Soon after graduating from Oberlin, Brokaw played drums for a number of bands, including 7 Or 8 Worm Hearts[3] and G.G. Allin. He then joined Codeine and played drums on their first two studio albums, as well as helping to kick-start Liz Phair's career.[4][5] In 1990 he returned to the guitar, one of his two main instruments, and teamed up with Thalia Zedek (Dangerous Birds, Uzi, Live Skull), a well-known figure in New York'spost-no wave scene. The two formed Come, a band that never gained much mainstream popularity, despite the critical praise they garnered throughout their career.[6]
Brokaw and Zedek took a break from Come at the end of the decade, and the band never regrouped in the studio. However, Brokaw and Zadek have since performed together on many occasions in a variety of contexts. In November 2008 Come convened for one performance at the Tanned Tin Festival in Spain.
After Come, Brokaw has released several albums in his own name, from the instrumental Post-Rock of Red Cities, through the composition and performance of the musical score for "i was born, but...", to the powerful rock-pop song structure of Incredible Love and Gambler's Ecstasy. Both Brokaw and Zedek were invited to participate in a limited edition series of albums by Normal Records, a German record label. Brokaw recorded his contribution to the series, Wandering As Water, in a single day, playing all instruments on the record.
Additionally, Brokaw has played in the bands Pullman, Rivulets, Consonant, and The New Year and played as accompanist to such artists as Thurston Moore, Evan Dando, Steve Wynn, Fan Modine, Christina Rosenvinge, Alan Licht, and Rhys Chatham. Brokaw also participated as drummer 10 in the Boredoms77 Boadrum performance which took place on July 7, 2007 at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to this, Brokaw was one of the guitarists performing Rhys Chatham's A Crimson Grail at the Lincoln Center, New York, as part of the center's Out of Doors series on September 14, 2010.[7] The performance was a 200-guitar version of Chatham's work, which was commissioned by the city of Paris and premiered at the basilica of Sacré-Coeur in 2005, originally scored for 400 guitars.[8]
Between 2005 and 2006, Brokaw performed with the Chris Brokaw Band, which included Karate's Jeff Goddard on bass and Rodan's Kevin Coultas on drums. Later, in 2011, Brokaw would perform again under the same moniker with Elisha Wiesner and Sal Esposito, both formerly of Kahoots, on bass and drums respectively. In 2007, Brokaw formed Dirtmusic with Chris Eckman (Walkabouts) and Hugo Race (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). Named after Tim Winton's 2001 novel Dirt Music,[9] the band released their homonymous debut album on Glitterhouse Records in November 2007. In 2008, Dirtmusic performed at The Festival in the Desert, in Essakane, Mali, where they met the Touareg band Tamikrest, in collaboration with whom they would record they following album, BKO. BKO, their second album, was recorded in January 2009 at Ali Farka Touré's old studio in Bamako, Mali, and was released the following year.
Brokaw formed his own record label, CAPITAN RECORDS, in 2008, through which he has released several solo albums of predominantly instrumental music (Canaris and Gracias, Ghost of the Future), in addition to his collaboration with Wrekmeister Harmonies, Live in NYC. Stemming from Brokaw's many musical projects and his enviable work ethic, DigBoston has called him "one of the most prolific and active artists to call Boston home."[10] Likewise, The Irish News has stated that "Chris Brokaw is one of America's busiest musical talents."[11]
Soundtracks and scores
Brokaw at the 2014 Pop Conference at the EMP Museum, Seattle, Washington.
Brokaw has provided music for productions of two dance companies: the Daghdha Dance Company (Limerick, Ireland), where Nicole Peisl commissioned him to create new pieces, and Kino Dance[12] (Boston), where he collaborated with playwright Rinde Eckert and director Robert Woodruff on Highway Ulysses, which in 2003 The Boston Globe named "the best production of the year."[13]
Brokaw has also scored Roddy Bogawa's 2004 documentary "i was born, but..."[14] and Leslie McCleave's 2005 feature film Road,[15] which won him the Best Original Score award at the Brooklyn International Film Festival.[16]
Furthermore, he scored Roddy Bogawa's 2011 documentary Taken by Storm: The Art of Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis, for which he is also credited as co-producer.[17] More recently, he has—with Animal Hospital's Kevin Micka—scored Lana Z Caplan's 2011 experimental documentary Sospira[18][19] and Jason Cortlund's 2012 feature film Now, Forager: A Film About Love & Fungi.[20] Brokaw also contributed a soundtrack to Holly Anderson's collection of flash fiction and mesostic poetryThe Night She Slept With a Bear (2012).[21]
He has also contributed a song to the original soundtrack to the German sci-fi thriller film Centerland, directed by Enko Landmanns.[22][23] In 2017, he composed the score to Julia Halperin and Jason Cortlund's independent feature film La Barracuda, which was nominated for the SXSW Gamechanger Award and the SXSW Grand Jury Award. Also in 2017, Brokaw wrote the score to Nick Frangione's film Buck Run, starring James Le Gros, which had its world premiere at the 2019 Palm Springs International Film Festival. Regarding Brokaw's score, Variety commented that "[t]he drifting electric guitar of Chris Brokaw’s score further amplifies a timelessly melancholy air."
