A Conversation With Briar Rabbit

Phillip Michael Scales is a performer currently living in Chicago, trained at the Berklee School of Music, and raised in Metro Detroit.  Coinciding with Black History Month, Scales has released a record on Bandcamp entitled “The Great Routine,” a concept album exploring some of the personal and political dynamics of a Minstrel performer.  Scales plays under the moniker Briar Rabbit, which is a name steeped in its own history, stretching back from American tales to Akan folklore.  Briar Rabbit’s two records shimmer with a warm Indie Pop influence, but don’t let the inviting feeling fool you; Routine is filled with challenging ideas about what it means to be a performer, to be an African-American performer in particular, and how the past continues to inform our present perceptions of these issues.  Catch him on one of his mid-west live dates before Spring rolls around.  http://www.briarrabbit.net/. You can listen to The Great Routine right here, at the end of this post! 

How is your tour going? 

At the moment I’m not actually on tour. I’ve just been doing weekend shots.  First it was three Iowa dates, then it was Grand Rapids and Madison, and next weekend it’s Lansing.

Wow, hell of a weekend trip from Chi-town to Iowa!

The shows have all gone really well. It’s just been solo and people can hear the lyrics.  It’s a drive but luckily it was all two or three hours away from each other

Does it feel easier to connect to audiences when you’re doing solo gigs?

Absolutely. As the head of the machine there’s so much you’re thinking about with a lot of people on stage and lots more listening. Solo it just comes out and connects, me and them.

Has to be a heavier burden, though. 

Maybe, but I feel like I have more control.  Like being in a kayak as opposed to a rowing crew.  I can sort of feel the crowd out but I really like both.

I think it would offer some useful context if we talked a little bit about your background as a musician, and the Briar Rabbit project itself.  I’m particularly interested in the significance of the band name.   

I’ve always been super into stories and I was really drawn to the character of Br’er Rabbit when I was younger. I liked the idea of having a nick name for a band name much like “Bright Eyes,” so I could add or subtract band members without feeling like they weren’t on par, or we weren’t on a level playing field.  This is skipping ahead a bit but I had The Great Routine written before making Briar Rabbit [the band] so I figured that would be an interesting tie.

It’s like you had to build the band around the idea.

Almost.  It was really something I knew I’d have to live with a while and to throw people back to a tale they’re familiar with.  I mean also Briar Rabbit was a bit of mouthy, wily, smart, loveable character that just kept getting into trouble.  So I sort of felt a bit akin.

I want to know more about that connection you feel to the project — aside from the provocative ideas, it seems really personal to you.

It’s my career and expression. I mean it’s about as personal as it gets. The way I see it is: I write songs because I need them. I need this idea to be expressed this way with these chords super specific. And the connection comes when I write a song someone else needs.  That’s the connection that makes a career and that’s the difference between “I like that song,” “I love this song,” and “This song is MINE.”  Or just that “YES” [feeling].  Making someone feel something requires emotional truth.

What’s cool is that even though Routine is a record of challenging ideas, it doesn’t feel mechanical or over-intellectualized.  That emotional truth pops right out.  Do you feel like bridging that gap so smoothly has represented growth, and if so, where has that come from?

Yes, for sure. I am way too brainy on songs sometimes and they frankly don’t go over as well as they could. So I think that when I wrote The Great Routine which was actually before [Briar Rabbit’s first release] The Company You Keep, I for sure hit a place of growth.  I had also been chipping away at some of those tunes for a while.  The growth came from my last year at Berklee when I was around songwriters and teachers and I was sharing ideas constantly.  Getting feedback and being able to have my weaknesses articulated to me helped me pinpoint my weaknesses

Tell us a bit about your time at Berklee.  That had to have been a huge influence.  

The biggest influence Berklee had was the people it put me in contact with: teachers who were super knowledgeable; resources out the wazoo; a professional environment; and answers to almost every question. The best thing by far was being around people better than me. I mean I was one of three people in my high school who wrote songs, I put out maybe three records before I graduated; then I get to Berklee and those same kids from everywhere went to Berklee so there was a lot of jaw-dropping. Concentrating on anything is going to make you better at it. I was able to craft an education for my career. Business Major, Guitar Principal, Take some songwriting classes.

You hear that focus on a record like Routine, and even Company You Keep before it.  Tell us about balancing that kind of focus and incorporating all of your influences. 

Well the deal is that I listen to a lot of different stuff that inspires me for different reasons. It’s a bit like me with meals, it gets messy and I get a bit of everything on my shirt.  I don’t even really see it half the time to be quite honest, people tell me that there are influences from everywhere and they’re all people I listen to I guess it just sort of goes into the concept of you get out what you put in.  I think that for me, battling with being too cerebral, you sort of let it happen by osmosis and just really listen and absorb it.

But you’re also not afraid to go to difficult places, either.  What made you want to confront the racial politics of performance like you do on Routine? 

