Ryan Brewer (above, left) was excited when I met up with him at Taste of C-U on Saturday. The Good Night and Good Morning guitarist had scored a copy of What’s Happening to Me? while curb-shopping on the way to the park, and the puberty lessons that awaited intrigued him.
Both Brewer and vibraphonist Pat Elifritz were rocking corduroys in the 90-plus temperatures, which is a sign of true commitment. Although the duo are Champaign natives, their full-time C-U status will be ending in the fall, when their studies take them to Chicago — Pat to UIC and Ryan to Columbia College.
But for the time being, they’re here, so enjoy them while you can. You can tune in to WEFT Sessions at 10 p.m. on WEFT–90.1 FM, and you can also stream the show online. Pat and Ryan talked with me about both their recent and upcoming tour, why they project movies while they play, and what movie they’d like to write a score for.
SP: Can you give us a little history of GNAGM?
Pat: Yeah, we met in high school. We played in some bands together throughout high school, but none of those really lasted very long.
Ryan: It started off with metal bands and then slowly got chiller. We were in this indie rock band, which wasn’t working out, so we started playing some acoustic stuff together.
SP: (To Pat) Have you always played the vibraphone?
Pat: When we first started, I played piano. The vibraphone’s a fairly recent addition.
SP: (To Ryan) You’ve always played guitar?
Ryan: Yeah.
SP: How did the whole, showing movies thing evolve?
Pat: We started doing it with this band.
Ryan: We’d seen a couple other bands do it with different styles, and we just thought it would work really well with what we were trying to do, and we had a lot of ideas.
Pat: Our music’s always been really mellow, so I think it helps engage people, and give something to focus on. Because we’re not putting on much of a show, visually, just us. I think it’s also tapping our deep desire to eventually write a score for a movie. We’d really enjoy the pairing.
SP: What kind of movie would you like to write the score to?
Pat: Maybe like a Bruce Willis movie or something?
Ryan: Yeah. Lethal Weapon 5. Or a snowboarding movie?
SP: Who shoots the movies?
Pat: I shoot ’em. I shoot them on Super 8, and then I edit them by projecting them and re-filming them on VHS. I used to use a computer and appropriated video for the old songs, but for all the new songs I just decided to do everything myself.
SP: Has that ever caused a problem with any of the shows you’ve played, setting up the projector or anything like that?
Pat: I’d say nine shows out of ten (there aren’t any problems).
Ryan: On the tour we went on, there were only two or three shows that we couldn’t.
Pat: Two or three out of 18. And you know, obviously, daytime shows, like if we were playing here today we wouldn’t be showing video.
Ryan: One of those shows was on a rooftop in Brooklyn, and there was this giant tree and the New York skyline behind us, so I wasn’t too bummed about that.
Pat: Pretty scenic, yeah.
SP: When was the tour?
Ryan: We just got back two days ago.
SP: Where did you go?
Ryan: This was an East Coast tour. We went through Indiana down to Kentucky, Virginia…
Pat: And north from there. Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philly, up to New England, and then back. Most of the shows were on the East Coast.
SP: Was it a good time?
Pat: Yeah. It was definitely the best one yet. We’d been out there one other time, last summer, so we had some friends that helped us out again.
Ryan: And all the friends that helped up out last year, helped us out even more this year.
Pat: Everyone outdid themselves.
SP: With the gigs?
Pat: Yeah, just really putting on great shows for us.
Ryan: Gigs and places to stay and everything.
Pat: We’re pretty easy to please, but the shows and the effort that everybody put into them were really appreciated.
SP: Were you able to break even on the deal?
Pat: Sure, yeah. We had some money left over. We’re getting ready to go on another tour. In about two weeks, we’re going down to Texas and Louisiana. We’ve never been down there before, so we have some money left over from the first tour to put toward this one, just because we don’t really know exactly what we’re getting into. We’ll probably have a hospital bill to pay for heat stroke.
Ryan: Yeah, possibly.
SP: It’s probably the best time of year to visit Texas.
Pat: I take full responsibility for that.
Ryan: I think it’d be a fantastic story to get chased down by a tornado. Or a hurricane. I think that’d be fantastic.
SP: So, is your EP out?
Ryan: Yes, our tour kickoff show was the CD release show.
Pat: The tour is very much EP support.
SP: So, you have merch now?
Pat: We only sell our CD, and we do it donation-based, and let people pay what they want for it. It’s worked out pretty well.
Ryan: It’s worked out great.
Pat: (Everyone pays us) a lot more than it cost us to make. We haven’t had anyone trying to give us a dollar or anything. We had one person pay us in change.
Ryan: But it was like ten dollars. It fed the parking meters for the rest of the tour.
Pat: We took it.
SP: No car trouble or anything?
Pat: No car trouble, but we had plenty of equipment issues, kind of from the start.
Ryan: All three of us (they toured with a second guitarist) had equipment issues on this tour. But that’s to be expected.
SP: Have you guys played for WEFT before?
Ryan: We did one a year ago, but we’re pretty different now.
Pat: That was when we were just piano and acoustic guitar. It’s definitely the first time we’ve played any of these songs on WEFT.
SP: Since you guys are such a visual group, is it simpler to play on the radio?
Pat: I don’t think we really play any differently, though.
Ryan: I don’t know how it’s going to work. I don’t know if we should keep some of the parts quieter, I don’t know.
Pat: I think we might play a little mellower set. When we were on tour, we had another guitar player, so we had the liberty to play a little bit louder. With just the two of us, we try to keep it a little more ambient. We’ll just play it by ear, I guess.