In 2018, he contributed -with Claudia Groom, under the moniker The Fly Aways- the original song "I'm The Only One For You" to the soundtrack for Derek Johnson's psychological-thriller Mother's Garden, starring Eryn Rea.
Since 2013, Danish guitar pedal manufacturer Reuss has been developing, with Brokaw's input, prototypes for a pedal named CB-01 Recidivist, after the Come song from their final album Gently, Down the Stream.[24] It eventually was made commercially available in a limited edition in February 2021.
Of late, Brokaw has been collaborating with Findlay//Sandsmark, a performance company working based in Norway which creates dance, theater, video art, and live music performances. Findlay//Sandsmark and Brokaw have been developing a new multimedia piece, provisionally entitled "Florida (lowlands)," which they are scheduled to perform in November 2021 in Kansas City. The piece was originally debuted in March 2019 at Rimi/Imir SceneKunst in Stavanger, Norway, as well as at the Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival 2019.
Collaborations and session work
Chris Brokaw with Come at Club W71, Weikersheim 2022
Brokaw has been a member of several bands over the years, most importantly Come and Codeine, though the list includes The New Year, Empty House Cooperative, Consonant, Dirtmusic, Hidden Tooth, Martha's Vineyard Ferries, Pullman, and GG Allin's solo band. Aside from his collaborations with Geoff Farina, Ryley Walker, Jeff Barsky, Holly Anderson, David Michael Curry, and Kevin Mikka, and split EPs with Bastro during his tenure in Codeine and Viva Las Vegas as a solo artist, Brokaw has worked with a number of bands and recording artists, including Cobra Verde, Dave Derby and the Norfolk Downs, Tamikrest, Evan Dando, Fifty Bucks, Gramercy Arms, Jumbo, Tara Jane O'Neil, Hugo Race, The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project, Kahoots, Karate, Lemonheads, Loog, Manta Ray, Molasses, 7 Or 8 Worm Hearts, Bedhead, Thurston Moore, Rhys Chatham, Rivulets, Christina Rosenvinge, Rosa Chance Well, Snares and Kites, Via Tania/Tania Bowers, The Boredoms, Willard Grant Conspiracy, and Wrekmeister Harmonies, as well as some of Thalia Zedek's and Steve Wynn's respective solo work, to name but a few.[25][26][27]
Brokaw has also begun a musical collaboration with Mark Morgan on guitar, Greg Kelley on trumpet, and Brokaw himself on drums and bass. They perform under the name Dark Money and they recorded and mixed their first batch of music at Oddfellows in Weymouth, MA, in October 2021.
He has been asked to play drums on Dan Burton and Chris Carothers' new record. Burton and Carothers have been making music under the name Ativin since 1994. They convened to work on the new material in New Orleans in August 2021 and plan to go into the studio in December 2021 in Chicago with the help of audio engineer Steve Albini.
Discography
Solo
Chris Brokaw & Viva Las Vegas EP (Kimchee Records/Acuarela Records, 2002) Split release with Viva Las Vegas
Codeine is an American indie rock band formed in 1989 in New York City. They released two full-length albums—Frigid Stars LP in 1990 and The White Birch in 1994. Although the group broke up in 1994 shortly after the release of The White Birch, their subdued and melancholic style helped pioneer the then-nascent slowcore subgenre of indie rock. Codeine has since reunited on two occasions: the first for a handful of shows in 2012, and a second time for a series of shows in New York City and Los Angeles in 2023.
Twoism is the debut EP by Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada, self-financed and released through their own Music70 record label in August 1995. Initially limited to 100 copies and released privately, the EP was reissued by Warp Records on November 25, 2002.
Thousand Yard Stare are an English band from Slough, Berkshire, England, active during the early 1990s, prior to the Britpop explosion. Supporting popular bands on the indie circuit such as James and Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, the band also released several EPs. Reformed in 2015, the band played a sold-out show at London's Borderline on 6 June, at the Nottingham Rock City Wake-Up Indie Alldayer on 17 October 2015, and at the Shiiine On Weekender festival at Butlins Minehead on 6 November 2015. More dates were scheduled for 2016 and they released full-length record in 2020 and 2022.