The record sort of came from a sort of perfect storm.  I was taking a class called “African American History Through Music” which I was very interested in taking because the way I grew up was a bit different from what some might call “stereotypically black.”  I went to a small private school for high school and so for me connecting to “blackness,” was different than what would typically be expected.  Through music, through the greats:  Louis, Dizzy, Ella, Duke, Fats, BB, Muddy, Etta, Otis…   I had a much easier time finding where I fit in.  But at the same time, I am the same color and so I’ve experienced racism just the same.  So that’s where I sort of came into that.

Around the same time I was listening to Neutral Milk Hotel’s Aeroplane Over the Sea and Okkervil River’s Black Sheep Boy, and also had a friend who was way into experimenting with themes.  So I started learning about the minstrels and the earliest forms of black entertainment and about being a black entertainer, and it really hooked me.  For me what drives a song is the feeling and reading about this predicament just created so many feelings inside of me: “How could you…?” “But you’re getting paid” “They called you a wha..?” “It’s kind of funny.”  So that was the jumping off point.  The order of songs went: “The Great Routine,” “Afterward,” “Coon,”  “In my head.”

I don’t know if I can think of another example in performance where passion and shame meet in such a bold way, which you articulate so well in “Coon.”  Was it identification? Trying to empathize? Something else, that drove you?

I just asked myself “how do you make that decision [to become a minstrel performer]?” I couldn’t leave that character alone with a cold narrator, so I made it first person. The thing about that tune is the “self awareness” was ever-present in early black entertainers, as in “I know this isn’t ideal, but here we go,” and the way performers would slip in jokes on the sly that laughed about the whole situation, much like the bridge on “Coon”: not sposed to think but I suppose if I did.

So in inhabiting that voice, is there something specific you want to communicate? Or is that more about the emotional connection on the listener’s side? 

It’s for the emotional connection and to communicate a more human, intelligent side.  Because it’s easy to look back at those times as a modern person and think “How COULD you?”  So I just wanted to bring in the grey.  The actor who played the notoriously lazy “Step-n-Fetchit” was actually the editor of one of the first underground Chicago newspapers.

I think Routine has this really illuminating aspect to it that forces the listener to be in the performer character’s shoes.  Does that tie in with releasing it during Black History Month? 

I didn’t write it for Black History Month but I definitely wanted to put it out during Black History Month. At a time when people like to take time to brush up on history, I think that this is really interesting.

Yeah, it’s such an abrasive subject that it forces you to engage.  I had to look up Bert Williams, watch videos for reference.  It was fascinating but uncomfortable. 

For sure. And I took a lot of time to think about this all before I released it, had a lot of conversations, because I had to question whether I wanted to release a record and get pegged as “that dude who writes about black stuff.”  I feel like sometimes being uncomfortable, people will shy away from that.  And I’m sure those people are around but for me it just made a good story and that’s why I made the video; to open up discussion and show that I’m not mad, that it’s uncomfortable, and that there’s some beauty and artistry in it.

To me that’s a perfect example of why the subject matter is still so relevant, the self-awareness of it running the risk of typecasting you as “that dude who writes about black stuff.”   Have you ever been boxed in as a result of your race, genre, etc.?

The thought of being pegged as an artist/black is very interesting to me because it’s no secret that the typical Indie sound is associated with a “white hipster.”  So to hear the music before seeing my picture I can only imagine what goes through some people’s heads.  Even on Company there’s a line that goes I’ve got secrets darker than my skin, which is a reminder that that I’m Black. No “Pale Blue Eyes.”

I think since it stems from being uncomfortable, I’m probably the last person people will bring it up to.  I’m not a big enough artist that anyone in would have to review it or be expected to have an opinion on. That being said, I write music for everyone and I like challenging ideas and meaningful discussions. Thought. So if Routine isn’t your cup of tea but you dig on Company that’s cool with me, but I feel like I have more to gain by putting out a piece of work that truly inspires me and presenting it in a tasteful way than to I have to lose.  It’s been a really cool response.  I shied away for just a little during live shows but once I broke it down to a captive audience, said I was inspired by an event in history, people would come up to me and start discussions about race to me afterwards.  It’s definitely a conversation starter and if approached sensitively, can really open up the conversation.

Well thanks for breaking some of these things down with us.  Ready for rapid fire?

Ready for rapid fire.

Steely Dan or Thin Lizzy?

Thin Lizzy for sure.

Sub, Hoagie, or Grinder?

Sub for sure. What am I? From Pittsburgh?

Shame at the thought!  Speaking of which: Steelers, or stealers?

Stealers?

Correct!  Finally: Judge, Fudge, or Grudge?

I hold a grudge for being judged for eating fudge.

That might be the slickest answer to a nonsense question I’ve ever heard. 

Boom!

Boom indeed.