The Riot Before

Brett’s solo tour starts next week!

This is when and where you can bring him whiskey:

April 3: Knoxville, TN at Longbranch Saloon

April 4: Springfield,MO at Lindbergs Bar.  

April 5: OKC, At the HiLo with Garret from Red City Radio.  Also, drunken heckling provided by the other members of Red City Radio.   

April 9: Arlington, TX at Center House

April 10: San Antonio, TX, at El Ten Eleven with Menzingers, Cheap Girls, Sidekicks, and Captain We’re Sinking.  My poor liver.

April 11: Austin, TX, Chris’s house   

April 12: Pensacola Beach, FL The Break, 10pm, FREE!

April 13: Birmingham, AL at The Dan

April 14: Durham, NC at Almost People HQ 

I, Brett, am driving to Texas. Playing solo shows. Come hang out!

Here’s the deal.  This past Christmas I was too poor to buy a plane ticket and fly home to see my family.  That was a bummer.  This upcoming April my brother, a fighter pilot in training, is getting his wings from the Air Force.  This is happening in Texas.  Many of my family members will be in attendance.  And since I still haven’t even met my nearly 1 year old niece, I figured I’d better be in attendance too.  But I’m still broke and can’t afford a plane ticket.  Solution?  Book some shows to and from Texas and hopefully not lose a ton of money.  I figure if ten or fifteen people show up to each show and pay $5, there’s a good chance I could break even.  Then again, I did absolutely no math to verify that, and if I had done the math, I’m sure it would have ended terribly.  

Also, I couldn’t take a ton of time off work and Texas isn’t exactly close to Virginia, so most of my drives are like 10 hours.  

Fuck it, this is going to be fun!

Here’s what I’ve got:  

April 3: Knoxville, TN at Longbranch Saloon

April 4: Springfield,MO at Lindbergs Bar.  More details soon.

April 5: OKC, At the HiLo.  I think Garrett from Red City Radio is playing too.  

April 9: Arlington, TX at Center House

April 10: San Antonio, TX, at El Ten Eleven with Menzingers, Cheap Girls, Sidekicks, and Captain We’re Sinking.  My poor liver.

April 11: Austin, TX, TBA.  Please bring Franklin BBQ.  

April 12: Baton Rouge?  NOLA?  Somewhere?

April 13: Birmingham, AL at Sandi Sidwell’s

April 14: Durham, NC at Almost People HQ

As for merch, other than some old The RIot Before stuff I’ll try and round up, I don’t really have any.  No solo release (yet) or a t-shirt with my name on it, which still just feels weird.  So instead the plan as of right now is to make a whole mess of homemade salsa and/or hot sauce, can it, sell it as merch, and hopefully give no one botulism!

I’ll update this with links to show pages as soon as I get them.

Hopefully I’ll see some of you soon. 

FUNDED!!

A very sincere Thank You to everyone to funded this project.  Artwork will be getting drawn and records will be pressed as soon as possible.  Now if you’re excuse me, I have 6 songs to write.  

We have a Kickstarter and here’s why

Adam from Say-10 Records has a Kickstarter going right now to raise some money to release a limited double LP of our early stuff.  I should have mentioned this earlier (it expires in 48 hours), but here’s why it exists.  

Pressing records is a risky business these days, but it’s a business that Adam is in and enjoys being a part of, and throughout the history of Say-10 he has always taken on the responsibility of said risk.  Before we broke up there was a plan long in the works to release a double LP of our early stuff, and before be broke up Adam was going to fund the whole thing and rely on touring and press and all those other things to work out well enough that he’d hopefully recoup his investment.  In fact, the reason this LP was in the works for so long was because it was going to be very expensive to press, and thus it was taking a bit of extra time to get the money together.  

But when we broke up it changed everything.  Because we weren’t going to be touring, the already extremely risky investment of pressing this record became way too risky.  And so the options were thus: 

1. Spend $5500 on a single pressing for a dead band and hope
2. Don’t release a physical copy of the songs (they’ve been on iTunes for some time now)
3. Begrudgingly start a Kickstarter

After thinking about it for a while, Adam went with number 3.  He’s never done a Kickstarter for a record before, and I doubt he will again, but the exception was made in this one instance because we were no longer active and the investment was so large.  

So here’s the deal.  The Kickstarter is for $5500.  That seems like a lot.  And it is.  But that actually is how much it’s going to cost to get 500 records made.  Seriously.  It’s two records, a gatefold cover, all kinds of extra money spent all over the place.  And because it’s limited to 500, there will be no further pressings (which are always cheaper to press) to spread the costs a little thinner.  It’s this one, super expensive pressing and then it goes away forever.  It’s more of a break even, let’s put this out there if people want it, sort of thing.  Make sense?

So if you do indeed want it, click here sometime in the next 2 days.  

Thanks.

