By Terence Dick
Many rock musicians claim to be “doing it for the kids,” but only a select few are kids themselves. Sure, there are plenty of manufactured teen pop stars like the Moffatts or the Donnas, but what about mutant adolescents who spring seemingly sui generis into underground communities with precocious, original, and endearing music? Redd Kross and Tommy Stinson of The Replacements did it 20 years ago. Ben Kweller and Ben Lee did it ten years ago. Who are the new kids on the block?
The Barmitzvah Brothers appeared in the wake of Guelph’s recent musical upsurge. As the Constantines and Royal City hit the big time running, the Brothers’ slowly emerged, their reputation growing by word of mouth. Early appearances by this band of happy teenagers left audiences either smiling or scratching their heads. They sang songs about cleaning the house, played omnichord, xylophone and banjo, and were too young to remember the ‘80s. Within a couple years, they opened for Damo Suzuki, released a record on the weewerk label and appeared on the cover of Toronto’s Now magazine. So while most teens are hanging out at the mall or playing video games, the Barmitzvah Brothers play showcase gigs in New York and go on tour with the Arcade Fire.
Broken Pencil talked with the Brothers’ Jenny Mitchell to find out what it’s like to be a teenage musician in the Canadian rock underground.
BP: Who’s in the band and how old are they and what do they do?
JM: There are three all-the-time, official members who are John Merritt (17), Geordie Gordon (18), and me, Jenny Mitchell (19). But we also almost always have at least a couple more people playing with us, and sometimes a pile more. Lately we’ve been consistently playing with Sylvie Smith (19) and Tristan O’Malley (34), who provide backing vocals, keyboards and electric guitars, among other things. John and Geordie are in high school and Geordie works at the Family Thrift Store on weekends. I work half time at the Family Thrift Store, which my father owns, and spend the other half of my time travelling and having adventures in and around the Toronto-Tri-city area. Sylvie is entering her second year of art at the University of Guelph and also works at Canadian Tire. Tristan works in insurance and does magic tricks in his spare time.
BP: Has your age affected the way people in the music world deal with you?
JM: Age has definitely had an effect on the way we do things. For one thing, it has really determined our time use. The whole way through our band’s career so far we’ve had band members that were going to school full time, which definitely limits our practice/show availability. I think that has worked to our advantage in a lot of ways though because it’s kept us busy and we’ve never had to have big blank periods of time where we felt like our band wasn’t going anywhere. I think sometimes when bands have the time to play every day, they start to feel strange when they don’t have shows, but since we’re so busy with everyday youth-related things, we can wait till people ask us to play shows, and it’s flattering and exciting. I think age has probably worked to our advantage in attracting people to our shows, because they are curious to hear what music people our age could possibly offer. But the exciting thing is that they seem to like the music for real reasons. Even if they come based on a silly thing like “youth,” they stay because we do an okay job. It has definitely been tricky playing in bars, and some bars have been way nicer to us than others, but I think that we’ll probably always find ourselves with good and bad experiences of that sort. Even when we’re all old enough to be in a bar, we’ll still have to deal with crabby bouncers and shifty show promoters.
BP: Do you think your age is a novelty?
JM: I don’t like to think that our age is a novelty. I guess that it is, in the sense that we do silly, youthful things, but that’s definitely not the motivation behind our music. I think that because we’re young, we’re not full of as many worries as other older musicians because we know we have a lot of time ahead of us. If this band fails, we’ve got years to make another more successful one, and I think that allows us to have a much more laid-back approach. I think that has worked to our advantage, because it definitely is way more stress-free and fun than a band that has crazy deadlines and “successful band” worries and pressures.
BP: What do your peers (that is, other teenagers) think about your music and your success?
JM: I don’t think a lot of other people our age have noticed what we’re doing! Just other young musicians, and they look at us and our exciting successes the same as older musicians do, I think. I’ve actually noticed more of a response from the little old ladies that come into my work. I think that us and a lot of other teenagers live very different lives and we just look at each other differently because of that.
BP: Do you know any other bands made up of teenagers?
JM: We do actually! We just made friends with a band called All Purpose Voltage Heroes from Alberta, who are somehow younger than us but have beards and are going on cross-Canada tours. It’s pretty impressive. We played a show with them and they were really good. We also made friends with a lot of musicians our age last year when we played in Brantford. We played a small, fairly unattended show, but we were playing with a band called Returned Unused Portion who had a self-taught upright bass player, an amazing guitarist with one of my favourite voices ever, a drummer who also played the vibraphone and was only 16, and a girl who sang and played the vibraslap and other crazy percussion. I think they were all under 19 at the time. We’ve stayed really good friends with all of them, and they actually became part of our giant backing ensemble for our CD release party last Halloween.
BP: What advice do you have for kids who want to make music and play gigs and go on tour?
JM: Convince your parents that it’s a good thing. I think supportive parents are really good. Also, spend your own money and spend as little of it as you can manage. Make your first CDs by hand and record as cheaply as possible so that you can actually make money selling your first CD. And then finance a second, better one after. I think debts are a pretty crappy thing to have as a young musician and they should be avoided. I definitely don’t think you should make any massive sacrifices to play shows either, because they often aren’t worth it for the money or the stress. Most shows don’t pay too much, so it’s worth it to play only the ones you know for sure will be fun. But I also think it’s worth it to take chances on shows you don’t know much about; there’s a chance that you might make exciting new connections. I’d say you should play as much as you’d like and get offers to, but I wouldn’t let it mess up school or jobs or anything.
BP: What do your parents think about your indie rock career?
JM: They’re all pretty supportive. My dad became a crazy indie-rock dad because of my band and now reads Now and Exclaim and goes on indie rock message boards and runs shows with me out of his store at night. And Geordie and John’s parents are both professional musicians, so they understand a lot of what we go through and can appreciate a lot of it too.
BP: What do you want to be when you grow up?
JM: I want to be a musician and write a cross-Canada haircutting novel. I don’t know about John. I think Geordie wants to be a roadie.
Find out what the Barmitzvah Brothers are up to at: www.barmitzvahbrothers.cjb.net