We sat down with brian&matt after the release of his stellar new tune 'SAY THE WORD', to discuss what influences shaped their sound. Be sure to check out the single at the bottom and follow them on socials!
Dammit - blink-182
This one of the first songs that got us into the genre of music. I (Matt) remember finding a live performance video of blink playing Dammit a long time ago where Tom breaks one of his strings during the song. His stage crew comes and takes the guitar and they proceed to finish the song in the coolest way possible all while keeping up their traditional blink banter. This instantly made me fall in love with the goofy pop-punk style music and stage presence. This later blossomed into our love for the band, which has shaped us into who we are today, not only as musicians, but as people in general.
Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Pants Off - Panic! At the Disco
This as well as a huge list of other panic songs really intrigued us early on. We loved how panic had a way of taking the very generic pop-punk style, and turned it into a more “mysterious” sound, offering more of their well-known theatrical tones. Mixing in more augmented and major to minor chords too add a lot of emotion in. This also helped us shape the type of music we make, in trying to add more raw emotion to our tracks, and trying to make the listener really feel what is being said not only through the lyrics, but through each instrument.
Childhood - blink-182
This is a new song by blink, however this song is so well done, i had to mention it. We believe this song capped off their album so beautifully, reminiscing about how great it was to grow up a 90’s kid, how we thought and were told that everything “would be ok”, but then you grow up and life just gets harder and harder. As mentioned above with Panic, we try to encapsulate a feeling in each of our songs, and this song is a great example of making the listener really feel the nostalgia through each chord, each instrument, and each word that was precisely chosen.
Numb - Linkin Park
Linkin Park is amazing, it’s so hard to choose one song that influenced us. They do an amazing job at making the audience feel their pain. Chester’s voice, lyrics, the heavy guitars.. It all comes together and makes such an amazing ensemble, it’s perfect. The thing that Linkin Park did so well, is taking these heavy rock songs and adding in rap. We really enjoy most genres of music, but find it hard sometimes to incorporate those genres in our own music. Linkin Park inspired us to add raps to some of our music that we may have skipped otherwise.
Hell At Home - Sonny Landreth
We know, you weren't expecting this one. I mentioned it before though, that we really love all genres of music. Don’t be surprised if brian&matt throw you a country song, or a blues song in the future. Hearing this song for the first time at the beginning of one of the Eric Clapton Crossroads specials caught our ear instantly. The way Sonny plays the guitar is unreal, he is able to make his guitar sing in such a unique way. It was because of Sonny Landreth that I (Matt) picked up the guitar and learned more than just the normal chords. His style really pushed me to learn some music theory, and actually figure out the fretboard. Because of him, I am MUCH more fluent on the guitar than I would have been otherwise. We had the pleasure of meeting Sonny at a small show in Massachusetts a few years back, where I got to tell him this in person. It was so awesome to see his reaction, and get a signed setlist from him and the band!
SAY THE WORD - brian&matt
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