Come is an American alternative rock band, formed in Boston by Thalia Zedek, Chris Brokaw, Arthur Johnson (drums), and Sean O'Brien (bass).
Glitterhouse Records is a German independent record label and mail order company based in Beverungen, North Rhine-Westphalia. It was founded in the mid-1980s. From the late 1980s until the mid-1990s it was the European branch of the American label Sub Pop. Since 1997 the annual Orange Blossom Special Festival has been staged behind the Glitterhouse headquarters. Glitterhouse created the subsidiary Glitterbeat Records label (2012) and Stag-O-Lee Mailorder record shop.
The Fuzztones are an American garage rock revival band formed in 1982.
Adrian Nicholas Godfrey, known professionally as Nikki Sudden, was a prolific English singer-songwriter and guitarist. He co-founded the post-punk band Swell Maps with his brother, Epic Soundtracks, while attending Solihull School in Solihull.
The Walkabouts were an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington in 1984. The core members were vocalist Carla Torgerson and vocalist and songwriter Chris Eckman. Although the rest of the lineup changed occasionally, for most of the time the other members were Michael Wells, Glenn Slater and Terri Moeller.
Thalia Zedek is an American singer and guitarist. Active since the early 1980s, she has been a member of several notable alternative rock groups, including Live Skull and Uzi both of which, according to Spin magazine, "made big noise in the underground", and Come. Critic Heather Phares writes that Zedek's music can be defined by "the permanent, aching rasp in her voice, her guitar's bluesy bite, the startlingly clear-eyed lyrics about life and loss."
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is a multi-instrumentalist and an ambient/experimental musician from the United States. He co-founded the drone and ambient label Root Strata.
11:11 is the debut album by Boston indie rock band Come.
Damnably is an independent record label based in Stratford, East London. It was founded by George Gargan and Janice Li. Primarily created to promote a John Peel night at The Brixton Windmill in 2006, Damnably then undertook tour booking and evolved into a record label. It has since grown, adding a roster of artists from all around the world including USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, China, Indonesia, France and the UK.
Frigid Stars LP is the debut album by American indie rock band Codeine. It was released in August 1990 on Glitterhouse in Europe and in Spring 1991 on Sub Pop in the United States. The album was released to generally positive reviews and is regarded as being one of the pioneering albums in the slowcore and sadcore genres. It was chosen by Pitchfork in 2008 as one of the 20 best Sub Pop albums.
Barely Real is the 1992 extended play (EP) by the American indie rock band Codeine. After releasing their previous album Frigid Stars LP in 1990, the group accepted an invitation from the quartet Bastro to tour in Europe in 1991. Following the tour, the group was invited to record a single for Sub Pop Singles Club and attempted to record their follow-up album The White Birch in 1992. The recording sessions proved to be disastrous for the group since they found themselves often with unusable tracks over several different studios. As Codeine could not record enough material for a full-length album, they decided to release what tracks they had as an EP.
Tamikrest is a group of musicians who belong to the Tuareg people. The band was founded in 2006 in Kidal, Mali. They mix traditional African music with Western rock and pop influences and sing in Tamashek. The main songwriter and leader of the band is Ousmane Ag Mossa.
Ben Zabo is a Malian Afrobeat-musician from Bamako. He was born at Tominian in the Ségou Region. He released his self-titled debut album on the international record company Glitterhouse Records in 2012.
Red Cities is the 2002 debut solo album of American musician Chris Brokaw, following the demise of his earlier band Come.
Stories is Chris Brokaw's third solo EP.
Canaris is Chris Brokaw's fourth solo album. Released on 23 September 2008 by Capitan Records, Canaris was in June 2008. Largely an acoustic release, the album was recorded by Aaron Mullan at Sonic Youth's Echo Canyon studio in Hoboken, NJ, and Adam Taylor at Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade's Camp Street studio in Cambridge, MA. All its songs are Brokaw's compositions, with the exception of a cover of Drink the Poetry of the Celtic Disciple, written and originally performed by French black metal band Vlad Tepes.
Uzi was an American alternative rock band, formed in 1984 in Boston, Massachusetts and disbanded in 1987. The band featured Thalia Zedek, Danny Lee (drums), Randy Barnwell, Bob Young (guitar) and Phil Milstein. Never achieving commercial success during their short period of activity, the band gained a cult following, becoming a part of Boston's underground rock scene.
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