"I love smuggling queer history through house tracks."
Loverboy is always here for an electronic moment, but when it’s inspired by a lost generation of ‘father figures’, includes a Whitney Houston sample and comes packaged in a hankie code-inspired colour cassette entitled Former Eagle, take all of our money…immediately. With such a winning combination, we thought it was time we spoke to New Dad aka Michael Brodeur to find out more…
OK, Michael, we should start with the name. Why New Dad?
There are a few things happening there. When I turned 40, I was suddenly “dad”/“daddy” to anyone who sorts by age on the apps. That was new. But beyond that, I’ve moved into a phase of my life where I’m interested in helping channel something along to younger listeners/dancers/ravers. That kind of generational connection was something I had to build for myself in record shops and bookstores – a generation of “dads” vanished. So I take the privilege of being as old as I am seriously, and I guess “New Dad” operates like a wink to that..
Prior to the release of this EP, what had you been doing musically?
I spent most of my 20s (i.e. the early 90s) singing and playing guitar a really loud band called the Wicked Farleys which made each song an opportunity to balance/defeat its pretty parts with violently noisy ones. I spent most of my 30s singing and learning how to use synthesizers in a two-to-ten piece electronic pop band called Certainly, Sir. We released a bunch of stuff in Japan and UK, and nothing here, though we did tour a bunch. After that I took a full decade off from making music and just DJ’d wherever and whenever I could. Part of it was just needing to get out of those rock clubs make a queerer life for myself. Nathanael Bluhm and I started a little tea dance called Group Hug in an unmarked upstairs bar in Cambridge, and for the few years it lasted it felt like building a family. It was truly freeing. It took ten years for me to come back to making anything, it was like I had to revisit a less free part of myself and lure him into now if that makes any sense.
Which leads us nicely to Former Eagle. You say it’s about a lost generation of father figures. Can you tell us more about this?
I’m not sure I’d say “father figures” exclusively — although I had to pull over on the highway when I learned about George Michael last Christmas. It’s more about filling that literal generation gap that can form between queer people. It’s why I love code and slang and language and sound when it comes to smuggling queer history through things like house tracks. On Former Eagle I wanted the men’s names that title the tracks to signal both specific references (‘Dave’ was written for David Wojnarowicz) but also serve as these little vessels for association and memory (all Daves).
How, specifically, within this album has loss influenced or inspired your music?
A lot of the sounds on Former Eagle are directly inspired by the kind of house and techno I’d hear in the late ‘90s and early naughts at parties in Boston – so there are literal nods like that. But then there are plenty of old idiosyncratic habits that just won’t die: My lyrics have always been chants that get gradually hammered into nearby-sounding words. (I’ve often wondered if that’s how Elizabeth Fraser does it.)
Which is your favourite track on the album right now and why?
I don’t want to make Former Eagle sound like a drag, but so much of the tracks are wrapped up with all the feelings of losing some dear friends over the past year, and trying to honor them with the music somehow. Listening to it still makes me cry, so I try not to do that too much. I would say that ‘Somebody’ is a track that feels like the album’s flashlight pointed forward. It’s just Whitney singing ‘I’ve been in love’ over and over. It feels like a celebration of the past instead of a funeral for it, and it’s kind of where I’m living lately.
Tell us about the ‘hanky’ cassette you’ve released…
She loves an accessory. But also, I’ve always been fascinated by the hanky codes. The way they’re so subtle but not subtle at all, such a specific way to transmit desire through silence. If we repress we’ll probably go with three new colors. Lots of requests for yellow.
Do you have a look for this era? I’ve noticed a bit of leather going on….
I’m super daddy on a dime lately. I was a bartender for a while at the leather bar here in Houston and just started accumulating and inheriting bits and pieces of leather from friends and benevolent leatherdads (my favorite leather pants were donated by one of my favorite artists here, Steven Evans). It felt like a very natural (and emotional!) way for artifacts/affection to be passed down from one generation to the next, so there’s probably a bit of that history mining wrapped up in why I like it too. Plus I don’t know if you’ve ever worn a properly fit pair of chaps but they’re so fucking comfortable it’s crazy. It’s like wearing a pair of leg hugs.
And you noted that this album was recorded in Gay Gardens. Besides having an incredible pool, can you tell us more about this location and what kind of energy did it bring to the album?
We found this house off a grim-seeming two-photo listing on Zillow and it looked like an abandoned zoo from the outside. Inside it was a gay party paradise built by two retiree BFFs in 1970. Lots of mirrors, lots of dimmers, courtyard pool, super cruisy sightlines, ancient poppers in the kitchenette fridge. (And cheap.) It felt like we won custody of this very gay space that was built (and walled in) to protect a way of living that required its own space. It feels lost and found, completely closed off but full of other people’s stories; and the carpets upstairs are ugly but great for recording. It’s hard to create music here and not feel like the house isn’t co-writing things a little (and impossible not to hear the highway).. It’s absolutely shaped what my music sounds like.
What is the New Dad live experience like?
It’s pretty much me, a microphone, a mixer, some feelings, and a bunch of synchronized (and unsynchronized) hardware. Right now the goal-goal has been to cut everything down to below 50lbs so I can check a single bag, but in general I just choose what tools I want to combine for a given performance. For the geeks reading my live setup right now is three Volcas (bass, kick, FM), a Bolsa Bass and an Organelle from Critter & Guitari, an MFB Tanzbar, and a x0xb0x all driven by an Elektron Digitakt.
Where can we see you on tour and where are you most excited about?
I’m performing at a special installment of the cool Denver party Junk Drawer in collaboration with the RedLine contemporary art center on August 3 (and I have a set of drawings up in the concurrent exhibition, which is a first for me and feels weird and cool). And then I’m excited to play the Honcho Campout in mid-August. It’s a wild lineup of DJs so I’m trying to write a set that can survive in the same woods.
From playing different cities and different countries, presumably you can feel different types of people tapping into different elements of your music. What’s been surprising to you about some of these reactions and how they vary?
I think I’ve been more surprised at how similar the experience has been playing such vastly different kinds of music to such a wide range of people. It’s not so much that I’m tapping into a younger me so much as trying to tap into the same feeling the younger me was.
Last but not least we are named after the infamous Mariah song Loverboy. What is your favourite Mariah song and why?
I feel like “I’ll Be There (Unplugged)” was a such a major moment because it was the first time Mariah was ever rendered human in front of everyone (and by her own backup singer no less!) but my favorite Mariah is song is “Make It Happen”.
EDIT: I changed my mind. THIS is my favorite Mariah Carey song…
New Dad’s Former Eagle is out now.
Follow New Dad on Instagram, Soundcloud and Bandcamp.
