Interview with BreadRose: "Our work and our survival and our art could be one thing..."

BreadRose formed in 2009 in Bangor, Maine as the union of three musicians who share a yearning to reach beyond the dominant order in music, society, culture, and our way of life. The trio is now a duo, consisting of Joe Gates and Martin Chartrand, each of whom also perform solo. Together, they make melody, songs, spoken poetry, and noise that amplifies their spiritual, political, and emotional anger and love, dismay and inspiration. Their name hails from the eloquence of young immigrant women textile workers in Lawrence, MA who demanded from their bosses, "Not just bread, but roses too!" and speaks to the connection between creativity, love, beauty and our most basic needs.

I interviewed BreadRose as they practiced in preparation for the incredible festival of "out" and experimental music, Frantasia, coming up later this month in Livermore Falls. To hear more BreadRose, check out their Myspace, or email breadrose (at) yahoo (dot) com for a copy of the new EP, Pop Goes the Culture.


RR: Joe, how did you begin playing the fretless guitar?

Joe: When I was 21—I’ve been playing bass for nine years-- I decided that I would play bass. It was summertime, and I set up outside and played outside all the time. I decided I was going to be the best I possibly could at this instrument.

After a year or so, I switched to playing fretless bass, which I like a lot more. It’s pretty interesting, it’s a lot more of an organic instrument. And now, as you can see, I play the fretless guitar which is, in a lot of ways, like a fretless bass. It’s more fulfilling for me to play the fretless than a regular guitar. First thing you gotta understand is, it’s not just a regular guitar without frets. It really is a different instrument. It sounds different—that’s the way we define a lot of instruments, ya know? It takes more skill I suppose, and precision to play, but it’s more fulfilling once you actually get good at it. It’s a more intimate relationship with your instrument.

Martin: I came into making music from having a lot of things I wanted to say, and writing poetry. And just imagining myself as, and desiring to be, a singer and songwriter. I had played the clarinet briefly, when I was ten or so. But then when I was 18, at that point I had become someone who had a lot to say. And I had written poetry, I had been a performance poet doing readings. But I really wanted to have an instrument. I got a guitar as a gift from my parents and started playing it.

A lot of people had been telling me I should play the guitar too, and that gave me the confidence to do it. I immediately started writing songs. I probably learned one cover song at the very first—I think I had a Bob Dylan song and a Tom Waits song. I wrote my first song about six months after I started playing, not really knowing that they didn’t sound like popular music, or folk music does. I just put together chords that I thought would go good together.

I eventually started playing open mics, and got the feedback that what I was playing was different but had its own interest for some of the audience.



RR: How did you two get together to form BreadRose?

Joe: How many years ago did I meet Martin? Maybe two, three years ago. I was looking for a roommate and I happened to be downtown and I didn’t know him at all. Sittin’, on a bench, looking in the ads in the paper for a roommate! He came to my house and I showed him the room. He didn’t actually end up taking it. We saw each other from time to time at open mics, and we liked each other. And then- what was it?- two years ago, I happened to have a bunch of guitars and instruments at the time and I noticed that Martin didn’t have a guitar and so I just gave him that one right there, the twelve string.

I liked his message. I thought he was a lot more selfless than a lot of musicians around here. They’re all about talking about themselves, and singing about themselves, and Martin talks about bigger things. He talks about his own feelings as well, of course, but it isn’t all about him. It’s kind of disgusting how, with a lot of musicians, it’s all about them. I respected that about Martin, and I thought I could help him, so I did.

Martin: Joe was one of the big supporters of my music and songwriting, probably I would not be where I am with music now if it weren’t for Joe.

I was interested in playing with Joe because I knew he wanted to make music that addressed injustice and a vision of a better world, and that I got along with him just personally, and he had an interesting style as a musician. He was not a conventional musician.

He got up there at open mics, too, all the time, and did stuff that a lot of people were awed and confused by, just like they were by my music! Though, he has more technical skill than I do, and people tended to be on the awed side and less on the confused side than with me. (laughter) But, uh, because of that I thought we could get a long in a band together, unlike a lot of people who liked my songs but just were used to playing music in a different way.

RR: Tell me more about the messages in your music. What is the common vision behind your songs?

