Brian Butcher - The Home Team 'Making Whatever Kind Of Music We Want To'
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Now, here’s a new one for you! We haven’t covered The Home Team on Wall Of Sound before, in fact, we’ve only just discovered them. If you’ve heard of them before, shame on you for not passing along such cool music.
The Home Team are from Seattle and they’re a heavy pop rock band featuring Brian Butcher (vocalist), Daniel Matson (drums), Ryne Olson (bass), and John Baran (guitar). They’re also coming to Australia for the first time THIS MONTH supporting Caskets on their Reflections tour.
They’ve dropped a few singles over the past few months, their latest just a few days ago actually called ‘Roommates // Overtime’, which is an incredibly groovy number. So, let’s get acquainted with their vocalist, Brian, and find out more, shall we?
So you guys have been kicking it since 2015, can you tell us a bit about your band’s origin story?
2015 is when I joined the band, and so we kind of consider it the beginning. They actually had two singers prior to me and did a couple of DIY tours for five years up and down the West Coast. We all come from metal backgrounds, and the drummer, Dan, and guitarist, John, started the band up and were sending demos to each other while in their other bands as early as 2009. But finally, things started to kick off after we recorded Slow Bloom.
Who inspired you back then and who inspires you now? What’s the progression like?
That’s a great question because it’s a huge difference. W all come from different specific metal backgrounds. So, Ryan listened to hardcore, I listened to prog, John listened to death metal, and Dan listened to deathcore. So, we all have a lot of roots in metal music.
Today, the thing that inspires me and, by proxy, us quite a bit is actually contemporary R&B music. So some of my favourites are SZA, she’s huge so I always mention her because everybody knows who she is, Lucky Daye is a huge one, Victoria Monét is a huge one. Stuff like that I think is phenomenal, and it’s usually what’s on my daily rotation. And as a singer it kind of goes hand in hand—it’s very vocal driven music.
So, beyond that I’ve also listened to a ton of other stuff. I listen to a lot of like lofi music, it has a lot of really cool chord progressions in there. And we also love Japanese rock.
You released your first album Better Off in 2018, and second album Slow Bloom in 2021. Looking back over that period of your band life, what was a highlight or something that you think contributed massively to your sound or development?
Definitely. So Better Off was the album that we thought people would like. The entire point of The Home Team, it sounds lame, but the point of The Home Team was kind of to sell out and to make music that’s a little more approachable than deathcore, for example. And the whole reason for that was because we were like, “If we want to do this for the rest of our lives, we should probably branch out of metal.”
So, we made a pop punk album, because we thought that’s what people would like, and it didn’t really hit because it wasn’t very genuine. I have a lot of love for that album. I know a lot of other people do, too. There are some great songs on it, and there are some other songs that I don’t think are really great, but that’s okay.
And when we were writing Slow Bloom, and because Better Off didn’t really work like we wanted it to, we basically said, “Well, if we’re not going to make a living doing this, we should probably have fun doing it and do whatever we want to do.” So, Slow Bloom was born out of us just wanting to make whatever kind of music we want to, like, it doesn’t have to have any parameters. It doesn’t have to fit any mould.
And we, honest to God, thought nobody would like it (laughs) all the way maybe up until the end of the process. Once we were at the end, we were like, “Oh, this is actually kind of sick.” But yeah, it was born out of trying to be a lot more genuine, and trying to do what we want to do, and not really caring what other people think about it.
You have been trickle releasing singles, the most recent being ‘Hell’ a month ago in March, and it’s actually epic. I need to know your first reactions when you saw yourselves all gamified. Were you amazed?
It was cool. Our director, Sam, spearheaded it because we gave him the general concept. We said we want to do an animated music video using a bunch of different animations and we want it to be us running around in hell. And he said, “Say no more. I got it, let me handle it.”
And he did all the dirty work of getting from point A to point B. And he did a phenomenal job, but he had a really hard time because it was so much logistic work that, to be honest, we didn’t see a cut of it until maybe about a week before it came out, which was a little frightening. But we were also giving Sam his space to be able to like work on that stuff.
He would come back and ask us questions and be like, “Okay, what do you think about this?” And he would send us frames and be like, “Is this the right direction?” But it was a little nerve wracking to say the least, but overall I mean the video turned out awesome, so I can’t complain at all. Once I saw it, I was like, “Oh great, this is so sick!”
What about the song itself? How did it come together and why did you like it so much that you wanted to release it as a single?
‘Hell’ is an interesting one—it’s the single fastest song we’ve ever made by beats per minute (BPM). We’ve never made a song that’s at 200 BPM before. It was a very weird, experimental one that we thought was going to be towards the back half of the album. It was just like a fun little thing, and we wrote it at the very end of the process.
