At a time when some bands are relying more heavily than ever on the financial draw of live performances while treating albums as free giveaways, up and coming New Orleans rock band The Breton Sound is going all in for their upcoming third album.
Produced by Better Than Ezra’s Tom Drummond, who also produced The Breton Sound’s debut album Eudaemonia in 2012 and sophomore effort Maps in 2013, the yet to be named upcoming album is the product of a multi-state road trip.
The Breton Sound at Ardent Studios. (Photo by Julia Pretus)
“The idea came about when we were starting to talk about making the third record, and Tom told us he was going to sell his share of Fudge, and that it was going to be closing,” Breton Sound frontman Jonathan Pretus said. “We were going up to Memphis for a show, and I had just watched the Big Star documentary, and I kind of got this wild hair up my ass to go take a tour of Ardent Studios just out of curiosity. We all ended up thinking ‘God, it would be so fun to record here.’”
A week after returning to New Orleans from the Memphis trip, Pretus watched a documentary on the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, and an idea was born.
“We thought it would be great to record a different song in a different studio, and kind of keep it all around the south in places that we have some connection to,” he said. “It’s not really a personal connection, but it’s a connection to music that was recorded there.”
In May, the Breton Sound piled back into their preferred mode of transport (a van they christened “Van Halen”) and headed back up to Memphis, where the band recorded two songs in two days at Ardent.
For Pretus, a huge fan of Alex Chilton and Big Star, getting to record music at Ardent, the pioneering band’s home studio, was something of a dream come true.
“It’s kind of daunting, but also kind of inspiring,” he said. “It made everyone go in and play their best. You know what’s been there before you, and you don’t want to be the band that makes a crappy album where all these amazing albums were made.”
There was even a moment of musical serendipity thrown into the mix while the band recorded at Ardent.
“We brought up our gear, and my usual amp is an Orange amp,” Pretus said. “I set that up, but when we started playing, it sounded like it had a blown tube in it. We ended up using the Hiwatt amp that’s there that Alex Chilton used on the ‘Radio City’ album and on the third album. When I got back home, I plugged in my amp, and everything was fine. I kind of took that as a little ghost in the machine moment.”
The next stop on the road trip will be Zack Brown’s Southern Ground Studios, followed by FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The band hopes to knock out two more songs for the album at each stop before heading back to New Orleans for additional sessions at the Music Shed.
To fund these trips and pay for the recording time, the band will turn to online crowdfunding site Indiegogo, which allows fans to help fund the project one pledge at a time. That project will begin accepting funding at the beginning of July, Pretus said.
“The unfortunate thing about making a record is it’s an expensive process,” he said “If you want to go to a studio, it’s going to cost you some money. Our crowdfunding is going to cover the cost of production and the cost of the studio time.”
One thing that will not change any time soon is the band’s transportation situation. “Van Halen” has been good to the Breton Sound so far, even when they had a guest that is probably used to traveling in a much better fashion.
“On the way to Memphis, Tom Drummond got to ride in the van with us,” Pretus said. “I think it was the first time he had ridden in a van with a band for quite a few years. He got to sit in the van with us and smell feet, eating sunflower seeds and shitty food. We decided we needed to humble him a little bit and bring him back to his roots.”
