Wichita trio Brave Boy releases its latest single on Friday, Dec. 20.
The tune is the latest in a series issued by the group, comprised of husband and wife Eric and Mary Harrison as well as longtime friend and collaborator Zach Pavey. He replaced original member Chad Duncan.
The single is available on digital streaming platforms and a video will soon follow.
The group will also perform Friday, Dec. 27, at Kirby’s Beer Store along with Milkwave, Holding and Goodbye Balloon.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This new single is identifiable as Brave Boy, but I detect some new sounds that have found their way in as well.
Eric Harrison: I think musically it’s a little different in that some of the other stuff that we’ve released is very ’80s-sounding in a way. I think this has more of a shoegaze/early ’90s thing going on. Our other guitarist [Zach Pavey] said it reminded him of a very certain era of Britpop before Britpop got huge. I can see that. That late ’80s Britpop/early ’90s Britpop thing, My Bloody Valentine, stuff like that. I can kind of see that.
Mary Harrison: Once I came into the writing process, I was thinking a lot about Blonde Redhead, when I was penning vocals and coming up with ideas for that with Eric. It’s a similar mood but a different presentation.
EH: I think there are some things that are common between everything that we do, so The Cure is always an influence. But in a lot of our newer material, and a lot of it hasn’t been released yet, Prince is a big influence. This one doesn’t really go there, which is sort of strange.
You’ve been releasing music for over a year now.
EH: Since July of 2023.
MH: Our original goal was to release a single a month. We haven’t quite kept to that. We did for quite a while but other things in life came up.
I like that we get this kind of trickle of songs and there’s a sense of evolution as we go along.
EH: Some of this material I wrote in the last year for Brave Boy and some of it I wrote for a project that I was in previously and some of it I wrote for a project that just didn’t exist. There are some Brave Boy songs [in which] the music dates back to 2016, 2017. Quite a bit of it was written in 2020. In fact, this song started long ago. The first parts of it … there’s an electronic section that’s also kind of an intro.
MH: There were loops he’d made long ago, and we were just listening to a lot of older material, and I fell in love with it. It changed a lot over time, but that’s how it started.
I’ve known you both for quite a while and, Mary, I didn’t realize that you wrote and sang.
MH: I’ve been a writer without a purpose I guess, and this just really kind of snapped into focus, and after years of teaching and being a mother, instilled me with confidence I never had before. Getting older you care less about what other people think. I finally decided to give it a shot and [I was] instantly addicted. It’s so convenient. I can be intoxicated by that and immerse myself in that because we live together and can work on things [easily]. It’s just been really great.
Did you want to say anything about the lyrics to this tune?
MH: Oh, sure. I don’t mind revealing that I’m a big English nerd. I teach English, so a lot of my writing inspirations are literary. This one is no exception. I’ve taught “Catcher in the Rye” for many years and every year it breaks my heart more than the year before. The older I get, the more heartbreaking it is, so going into the winter blues, it just seemed like the perfect inspiration right now.
