Michigan music: Juston Brady
Juston Brady. Photo by Chuck Marshall. Used with permission.
by Steve Girbach
I feel some of the best kept artistic secrets are hiding in plain sight. Juston Brady, in my view, fits that description perfectly. I first saw Juston perform his music at a local open mic. I was immediately struck by his originality, his honest, heartfelt, sometimes painful personal stories, which hit all my favorite musical hot buttons … Playing cover songs by, or original songs influenced by, Ween, Jeff Tweedy, Leonard Cohen, old country tunes, all sprinkled with a bit of Tom Waits. When we needed an opening act for a Manchester Underground show we put on a few years ago, Juston was the first artist we thought of. It was at that concert in June 2020 that I personally felt the true emotional power in his music.
Born and raised in Manchester, he attended the Manchester Alternative School. Juston is both a visual artist (painter) as well as a musician. “I was in a band before I started to paint,“ he told me. “For me, growing up in my household, there was always a band jamming in the basement from the time I was 5 years old. I just liked the noise, and the vibe of it. I also spent a lot of time looking through my mom’s records. There really wasn’t anything else for me to do. I just wanted to sit down there with everyone in the basement and be a part of it.”
Describing some of the early influences that made an impact on him, Juston states, “Easily, Alice Cooper and Elton John. I remember really being moved by ‘Candle in the Wind.‘ And just looking at the record jacket of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, it was the most psychedelic and strange album cover. I remember it had a naked lady on it. I was 7 and I was like, ‘Wow! I want to know what this is about!‘ And then playing it and finding out it was actually really good! When I started listening to Pink Floyd in my early teens, I remember hearing songs like ‘Welcome to the Machine’ in the car and just being scared. That’s a scary song! I was in a band by then and I was like, ‘Maybe I don’t want to be in a band’, because that is a scary song about being in a band! I remember my mom was dating a guy and his cousin died, I had a dream that he appeared and taught me how to play (Pink Floyd’s) ‘Wish You Were Here’. So there was always this really spooky aspect to music the whole time. I became obsessed with Syd Barrett (founding member and original guitarist of Pink Floyd). He and my mom have the same birthday. That’s how I got into music on a much deeper level than just ‘This song sounds cool.’
“So, with a group of friends from the Manchester and Chelsea area, we started our first band, Elsewhere, at 13 or 14. We started by playing Nirvana covers. Then we began writing our own music. I wrote my first song at a bonfire when I was 14. That band played Harpos in Detroit. By the time we were 16, Elsewhere became Trash Pig when my friends discovered heavy music. My friend, Grant, hated the name Elsewhere. By this time our sound was pretty trashy and aggressive so he suggested we call ourselves Trash Pig. We still played Harpos until that band broke up when we were about 20.
“After that we started 5 Tongues with me and Grant writing the songs. Grant is probably the most creative and prolific songwriter I’ve ever known. 5 Tongues were just everything you could imagine musically. We had a keyboard player who really didn’t like heavy music, but he was also a really good guitar player and a good songwriter. So there were some really gorgeous, mellow song ideas but I added this heavy element to it. It worked. We played the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor a few times but then broke up. Those were some of the best shows I’ve ever played. The place was packed, and it was really high energy. I used to just scour my house for things to give away at the shows. Like paintings I did, a box of fortune cookies, and an extra copy of ‘Lord of the Flies’. Running the merch table was basically me giving my stuff away.
“After that, I became friends with Terris Ahrens. He kept bugging me to come jam with him and some friends of his. It was cool. Kinda like one person was into Sonic Youth and the rest were into the Doors. It didn’t really work, but it kinda did. As time went on it became a really cool thing. Ultimately, that band became Risky Brenda. After the Risky Brenda band ran its course, we formed Sometimes Pretty and that’s still going on. We put out a video this past spring called ‘Past Life’. I had to take three months off because I had a son. These days I’m doing a lot of bouncing that baby! I paint a lot and I’m writing lyrics. The older I get it’s harder to write lyrics. When I was a kid, it was cool to write abstract lyrics. It didn’t really matter what you were talking about because you had a whole band behind you. These days lyrics are harder to come by.”
I think lyrics will come easy for you Juston, the more you bounce that baby. You can check out the video of Juston’s latest musical project, Sometimes Pretty, and their video ‘Past Life’ at www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_plWNtjhK4
Juston Brady. Photo by Chuck Marshall. Used with permission.
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