The Crampton Brothers of Metro Detroit released their first full length album “Cannonball” on April 20, 2018.
We sat down with Ivan (vocals), Matt (drums), Kevin (bass), Joey (guitar) and Josh (lead guitar) to talk about their album, the challenges they faced while making the album, along with what to expect from them in the future. Read the full interview below:
Beyond The Stage: When did you become a band?
The Crampton Brothers: 2013. We really got serious in 2014 though. We played for a long time just like in the basement. We then started playing just like cover songs at local places. Eventually we decided that we were going to just write our own music and just become more of an original band.
BTS: Where did the name of the band come from and who came up with it?
TCB: We had a series of band names that we were going to pick from and to be honest we weren’t sure we wanted to be The Crampton Brothers. We had a show coming up and we needed a name, we needed something real quick. We went with it, and said we would change it afterwards. It became stuck and it was unchangeable. The name comes from our high school gym teachers and we got it tatted so we can’t change it.
BTS: Has music been something you guys have always wanted to do?
Joey: My whole life yeah.
Matt: Ivan and I played music together in high school, Joey and I played music separately.
TCB: Josh and Kevin have also always been interested in playing music.
BTS: How did you guys meet?
TCB: High school.
Joey: I was the youngest of the bunch.
Matt: I grew up with Kevin and Ivan and I kind of met through music. Being musicians brought us together. I saw Josh playing acoustic songs by a fire and making his friends sing harmonies.
Ivan: Yeah Josh was forcing his friends to sing and we were like you should hangout with us instead cause they don’t want to sing. That was about three years ago.
BTS: You’ve recently released your debut album ‘Cannonball’, tell us about it.
Joey: Its great, its a lot different from our previous material.
Matt: It’s different because before when we recorded our other stuff we weren’t able to actually record live drums or live elements. It wasn’t a bad thing but we decided we wanted to go with a live recording for this. We had a lot more time to write these songs.
Joey: We were on our own timeline. When we released our other CD, we did it backwards and set a release date before we even had a product in our hands, which kind of set us up for failure. It kind of forced us to rush it. This one we were able to take much more time with it and actually map out everything.
Ivan: It definitely has a lot more of a natural feel to it. It is something we all together recorded live and played together opposed to individual track by track.
Matt: It is definitely I know the best thing I have done musically so I am pretty pumped about that.
Ivan: The songs are great, everything about the album is great. We put a lot of time into it. As far as the artwork we had a friend of ours Will Lovejoy create it. He was excited to do it for us. We gave him free reign and told him the album name and just let him go with it and what he came up with was pretty cool.
Matt: What is cool is that we have a few friends that do graphic design, we had our friend Rachel design our logo for “Fallen,” Mason Sultana designed a few things for us as well. We have a variety of different pieces for the album which is really cool to say we had a bunch of different people be apart of it.
Joey: We have lots of friends with many talents!
BTS: What was the production like?
Josh: It was long and tedious. Lots of hours in the studio. Our man Al at Scratch Studios helped produce the album.
Matt: He was all for us, he loves our music so that was like a selling point!
Joey: He is awesome too, he likes the kind of music that we play. He knew exactly what we were aiming for when we were recording. He made it so much easier. He loves classic rock.
Josh: He is all about getting really raw sound and capturing the band for what we are. We had room and time to be creative. We added a lot to our music when we were just putting it together in the studio.
Matt: It was really fun too, it was tedious but fun, there was a lot of dancing.
Ivan: It was a lot less tedious than our previous experience.
BTS: How would you describe your sound?
TCB: It is rock and roll, it is something that is new age. It can be related to new pop music but has the classic rock effect. You can dance to it, and even head bang to it. It is very meaningful and gets in depth. There is layers to it.
BTS: How long did the album take from start to finish?
TCB: We started recording in November but some of the songs were written way before we started recording. It took us about five months. The songs were written months prior so that we would be ready to get in the studio and record, so this whole project really took we would say about a year.
BTS: Who writes most of your songs?
TCB: We all partake in the writing. Kevin does a lot of the writing, he is very lyrical. Most of the time everyone will participate. Sometimes we either pull up songs we wrote individually or we each contribute a part. In the album there are elements of every single one of us in every single song. Josh has a song that he wrote. Ivan has a song he wrote. Kevin has two songs he wrote. Everyone basically as a song that they have written. The album is very diverse.
BTS: What was the hardest part about making the album?
TCB: Having to make tough decisions. We had lots of songs that we had to choose from. There were twenty five songs that we wrote and had ideas for. We had to pick from those and narrow it down to ten. You know like saying a song wasn’t good enough was hard. The toughest part too is being patient. We had to record it and be patient so it sounded the way we wanted it to. There were so many things to choose from and we all had to decide on just one. Also cutting the album at a stop, like calling it good there. There are always things we wanted to change, even now. The hardest part is like putting the brush down and knowing when your work is finished.
BTS: What is each of your favorite songs on the album?
Joey: Fool for You.
Matt: Tonight
Ivan: Greed
Josh: Toy Soldiers
BTS: What do you want our readers to know about you?
TCB: We like having music that sounds good live. Our live show is very important to us and we want to make sure we put on a good show. We want to be known as a live band. When people listen to our album we want them to feel the emotion and feel like it is us playing live. You know you hear a great album by a band and you go see them live and it’s not that great it kind of just disappoints. We want to be even better live than our album. We want the emotion of us in it. Just know there is more music to come, we have a lot of live shows coming up and something is coming. We have worked really hard for this moment.
Be sure to follow The Crampton Brothers on social media for updates about upcoming shows, new music releases and more! We are excited to follow along with them on their journey and we can’t wait to see what is next!
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You can find their new album Cannonball here.
Photo By : Charlotte Lawrie
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