Review Fix Exclusive: Brother Hawk’s JB Brisendine Talks ‘Clear Lake’ And More

Review Fix chats with Brother Hawk’s JB Brisendine, who discusses the band’s origin, goals, creative process and standout tracks.

Review Fix: How did the band get together?

JB Brisendine: Nick and I got started early, when we were eight, I asked for a guitar for Christmas so we could start a band together. We went a long time without playing but reunited in 2010 along with our bassist James and started Brother Hawk.

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Brisendine: It’s kind of all over the place. Mostly we just get in the space and I’ll bring a riff, or two, or a piece of a song and we’ll just build it from there. We try to always let whatever is going to come naturally happen. We don’t spend much time trying to force things, but it’s a fine line between that and being patient with something you know will work.

Review Fix: What’s your standout song on the current album? How was it written?

Brisendine: For me it’s The Clear Lake. I wrote that main riff in this tuning I ripped from American Football. I’d been playing in that tuning for 15 years or so but was never able to write anything that stuck, I’d just go back to it every once and a while and play around with it. I can’t remember how but that riff finally came out one night and i played it over and over and over again til i got it just right. I love that riff. I don’t know how i wrote it, sometimes i forget how to play it. It’s just what that tuning made me do. I’m very grateful for it.

Review Fix: What did you learn from this last album?

Brisendine: I think we really learned a lot about the process. That was our first time in a real (nice) studio, and it was hard to translate what we do live into that environment. I think we as well as Tj (Elias, our engineer) did a much better job this time.

Review Fix: What are your goals for 2018?

Brisendine: TOUR TOUR TOUR TOUR.

Review Fix: How would you describe your sound to someone who’s never heard you?

Brisendine: That’s always a tough one, but ii usually say it’s somewhere between The Black Crowes and Dinosaur Jr. i don’t know how accurate that is but it’s what i got.

Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?

Brisendine: At all really. Music has such an important healing impact on me, it’s like medicine. To know that our music does that for anyone is a gift and something we’re extremely proud of.

Review Fix: Why is this new album special?

Brisendine: Because it means so much to us. We’ve worked hard for several years on these songs, and to get to a place where more and more people care about hearing them. This feels like the beginning of something for us, the next step in our evolution. This record also has my dad’s (our harmonica player) last performance. He played his parts on The Black Dog just a few minutes before he died. I think that’s the most special song I’ll ever hear.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Brisendine: We’ve got some support dates with Blackberry Smoke coming up in April, and we’ll be hitting the road in May to support the album starting with the east coast.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13819 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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