It’s a Wednesday afternoon and Dave Brandwein is milling around Galaxy Smith Studios, his personal recording space in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. The singer-guitarist is gathering his things, preparing for one of Turkuaz’s biggest tours to date. “Having just released the album, we’re starting to hit it hard again,” he laughs, referring to Life in the City, Turkuaz’s first LP since 2015’s Digitonium. Staring this month, the nine-piece band will embark on a five-month, coast-to-coast outing that will bring them everywhere from Port Chester, NY’s historic Capitol Theatre to the high seas of Jam Cruise. Looking back on the creative process of Life in the City, Brandwein is excited to explore its lyrical depths onstage. “Each song on the record has its own little theme that it explores,” he explains. “It’s different than the last one; this one is based more in reality than fantasy.” Below, Brandwein touches on the new record, Turkuaz’s ongoing love affair with Talking Heads and what it’s like to be at the helm of a wildly creative and “hugely collaborative” band. Since Life in the City is your first LP in three years, did you have any specific goals in mind? Our album in 2015 was Digitonium and it was a very long record—it was very much a concept album. It was based in fantasy, around the sword and the stone. It was this fictional universe that we played into, It was totally just a fun, fantasy-based thing, whereas this album was trying to dig in a little bit more into what was going on in my life, what was going on in the world, without addressing any of it too directly. Trying to include some personal, and at times, darker stuff, is tricky being a band whose music is always supposed to be fun and uplifting. People come to Turkuaz shows to celebrate life and to enjoy it and forget about problems. I didn’t want to take that element away, but I think what ended up happening was a really cool juxtaposition of putting some darker, even at times dystopian, themes over music that’s still fun and energetic and uplifting. What songs do you think exemplify that juxtaposition you’re talking about? This one song “The One and Lonely” is dealing with sticky habits like drinking. As you can imagine, when living life on the road it’s easy to get into the drinking and partying lifestyle. I kind of hit a point where I wanted to change in myself, and you can hear me sorting through some of that on “The One and Lonely.” Again, it was something that I was a little bit unsure if it was gonna work for Turkuaz music, but the music under it is still fun and, in fact, is one of my favorite grooves on the record You touched on it earlier, but Life on the City is much shorter than your previous release. Did you originally have more than nine songs in the writing process? Absolutely. I think that is another big difference, that the last one was so long and this one we tried to trim the fat and make it leaner and more compact. It packs a lot of punches in a short period of time. Each of the nine songs has its own really strong identity, and it is a very listenable length. Over the couple years we were working on this, we recorded something like 21 or 22 songs, not all of them to completion. We took the nine that we felt made the best record, because we do still care a lot about the art of making an album. At some point, over the next year or so, we want to trickle out the rest of the material. I have to ask about your collaboration with Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads. How did you guys end up meeting? Someone in our management team actually came up with the idea because they heard us talk about the Talking Heads being such a huge influence on our band, which they are. Stop Making Sense, the film, was the direct impetus for Taylor [Shell] and me, several years ago to put a band like this together. We were looking to have an experience with an outside producer so we reached out, and sure enough he was very interested, which we were thrilled about. I met up with him, we hung out one night, and it was really awesome getting to pick his brain and hear about how they put that film together, how it was done. Can you remember moments in the studio with Jerry when you were particularly inspired? There were a number of them, but one that’s really funny was he thought my vocals were too calm or didn’t have a sense of urgency to them, so he asked me to run laps around the studio. I have a hard enough time getting a good take as is, and I didn’t think running around was gonna help very much, but he insisted. And it actually yielded a cool result, this intangible thing, a sense of urgency. He told me that they used to do that on some Talking Heads recordings. Now I’m imagining David Byrne running around a studio. I think that did happen. That’s probably why there’s that whole running sequence in Stop Making Sense for “Life During Wartime.” Running laps around the stage. How exactly do you think Talking Heads fermented in your brain to create Turkuaz? I think that people assume that a lot of the more classic funk stuff would be our main influence, which obviously a lot of it is: everything from James Brown to P-Funk, Prince, Michael Jackson—there are so many I can’t even possibly begin to name them. But seeing that film, Stop Making Sense, and hearing the way Talking Heads put this theatrical spin on funk, they used a different approach. I come from a background of a lot of classic rock—Beatles, Pink Floyd, things like that—and I saw for the first time a really perfect melding of funk and that sort of songwriter approach when I watched Stop Making Sense.
Turkuaz are very much a current part of the jam scene. Yet, stylistically, you’re set apart from a lot of other bands. Well thank you. That makes me happy to hear—not for any reason of not liking that music, but I do hope that comes across for the exact reason we just talked about, the Talking Heads thing. Early on, when we were just playing in clubs and doing what we do, the jam scene wasn’t the main thing on my radar at all. I was like, “Let’s just go out and play.” As we started realizing that this is where the music fans are and this is where the community is—and that’s what’s so special about the jam scene— we realized that it made a whole lot of sense. Along with that came extending the arrangements, adding more jam sections. We definitely fell into the jam scene, and happily so. I think we still try to expand and attract fans from outside it. I think our music has some crossover potential. But those fans and that jam community are really strong. That’s where the greatest love of live music that I’ve seen today exists, for sure. We’re very happy to be a part of that. Tell me a little about life on the road with a nine-piece band. What strategies or techniques do you guys use to stay on the same page remain in fighting shape? I think we’ve all luckily learned over all these years how to get along on the road, how to keep ourselves in shape playing, and it’s been a learning process. We stay organized. We have a great team of people that run the show for us off the stage. Everyone knows where they’re supposed to be and when. It’s also really important for each person to find your own time. If you have a two or three hour window one day where you can do something, take it and go for a walk. If you just get in and out of the bus and play I think mentally that can do some damage. And when you multiply that times nine in a band like this, it’s important that each of the nine people is doing the things that are gonna keep them feeling positive and happy on a daily basis. You played Red Rocks with Greensky Bluegrass a couple of weeks ago. What were the personal highlights for you? Just the venue itself, obviously, is quite an experience to play. It was nice because this was our second time going there; we played there with Lettuce last year. So that was really overwhelming, going back a second time to play. By the time we were there setting up, I was able to take it in a little bit more. Last time seemed like a whirlwind. This time I found myself really comfortable the whole time; I got to really soak in the beauty of that venue and how great it sounds. The horn section, as well as myself, Sammi [Garett] and Shira [Elias], sat in with Greensky too. We closed out the night with a version of “Rocket Man” by Elton John. There’s a Turkuaz concert film in the works. Any details you’d like to share? It will probably come out some time next year. We’re waiting to see how it all comes together. I’d been thinking about doing something like this for a couple years, so finally having Jerry and picking his brain about concert films—I took the opportunity while we were working with him a year and a half ago to start to plan it. Now we’re moving on to the post-production and what the release plans could look like. Is the next Turkuaz album already in the works? Definitely. The first order of business is finishing all the songs for some sort of follow-up release that’ll be associated with Life in the City. Between that and the live film, we certainly have our work cut out for us. But I am trying to always be ready to move on to the next album. You guys tour all over the place, but you’re still a Brooklyn band. Even the title of the album, Life in the City, nods to that. Is it nice to have a creative surrounding that you can call home? For better or worse, the city environment inspires a lot of creativity. I know it’s not for everybody, but I think it does give the music a certain feeling. And that’s never more evident than with this record. It gives some edge. There’ll perhaps be other phases of life where the city won’t be the right environment, but for now I really enjoy being here. New York City is the city. It’s the place where things happen, and I’m definitely proud that we’re a New York band.
