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Marc Brownstein: Mooring (and Morphing) the Bisco Inferno

by Dean Budnick

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Marc Brownstein was a sophomore bass player at the University of Pennsylvania when he first met Sam Altman. At the time Altman was a freshman, who boasted of his own slapping prowess on the instrument. Brownstein found him to be somewhat obnoxious but hun g out with him long enough to meet guitar player Jon Gutwillig, who similarly left an uninspiring first impression. However, Brownstein soon warmed to the two musicians, and ended up living with Altman when the pair took a sabbatical from Penn to attend c lasses at New York's New School. In 1995 Altman, Brownstein and Gutwillig formed the core of a band that would come to be known as The Disco Biscuits. The group solidified a year later when its original keyboardist was replaced by Aron Magner someone Brow nstein remembers as "this really annoying kid in my jazz class who used to answer all the questions. I knew all the answers as well, I just didn't shout them out." Over the past few years the Biscuits have become one of the notable bands in the scene, wit h a particularly fervid group of fans who travel from show to show to take in the band's trance fusion. Following their two shows on the jambands.com tour, we spoke with Brownstein regarding the evolution in the band's sound, his Wetlands thoughts and mor e.

DB: Let's talk about the name. People describe your music as Bisco. What does that term mean to you?

MB: Bisco ultimately is a lot of different things. Recently, I was getting emails recently every few days, people forwarding me other people's definitions of Bisco. One girl said "Bisco is the feeling you get..." That's where she left it, the feeling you get. For us I can tell you that we feel that Bisco comes to every show and it's been to every show since Seattle. That night there were maybe 200 kids who had seen us once or never before and we didn't know any of them. How did we answer that? We played T he Hot Air Balloon {the band's rock opera which debuted at its New Year's Eve show}. How did people feel about it? Well it was a really great crowd. We explained it to them, we said "Listen we have this rock opera and we're going to play it for you. It ma y not mean as much to you as it would to the Bisco kids but maybe we'll hook you through it." And maybe we did. The bottom line is that Bisco is a lot of different things to a lot of different people but I think ultimately everyone involved knows what it is. It is a concept, a feeling, an energy rather than something that can be defined. You know what Bisco is right? Bisco is also an identity for a lot of people. There were Deadheads, Phishheads, moe.rons. There's all this shit going on in this scene and the Bisco is defined by those people whose heart lies with us. That's what I feel like. Bisco is the four of us and everybody who is going along for the ride.

DB: For me, the where I first experienced Bisco was the point where you started incorporating techno. How did that come about?

MB: A couple of years ago without saying it openly, we felt a need for something to happen. There was a sort of stagnancy in the scene. Most of the bands were we playing with sounded the same to us and ultimately we sounded similar to them as well.

The interesting thing is we're not just jam bands kids. Jon was in a fraternity at Penn- actually it was less of a fraternity than a social group which had three letters in front of it- and these kids were from all over the world. They were into trance, drum and base, that type of music. We used to play our hippie shit at their house and every other party we'd do as a rave. And when we'd go out to a party there wasn't someone spinning "Roses Are Free," it was straight-up jungle or drum and bass or hardcore trance. Everywhere we looked and everywhere we went there was electronic music.

There was a kid named Nasir and he and Jon set up a studio over break and using the computer and live instruments they made a little techno EP. Magner came in and did some tracks. Jon was laying down loops on guitar and Magner was laying down loops on pi ano and then they'd run it on the computer and loop it. They still have that on a disc somewhere and we used a melody that they wrote in "Above The Waves."

We played a show at Penn State that fall and we did a "Run Like Hell" jam which basically was excessively techno sounding. Magner was using weird sounds on his synthesizer and I would find a bass line and just play it over and over again. That was the be ginning of it. We realized that the less quickly we changed the more interesting the jam would be, so we could really lock into each other. If four guys are constantly changing it's just an amorphous mess of music, everyone's always filling and it can be too much. We only allowed one guy to change at a time. It started coming out of "Vassillios," when we would all get in a groove and then Jon would change his line, then we locked up and I would change my line and we'd continue around. We were committed to building the jam slowly. What happened was that a few minutes later we weren't playing anything related to what we'd started but there never was a point in the jam where more than one person changed at a time. Basically we took that out of electronic mu sic where you lay down a loop, lay down another loop, lay down another loop, take one loop out, put another loop on top of it. We were developing our jams the way that we heard electronic DJs develop their music.

