You Won’t Forget

Brent Best's Songwriting Provides Continuity From Slobberbone To The Drams

originally published May 16, 2007

For more than 10 years, Brent Best (vocals, guitar), Jess Barr (lead guitar) and Tony Harper (drums) incessantly toured the country as the hard-hitting, hard-living alt-country act Slobberbone, garnering a rabid base of fans, a mention in the Stephen King/ Peter Straub novel Black House, and the ultimate compliment from the late novelist Larry Brown, who described them as “probably the best rock and roll band I’ve ever heard.”

Still, all good things must come to an end, and so it was with Slobberbone. Brent Best maps the band’s demise thusly: “Our bass player [Brian Lane] moved to Florida and got married. We’d always said that once anyone left, we wouldn’t call it Slobberbone anymore, we’d just call it quits.”

For about a year and a half, Best toured solo. That ended in 2005, when he found out that he was scheduled to play at South by Southwest, not in a singer-songwriter showcase, but wedged between full live bands. He decided to put one together, roping in Slobberbone’s Barr and Harper, in addition to old friends Keith Killoren (bass, vocals) and Chad Stockslager (keyboards, vocals) of Denton band Budapest One, whose albums Best had produced. The lineup worked and The Drams came into being.

Last summer, The Drams released their debut Jubilee Dive, which they recorded with Best’s old friend Matt Pence of Tex-Mex soundscape band Centro-Matic. “I’ve known Matt for a long time. We used to be in a band together," says Best. "I’d recorded some demos with Matt, and when the time came to record an album, we went into the studio. Matt’s a savant in the studio in terms of engineering. We’ll probably work on our next album with him… it’s a good fit.”

The Drams have received a lot of praise for Jubilee Dive, a solid rock album that soars with three-part vocal harmonies and the addition of keyboards. Best says he doesn’t find The Drams very different from Slobberbone, but “we’ve had hardcore fans who have followed us for years, so the little differences seem magnified. I write the same way. I do have other people singing with me, and with Chad on keyboards, the instrumentation is more filled out. To me, one more person in the band just means it’s extra stinky and that there’s less room in the van.”

As far as writing processes go, Best also says he's stuck with what's worked. “The best tunes end up writing themselves. Sometimes I hear the melody attached to words that I may not understand until I finish writing the song," he says. "I find the best way that songs come to me is in the moments before I fall completely asleep, around 5 a.m. I have to get up and record it or write it down. Sometimes I don’t, then I’ll wake up and not remember anything… Sometimes a phrase comes attached with melody and I don’t know why. At some point, it finishes itself. Patterson [Hood of the Drive-by Truckers] and I have talked about this, and it might sound all flighty and zen, but the way the best songs happen has less to do with sitting down and writing songs and more about being ready to take it when one comes.”

Unlike his buddy Hood, Best “didn’t come from a musical family. I only had a few records when I was a kid. My dad bought me Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings records to play. They meant a lot to me because my dad had bought them for me, but I didn’t realize 'til years later the impact they had on me. I began listening to a lot of hard rock, the Replacements and Hüsker Dü, and that’s really where I found my place in terms of wanting to pick up a guitar and play the loud, feedback-y distorted post-punk punk stuff. Later on, the music I played was a reflection of the punk stuff I liked and the country I grew up on, as well the bluegrass my parents listened to.”

In between tours, Best is working on recording and producing bands from Denton and elsewhere. The Drams will be on hiatus this coming fall - drummer Tony Harper’s wife is expecting a baby in September. Best says the band will probably begin work on a new record soon.

Best’s newest release is a song for a compilation CD out earlier this month featuring several other artists, including Vic Chesnutt, Alejandro Escovedo and Robert Earl Keen, honoring author Larry Brown, who passed away in 2004. Recently, they gathered in Oxford, MS, to pay tribute to Brown at the Oxford Conference of the Book, playing a show in his memory. In the liner notes of Just One More: A Tribute to Larry Brown, Best recounts Brown as being "one of the biggest single influences on the songs I was writing after finding his work and, most importantly now to me, he became my friend."

Deirdre Sayre

WHO: Southern Bitch, The Drams
WHERE: Tasty World
WHEN: Friday, May 18
HOW MUCH: $5