Martin: Maybe it doesn’t always have a common vision, but it has a common drive to be fearless in talking about my own stresses and problems, and also the atrocities and injustices I see in the world. It is about being blunt about things like capitalism, racism. But I am trying to be as concrete and personal as possible. It’s not about just using those words, but telling stories.

One of those stories is my own story about trying to find a way to be part of that struggle as someone who is middle class and white, and about the story of the people who come to the US as immigrants and are struggling to make a living. I think that the lyrics and poetry that Joe brings in talk about struggle and is really personal, and addresses the same things from a different perspective. But I’ll let him explain that.

Joe: I think we’re sort of coming from the same place in a sense. We’re looking at the world around us and saying, This is fucked up. What the fuck? Basically, let’s do something about it, but in a way that can inspire people, you know?

If I actually took some of our lyrics and went up and told people these things, they’d be like, get away from me! (laughter) But if we do it in an artistic way, they actually want to and will be more compelled to listen!



RR: That is cool—you can get it into venues where people wouldn’t have heard it otherwise. What’s coming up next?

Joe: Well, we have a new EP recorded. 7 tracks. And we are playing at Frantasia Out Music Festival on uh—

Martin: August 19, 20 and 21.

Joe: We’re playing at that in Livermore Falls, and that is a great festival. I have never even managed to make it, but Martin, you were there, right?

Martin: It is a great event. Fran Szostek, who puts on the Frantasia festival, is another person who I probably wouldn’t be where I am in my music without him. He brings together everyone from world-class improve and noise performers to cool people who do something that’s totally unclassifiable, like us. It’s a really great event that kind of breaks apart the stratification of the genres, types of people and even age and class. He puts it on from the ground up. I played there last year with a different group of musicians that I assembled. Now, BreadRose is playing there this year as well as Joe and I doing some solo stuff. You’ll see a lot of Joe and I that weekend.

RR: Is that woman going to be back again—Audrey?

Martin: Audrey Chen! I don’t know. That would be great—Audrey is a great performer, a very inspiring solo violin performer. (Editor's note: Audrey is scheduled to play this year.)

RR: Anything else coming up?

Martin: I think we want to complete our sound by having a bassist and a drummer and we actually have someone here in the studio with us right now who is going to potentially play bass with us and is going to try it out tonight. This is Paul—or C Bear—or Tony.

C Bear: I am a man of many names. My name is Anthony, or C Bear. A lot of people call me C Bear. I would enjoy collaborating with these guys a lot because they’re both very creative. I’ve been doing different types of music since I was a little boy, and I’m keepin’ it up. I see a lot of creativity in the studio today and I am really excited.



RR: Anything else you guys would like to say before we conclude?

Joe: Of course, you can always check us out at myspace.com/breadrose. There are six pieces of music on there, of various recording qualities. And of course, our new EP, called Pop Goes the Culture. It’s the name of the video we shot tonight, and the title track of the CD. And we’ll be distributing that to people. You can email us at breadrose at yahoo.com, or friend us on Myspace to get a copy.

I think we forgot the most important thing though. Why are we called BreadRose? I’ll hand that one to Martin.

Martin: So BreadRose comes from the phrase “We want bread and roses too,” which was first said by the textile workers of Lawrence, Massachusetts. These were young women of all nationalities, most of them new to the US, who worked in horrible conditions. Sometimes they were even locked in the mills when they were burning—awful things like that happened. So they went on strike, I think it was 1912 or 1913. They not only wanted enough bread to have on their table, but also roses, being the beautiful things in life. They wanted the ability to enjoy their lives beyond just working to make a living.

I thought that was a beautiful idea but I wanted to go further and put them into one word—BreadRose—because to me, the whole idea that there is a divide between surviving and being fulfilled in life is absurd. It’s something that comes from this way of living where everything has a price, where we are commodities and our labor is a commodity. But if we look at it from a different perspective, that we should all contribute and we should all be fulfilled by doing so, our work and our survival and our art could be one thing. That is what I am trying to say with the name.

Joe: That is what we will accomplish for ourselves, maybe. To help other people accomplish that, too.

Joe: Well, thanks for interviewing us!

RR: Thank you!


Above photos: Joe in top color photo; Martin in lower black and white photo.