So what we did was we’d come up with these ideas like, “We’re gonna have a potluck dinner and we’re gonna cover Hunky Dory, and it’s going to be The Secret Machines of Captain Audio and that’s gonna be the show at a club on a Monday night.” (Laughs) It just became a concept of experimentation and musical exploration.

And then as Captain Audio was ending, the three of us decided to keep the name Secret Machines, because to me it represented what we were trying to do. We were just going for it, seeing what we had to offer and seeing what we as people and musicians had to contribute to the din and the noise of the world. But as an image, the Secret Machines to me implies the elements of our lives that are unexplored and that rest unksnown – like the infrastructure of our lives, the objects or the machinations or the mechanizations that keep our lives running, the things that really most of us don’t have a clue about how they operate.

I couldn’t change the oil in my car; if it breaks, I’m helpless. To some extent, our lives are pretty much surrounded by devices and objects that are totally beyond our ability to understand. Not that I couldn’t if I wanted to go to mechanic school and figure out how to change the oil in the car. But luckily, I don’t have to. There’s a world beneath the world that we live in that, without it, things would be bad.

But the blackout here in New York last summer was pretty awesome. All of a sudden, everyone who was parked in front of their television set went outside. All of a sudden there’s no electricity on Ludlow Street and it turned into a party; people were socializing and hanging out and it was a glimpse into a different kind of world. To me, as an image, that’s what Secret Machines means.

Yeah, that’s a very cool image. It’s making me want to go see The Matrix again.

(Laughs) Yeah, I guess there would be the sci-fi element to that too but to me there’s an idea of…you know when you’re driving on the highway late at night, there’s a blur of light on the horizon and it’s like these weird towers or pipes or whatever, and it’s like…

What is that?

Yeah! What’s out there? And why is it there? Who is it that drives out here to work every day? (Laughs) It’s a weird thing.

That’s a great image to think about. What is next for you guys? Are you planning on doing the European summer festival circuit or do you have any more videos in the works?

We just made another video; it’s being edited polished right now. It’s for “Nowhere Again”; that’s the song that the record company is going to try and coerce commercial radio and MTV and all those people into adding to their play list somehow. I don’t know how that works, but that’s the one they picked.

We’re going to try and tour a lot; I think we are doing some festivals in Europe but we haven’t been confirmed for anything yet. Honestly, for the rest of the year we wanna play. We spent a year basically making the record, and hopefully we can spend this next year just performing because it’s so much fun.

And for the first time in my life as a musician, I get to do that as my job full-time, and I really love it. To have the luxury of being able to perform and play your instrument and play songs that you wrote and sing and hang out, it’s really lucky. Hopefully we’ll get to take advantage of it the rest of the year.

Who directed the video for “Sad and Lonely” and was it the same person who did “Nowhere Again”?

Bruce Dickson directed “Sad and Lonely” and Patrick Daughters did “Nowhere Again”. Bruce did a Trail of Dead video and I think he did some others like Zwan. And Patrick Daughters has done The Rapture and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I like them both. Did you see the “Sad and Lonely” video?

Yes and I was struck by how simple it really is – it’s kind of a contradiction to how you guys sound. I guess I expected something more visually bombastic to go with the music, but it works.

We took that idea and stepped it up a little bit. Hopefully this one will be a little more…it’s basically just performance but we have lights and a little bit of editing and it’s a little fancier. Basically we took that next step – a little less simple, a little more rock. (Laughs)

The next one will be with lasers and clowns and animals and things; I’m sure it will be out of control.

(Laughs) Yeah, we need to think about clowns!

The Secret Machines can be found online at www.thesecretmachines.com.