![]() We were all so excited to be able to do these last shows. “It wasn’t sad nobody was upset, at least in the band. “I remember that being an amazing weekend because it didn’t really feel, to us, like the end,” Nanna says of those last shows. In 1999, Braid planned four final shows in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Champaign-including a secret show at the legendary Fireside Bowl where the band selected their set by spinning a wheel to which thirty-six of their song titles were taped. But it’s hard to hold a candle to someone that can drum that technically and that hard.”īut touring took its toll on the members of Braid, who hadn’t taken a break since solidifying their lineup and were burnt out. ![]() “Roy’s drumming is excellent, and I’ll say that until the day that I die. ![]() “We got Damon and went from being a band that was quirky to one that was much more of a rock band,” he explains. But Frame & Canvas also expressed a focused power to which their previous releases only alluded-a power, Broach says, that was brought to the band by drummer Damon Atkison, who replaced Ewing a year earlier. Songs like “Killing a Camera,” showcased Nanna’s croon, which seemed tossed by frantic, foaming chords and a slow but stirring drumbeat others, such as “A Dozen Roses”, captured the band’s dissonant darkness and an explosive desperation that lent itself so well to the emo scene that Braid helped build. “They were a little less serious, and we wanted our music to be fun, but they were maybe a little more straight-forward, more pop, and had a lot more of the storytelling aspects that I loved.”įor four years, Braid toured relentlessly and released a series of records-including full-lengths Frankie Welfare Boy Age Five and Age Of Octeen-all of which led to the release 1998′s Frame & Canvas, a record that both Nanna and Broach agree best captures Braid’s essence. “But Braid was also equal parts of music coming out of the Bay Area-Jawbreaker, Samiam, even Green Day at the time to some extent,” Nanna adds. “Anytime any of those bands-like Fugazi, Nation of Ulysses, Shudder to Think, or Jawbox-came anywhere near Chicago, we were there.” In addition to the music, Nanna was obsessed with the energy that these bands expressed onstage. “We would soak up and study pretty much anything on Dischord,” he says. With Broach and Nanna as principal songwriters, Braid started writing songs that combined the sounds of DC with those of the Bay Area. I went to the show and ended up leaving being introduced as the newest member of Braid.” “At some point, they found out that I sang and played guitar,” Broach continues, “and Roy basically offered me a job. ![]() “I ended up talking to the guys afterwards,” he remembers, “and I said, ‘Hey you guys did a really good job except, well, your one guitar player was out of tune the whole time.’” The band, who had already lost their first singer, knew that things were not working out with this guitarist, and were ready to recruit Broach. We all loved the same bands, so we started playing music.”īroach was added to Braid after seeing one of their early shows in Urbana, where he too would soon be attending U of I. “Within the first week or so of me being down there,” he continues, “we hung out and I met some of his friends, one of which was Todd Bell, who played bass, and we hit it off. Though he sang and played drums back home in a band called Friction, he hoped to meet new musicians while he was away, and had already met a drummer-Roy Ewing, whom he met after posting an ad in Maximum Rocknroll to trade video tapes of concerts he had recorded. These good times can be traced back to 1993, when Nanna left the Chicago suburbs and started attending the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. “We would sit there after DJing, drinking at two in the morning when the bar was closed, and just start talking about old times, realizing how good those were.” “Our night was called ‘Shield Your Eyes’, like the Jawbreaker song,” Broach adds. I thought, I wonder if Chris would want to come and join me?” “At the time,” Nanna tells, “I had started to do these DJ nights at a bar called Bar DeVille, and they wanted me to do a punk/indie DJ night. They began bumping into each other at local shows and bars before they created new reasons to reconvene. When Broach moved to Chicago, though, it took no time before he and Nanna reconnected. Nanna was in Chicago, a two and a half hour trek from Champaign, IL where Broach lived and where Braid had started writing its angular, dissonant songs in 1993. It wasn’t due to animosity both were simply busy with other musical pursuits and living in separate cities. For three or four years, Bob Nanna hadn’t heard much from his former Braid bandmate Chris Broach-not since the band’s brief reunion in 2004, at least.
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