That next week Aron went our and bought this machine that was stocked full of electric sounds. He didn't tell anybody about it, he just started practicing on it at home. Then a couple days before Halloween that year he mentioned to us that he had bought this piece of equipment. Ultimately we played a surprise show on Penn's campus, and we played a two and half hour set that was predominantly "Run Like Hell." We popped into it early in the set and then we got out of it and continued to jam. It was excessi vely boring and extremely repetitive but it was unbelievably groundbreaking because it was the first time he had ever used this equipment with the band. And on this two and a half four tape there were five minute snippets here and there that absolutely d id not sound like it was coming from a band, and certainly not this band. At the end of the evening we kind of high fived each other and said "Holy shit, it's finally came to fruition." It just all came out, the electronic music from our ears into our bra ins, out of our fingers and into other people's ears. It was a huge turning point. We had this huge piece of equipment and we said "Let's get out there and let people know it's ours."

We're not really playing techno, we're using techno type sounds in improvisational music. We're doing it in a way that a band might get a mandolin because they don't want to sound too much like somebody else. I don't know if Bisco would exist if people c ouldn't say there's something this band does that other bands in the scene don't do. It was a really exciting time for us. It still is.

DB: I know you spent quite a bit of time at Wetlands attending shows in the early 90's. What does it feel like on those nights like the other one (June 5) when you're there until 5 AM and the place is packed until you walk off the stage?

MB: It really is unbelievable. I've been going to Wetlands since it opened up in 1989. At that time I was living in the West Village with my father. Then I was seeing the Authority at Nightengale's, and at the time that Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler w ere coming out of Wetlands. During those first couple of years there was this amazing thing that started to build there. This scene which hadn't existed in New York City was defined by the Wetlands. It was a wild thing that happened. When you think about it if Wetlands never opened what would the New York scene be like for young touring acts?

At that time I was going to all these shows. I used to hang over by the current backstage area which used to be the kitchen. I'd try to get over there because it would be packed everywhere else. It's funny because when we play there I know the kids who st and over on my side. Those are my kids, I know what they're going through at Wetlands. It's rough in there, you have to get by that back door where there's air coming in.

I spent three or four years avidly attending shows there. Then on August 7, 1996 we had our first show in the club. It was a headliner on a Wednesday night. That came about because we had gone to a moe. show at the club and promoted the crap out of a gig we had somewhere elsewhere in the city. This opened up the club's eyes to the fact that we were four kids who didn't mind promoting the shit out of their band. That was a big thing back then for us, street promotion. Anytime a show came around we were the re with fliers, almost annoyingly. I know that there are people out there who remember what it was like "All right, the Biscuits, I know. Enough already." Nobody had seen us but everybody was starting to hear our name. Not because we were a good band but because we were a hard working band. Well we got that first show and we said "Wow, if we bomb here we're screwed." But we brought in 150 people on a Wednesday night, and Chris {Zahn, talent buyer} said "You know what? I can work with you guys." It to ok us 11 gigs to break 200 people. Then it was mainly us calling all our friends in New York saying "Please come out, please come out." I hear young bands talking about that now. You really have to call everyone you know when you're playing the Wetlands. It's just too important, you have to be continuously moving forward. It really started to happen for us at the club this fall after we went out west, then we really started to bring out the kids.

To be honest with you there was a time when we couldn't play past three o'clock in the morning there. We couldn't hold a crowd. Maybe it was because we played Wednesday and Thursday, and people had to work. Whatever it was we couldn't hold a crowd past t hree o'clock. Then beginning this September we just started going until the crowds left. And now we've gotten to a point where we just keep playing. People don't leave. They may fall down but they won't leave. That's the kind of dedication that you really need. It was amazing this past Saturday when we finished, looking at my watch seeing that it was 4:55 and there were people all the way back to the bar.

We have to play until people leave because that it what the legend of Wetlands is all about. The legend of Wetlands is bands play until 5 or 6 in the morning. Blues Traveler used to do that. They would shut the doors and nobody would leave and they'd play until six. We'd hear about it and say "God, we want to do that." Starting with the New Years shows when we played until 5:45 one night, the word started getting out, "Go see the Biscuits at Wetlands and they're not going to stop playing." Of course we're locked into that and even if we're tired we have to keep playing because that's what people expect of us. But being a Wetlands kid it feels really, really good to have made it through the ranks to become one of their top bands.

DB: Along those lines what did it feel like when Oteil came out to play with the Biscuits?