-Brett

dasowth:

Hey. I recently had a surgery on the ol’ throat box that I couldn’t/cant afford. I hate asking for help with anything, but I’m in the process of doing a new OWTH record and don’t want anything to get in the way of it, ensuring that we can get back out on the road as soon as possible. I’ve been selling off all of the things I don’t need, and auctioning test pressings of 7”s we’ve done. A lot of people write and say they can’t afford the records, but would like to help out. This is that way. If you can, I really appreciate it. I’ll make sure and send you something as a thank you, no matter what the amount. Just make sure and leave me a note when donating by clicking on ”Include Name & Address” so I know where to send it. Thank you. (I’m flipping off my girlfriend for making fun of me, not you.)

Send Ryan some money.  He lost his voice singing songs for you.  The least you can do is help him pay to get it back.  

Two days after getting back from Fest 10 Jon texted me, “we need to talk.”  Like so many other aspects of existing in a band, the anticipated subject matter of one of these “talks” was the same as if it had been in its more common context of a romantic relationship.  You know before you know but you have to wait before you know.  Conveniently already at a bar, I ordered another drink and announced to my friends that my band had just broken up.

The following day I met Jon for coffee and he, never the most garrulous member of the band, skipped the small talk and regrettably announced that he was quitting the band.  There are myriad reasons to quit The Riot Before, and he listed a few good ones.  We chatted for a few minutes about our futures while finishing our coffees and then got up, shook hands, and went our separate ways.

Though The Riot Before has been made up of thirteen different musicians over the course of its eight year existence, Cory, Freddy, and Jon were by far the most important and influential members.  They performed on Rebellion and Fists Buried in Pockets, they were on stage during the vast majority of our five-hundred plus shows, and they sacrificed their time, their money, their personal lives to make this band work for as long as it did.  The band is permanently indented with their influence, so much so that, with all three of them now gone, it would be both insensitive and dishonest to stand alone on something built by a group and obstinately declare it The Riot Before.  So I won’t. 

Sitting alone in my dorm room playing guitar way back in 2003, I could never have imagined that those poorly strummed power chords were the beginnings of a sound that would resonate for the next eight years.  And I really mean that.   I grew up in a small farm town in a part of California that bands tend to avoid, and so for most of my life the act of simply attending a show was normally so far out of reach that I never thought it possible to get the chance to be the show.   That I would be a part of over five hundred shows in ten different countries, well, that was a reality that at one time really was even beyond the grasp of my imagination. 

I’d like to extend my deepest gratitude to everyone who made this improbable band a reality for so long.  Thank you to those of you who put on our shows, put us up in your homes, put out our music, and just plain put up with us.  Thank you especially to everyone who came out to a show, from the shaky, stage-frightened start in Isla Vista, to the triumphant sea of fists and bodies at the Fest, to all those in between.  Thank you to everyone who sang along with us.  Thank you to those who will continue to do so in your cars and bedrooms.  Thank you for making us feel welcome in your town, whether there was a large crowd or three was.  Thank you to all the bands we were so very fortunate enough to share stages with.  We would never have made it this far if we had not been so surrounded by such inspiring, talented people. 

I am so very grateful for these years defined by this band called The Riot Before.  It’s the best thing I’ve ever had the chance to be a part of, and the bar is very high indeed for all future endeavors. 

Regarding the future, at this point I can’t image mine filled with anything but stages and songs.  I have to figure out the latter first, but once I do I have every intention of bringing them to a stage near you. 

Cheers,

Brett 

Anonymous asked: yo guys. HUGE fan of your music! One of my fav bands for sure! just was wondering if Brett was ever a jehovahs witnesses cuz in a few songs it sounds like your singing about it and how ur not anymore?

I was never a Jehovah’s Witness, just a regular old evangelical Christian.  And yes, definitely not one anymore.  Though I didn’t trade that out simply to replace it with evangelical atheism.  It was something I had to figure out for myself, under my own volition, and I prefer to leave others alone to answer those questions however suits them best…though I do love a good debate.  

Also, God or no god, ur < you’re.  

We stayed with the very hospitable Kev and Patrycja in Huddersfield, U.K. a few weeks back.  Sometime very late at night we started sampling some hot sauces that Kev had, including one made from ghost chilis, called Blair’s Ultra Death, which has a Scoville rating of 1,100,000 (as a frame of reference, Tabasco sauce rates at well under 10,000).  Safe to say, the stuff was really hot.  

Jon and Dan in Regensburg a few hours before our ability to walk any of those lines in the road would be completely destroyed.  

Our friends over at These Numbers Have Faces have a put together a great new short promo video with a soundtrack provided by yours truly.  

If you don’t already, go support TNHF faces right now, right HERE.

Oh, and if you never downloaded our unreleased song, Blank Slate, you can still do that on their site right HERE.

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