This is my chat with Brick Distributor, an up-and-coming high school band with a vision of making music they love! They are in the midst of finding themselves in music history and have expressed that to me in this interview.

Q1: Give me a synopsis of how Brick Distributor was formed.

Sofia: Okay so basically we were like—Danny and I were dating and we knew that each other had musical abilities, so we decided first that we were going to cover a song and then we recorded it and put it on Reddit and the guy who wrote the song saw it and said he liked it. So, Danny wrote a song and we decided we’d become a band. So, we got Danny’s friend who can play bass to join us and that’s how we became Brick Distributor. 

Q2: What song that you’ve written has been your favorite?

Danny: I think “Just the Other Day.” I like the way it makes me feel and how it tells a bittersweet story.

Sofia: I’m biased towards the song “Girlfriend” ‘cause I wrote the lyrics and it’s the most fun to sing. There’s a part of the song where I get to scream and it’s really intense. It’s really fun while I’m performing to scream.

Zach: My favorite song that I’ve written the bass part for is unreleased at the moment but is a mellow instrumental song that should hopefully come out soon.

Q3: Tell me a memorable and/or funny experience you’ve had at a show.

Danny: Our first show was pretty memorable. It was in a Brooklyn backyard. There were five people present that weren’t in a band. The memorable part of this was that the guitarist of the headlining band smashed his guitar. The experience was pretty crazy all around.

Sofia: Hmm, let me think…I got very anxious before a show so I had to calm my anxiety right before going on and it was stressful, but my bandmates were there for me and we had a lot of fun. Another one is that at our most recent show we couldn’t get our drum machine to work, so we started a few songs and the drums weren’t coming in which was annoying but also really funny and the sound guy at the venue was really pissed off.

Zach: At our last show, the sound guy, who didn’t like us very much, got his hair stuck in Danny’s guitar… 

Q4: Tell me the story surrounding your album What’s the Matter With You and Me??

Danny: Basically you write songs and put them all on the album. I feel like all the songs have themes and shit. I would say when we were writing this album there’s existentialism and storytelling.

Sofia: I mean it’s my favorite album out of the ones we’ve done so far. I think it has the most feeling and the most interesting story. I find that in our music that we’re always playing characters and trying to embody the different feelings that those characters might feel. I guess the album itself is just a compilation of all the songs we’ve written since Esteban B. Esteban B was our first album under the old name we had. Actually the [album] that we wrote most recently is just called Brick Distributor.

Zach: We had been working on the songs on the album for a long time and many of them had been finalized for a few months. The songs that were the newest, and in my opinion the best, were “Girlfriend,” “Another Personality,” and “Just the Other Day” that closed out what would become our first album. 

Q5: What’s the hardest part about being in a band?

Danny: I think being on stage is pretty stressful and I get pretty nervous on stages, so…performing is the hardest part. It’s easy to record in a studio.

Sofia: Um, the hardest part about being in a band…I would say collaborating because we’re all really passionate and we all have a lot of opinions so sometimes compromising can be really difficult.

Zach: The hardest part about being in a band is really just logistics. The act of playing with great people is so much fun that there really isn’t a downside to it. 

Q6: What are you most proud of in this band?

Danny: Personally, I think we sound good so I’m proud of that.

Sofia: I’m most proud of the fact that we’ve not only come together as a band but we came together as friends. We created a very important feeling of being in one collaborative and cohesive unit.

Zach: I’m most proud of the songs we’ve written. It is one of the best feelings to create something that not only you enjoy playing, but also something that other people enjoy.

Q7: What are your future plans as a band?

Danny: Well we have three shows this month [March]. I also want to perform at my job and make another album.

Sofia: Um, well, since we’re all going off to college, it’s going to be pretty hard, but we’re hoping to stay together as a band and send each other recordings through the internet.

Zach: We plan to keep playing and releasing music that makes us happy to create. 

Process

This idea stemmed from two of my favorite things: journalism and music. For my piece, I used the Voice Memos app to record my conversation. I learned how to format a podcast and enhance my critical thinking skills. My main challenge while creating this podcast was timing when I could do the interview. I was surprised at how capable I am of conducting a piece of writing in this media form. When I completed the project, I felt overjoyed, but also sad because it’s one of my last pieces as a mentee at Girls Write Now.