MB: I can't even put it into words what it was like to have that guy on stage with the band. I think what he did this week was an unbelievable service to the community. He didn't need to be there to help his career. The guy is in the Allman Brothers, his career is in place. (laughs). He is widely considered to be one of the bass players in country. It was really fun to see him play with all of these other bands and see these other young bass players try to rip a solo after him. You may have noticed I did n't even bother. That was my feeling in the situation. This guy pays the baritone guitar better than anyone in the country. Let him do his thing and I'll do my thing right behind him. Our band has never been about virtuoso bass playing and has never been about bass soloing. There's so much movement in the upper end that in order to keep our jams together we've been concentrating on the bass and the drums being a solid unit, something that emphasizes the rhythm and the harmony. So it was really cool to hea r somebody who had that kind of talent soloing over our music, which was something I'd never heard.

And it was crazy to look down and have Butch Trucks standing there smiling and bopping his head to the band. I left the venue that night and when I was driving home I turned to my friend and said "Can you fucking believe what just went down? Can you even believe?" The first time I saw Oteil was in the HORDE with ARU. You're talking two years before the inception of the Disco Biscuits. Years before we had the band I was a concert-goer watching this guy shred the concert-going world to pieces and from that moment on people was saying that he was the best. I never in a million year thought that the guy would be standing six inches from me with a bass and I'd have on my bass and there would be hundreds of kids in front of us. Not to mention getting to kick ar ound with Butch and Oteil at the shows where I'd hear their version of life. Just to have two guys who are so well-respected in the music business, taking such an interest in the community was really satisfying. It was really cool to hear Oteil for instan ce say "Wow, Schleigho shred me to bits." Schleigho shred him to bits (laughs) It's too good. Or to hear him say 'Wow, Ulu, that's a great band."

DB: Moving on to a different topic, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Allgood {editor's note: due to a freak windstorm, a light rig crashed at the festival during the Deep Banana Blackout set, canceling the Biscuits own performance}.

MB: I think it was great that no one got hurt. It could have been so much more of a disaster than it was. It was a setback in the region for us. But if the lights had fallen differently it could have been much more of a setback for Deep Banana Blackout or us because both bands had people on stage at the time. More or less we're grateful that the extent of the damage was that we lost our sets and maybe a couple of pieces of equipment. That type of event really put it into perspective for us. Obviously all we wanted was to get on stage that day but after something like that happens, you can't be upset. Maybe you're upset there may have been some type of breakdown along the way. Mother Nature had the grip on the day though, we didn't. I was in the tent behin d the stage when this all went down because I only have to plug in one plug but everybody else in my band was on stage setting up. It took me a little while to fully appreciate what could have happened.

After we lost our set officially what occurred was that if we were going to get on stage it was up to moe. We have something of a relationship with them. We've done some shows with them, and we jammed with them at the Gathering of the Vibes. When it got t o this point one of their guys, I think it was Chuck, told Tim {Walther, the Allgood promoter}that they were willing to give thirty minutes of their set to the Disco Biscuits, whether that meant in the middle of the set or sliced it off their set, through the moe. hostile takeover or whatever. Ultimately we couldn't work that out because of electrical problems. But since I ended up getting paid, it turned out that my job for the day was just to be a nuisance to moe. Stand around and nudge Skippi, punch Ch uck and get chased around by Rob with a polish sausage. I tried to rip down their tent at one time. I was bored and having a great time, tending to the idea of annoying moe. as much as I could (laughs). It was all in good fun. If anything came out of that day it was getting to know them a little bit better and realizing that those guys are really fucking cool.

DB: What do you have planned for the rest of the summer?

MB: We have Gathering of the Vibes then the Shhh Festival. The week after that we have the Melstock and that's it. Other than that we're off for all of July and most of August. We're doing Camp Bisco and the Berkfest in August. It will definitely be a dow n period in terms of playing out so we can start to work on new tunes. We've been out on the road for over a hundred shows with our new roster of tunes, and it's time for new songs. We're looking to do ten to twenty new tunes and get back on the road in the fall and have everybody say "What's this song? What's this song? I love this song." It will give the kids something to talk about in the fall and give us a new reason to be on the road because it is all about new songs. It's the new songs that keep yo u enjoying the touring.

The local kids who are coming really feed off the energy of these kids. It's really changed the face of Biscuits tour having this touring contingency, it's changed the shows because there is an energy that comes to every show.