I think it was just a matter of like how punchy it was, and also the fact that it was very different. I think we’re always a band that’s gonna try different things. So we wanted to basically figure out: is this something that people would like? We have our personal favourite tracks, but realistically when it comes to a release campaign, we will consider strategy and try new things to see what works.
And I think people really liked it, which I’m really happy about. Yeah, the main reason we released it as a single was because it was different and we just wanted to try something new with it. It’s also so short that it’s like, no harm no foul.
Looking at your releases so far, all your music videos are very cool and creative, just like the songs: very upbeat, fun, exciting. Do you guys just have ideas bursting at the seams for everything you do? Or is it a bit more hard work?
Totally the latter, it can be pretty tough sometimes. So the way that our dynamic works, John is an amazing idea guy, and I’m a lot better at execution. So, historically, for Slow Bloom, he would come up with the idea for the music video, and then I would film and edit it.
We have since hired a director because he’s way better than me at doing that stuff. And it can be a little tough. Actually, as we speak, I’m currently a little stuck on what to do about one of the future music videos. I feel like one of the reasons why we don’t necessarily have ideas bursting at the seams is because I don’t usually like to entertain ideas that I just don’t like. So if I don’t like an idea, I’ll be like, nope onto the next. Same thing with songwriting, I feel like it takes me especially, but us as a band, just a little bit longer to squeeze it out. But that’s because we’re really passionate about it and we want to make sure it’s good.
You’re supporting Caskets on the Reflections Tour in May, and it’s your first time in Australia. Have you guys been trying really hard to get down here? I know it’s a really long flight and really expensive, but is this something you’ve been working towards and the opportunity came up?
A little bit of both. The opportunity did kind of appear out of nowhere, like, within one week the idea and the accepting of the tour happened.
I stay a little bit away from the touring stuff because I’m not totally in charge of it, but it just kind of happened. And that’s the thing, Australia was something we’ve always had on our minds and wanting to get out there. So, it’s just a matter of, as you said, cost. It’s so expensive. We will probably lose money on this trip, but that’s okay, because now we have at least another awesome band to go there with. And it’s just a little more secure knowing that we have a plan and dates and a lineup and all that instead of trying to bank on a headliner when we’ve never played there.
Anyway, so it kind of happened out of nowhere, but it’s something that’s been on my mind for a long time. We’re really excited to come.
Are you taking any steps to prepare mentally and physically for the incredible coffee, kangaroos and rowdy Aussie crowds?
I’m definitely working on my fitness and specifically my cardio because as a singer that’s something I definitely have to consider. Definitely fell off after the last bunch of tours that we were doing just because when I’m on tour, I’m a lot more focused on like keeping myself like well.
So, oftentimes I don’t work out nearly as much as I do when I’m at home. And so I’ve been exercising, I’ve been practicing because I haven’t sang in, I mean, Home Team hasn’t played a show this year. We haven’t played a show since December, and I haven’t sang on stage since January. We did a rehearsal about a month ago, and I hadn’t really sang in between then, and it was pretty rough. But I’m practicing!
Did you see that Taylor Swift would run on the treadmill and go through her entire set list?
That’s so smart, because honestly, all it does is conditions you to be able to do something that’s even harder than what you’re doing on stage. Actually, sometimes it’s about as hard, because what she’s doing on stage is a lot of dancing.
Dancing, I’ve found out recently, is extremely cardio intensive. So that’s a big reason why I’ve been just reconditioning my body to be used to it again.
I hope your time over here is so fun. Do you have anything else this year to look forward to?
Summer School Tour. Yeah, that’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s just a bunch of crazy cool bands.
And then we haven’t announced yet, but the signs are there—we are dropping an album this year. I’m very excited to see what the reception is today because it’s not the same album again.
Well, everyone is super, super keen on all these new tracks, so I don’t think you can go wrong, to be honest! Thanks so much for your time, Brian.
Interview by Ebony Story
Caskets hit Australia on May 10th – shows are selling out like hotcakes!
Caskets – Reflections Australian Tour
with The Home Team, Stepson and Bad Love
FRIDAY – AMPLIFIER BAR, PERTH – SOLD OUT
SATURDAY MAY 11 – LION ARTS FACTORY, ADELAIDE
SUNDAY MAY 12 – 170 RUSSELL, MELBOURNE
WEDNESDAY MAY 15 – DICEY RILEYS, WOLLONGONG
THURSDAY MAY 16 – CROWBAR, SYDNEY – SOLD OUT
FRIDAY MAY 17 – NEWCASTLE HOTEL, NEWCASTLE – SOLD OUT
SATURDAY MAY 18 – BRIGHTSIDE OUTDOORS, BRISBANE – SOLD OUT
