Chris Browder is ready to get loose (Human Pursuits 18/11/22)
The Mansions frontman on embracing sobriety, being endorsed by Pete Wentz and striking a creative balance
VANCOUVER – Nobody writes a song quite like Chris Browder. I should know. I’ve been listening to him for over a decade.
In 2011, Chris and his band Mansions, which includes his partner Robin, released what is now considered their seminal album. A study in slow-burning sonic catharsis, Dig Up the Dead cemented Browder as one of the scene’s best songwriters, drawing comparisons to, and collaborations with, stalwarts such as Kevin Devine, Matt Pryor, and John Nolan, who the band released a split EP with in 2012.
As an emotional, 20-year-old, I spent a lot of hours listening to Chris. His music was the soundtrack to empty summer days, a couple sleepless nights and a lot of solo drives to butt-fuck-nowhere Alberta.
But while he writes some of the heaviest pop songs I’ve heard, off-stage Chris carries himself with a certain lightness. When I slid into his DMs asking for an interview he graciously obliged. Better yet, he never cancelled (despite my unspoken concerns that he might).
Our conversation, which has been condensed and edited for clarity, looked at his craftsmanlike approach to songwriting, embracing sobriety, his ties to Canada, avoiding emo nostalgia and more.
CB: My mom’s Canadian and we used to go up to Lake of the Woods outside of Winnipeg for like a month every summer so I’ve watched plenty of CBC.
ES: Wait – what lake did you go to? [Editor’s note: I’m an idiot and didn’t realize Lake of the Woods was, like, a place]
CB: So it was on Lake of the Woods. It was Rush Bay.
ES: I just visited Manitoba for the first time this year because my very dear friends just got married on Victoria Beach. The lakes are beautiful out there, man. Where is your mom from in Canada?
CB: She’s from Winnipeg.
ES: If you like Winnipeg, you would love Edmonton. They’re like sister cities.
CB: It’s always funny telling people she’s from Winnipeg. Everyone’s always like, “Oh, I’m sorry.”
ES: I mean, Winnipeg is notorious for having some of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet in your life. Not a lot going on culturally, unfortunately.
While we’re on the topic of geography… You famously, at least in my mind, moved from Kentucky to Seattle, and I’m just interested to know how you settled on Seattle.
CB: So I grew up in Kentucky. After high school I went to college in North Carolina and stuck around there for a few years after. We didn’t have anything holding us down to North Carolina… New York seemed cool but a little too big. Austin was a little too hot, and I’m glad we didn't go there because then it kind of went crazy around then. Seattle just seemed cool. A big city, but not too overwhelming.
One thing I didn’t necessarily think about, but that ended up being really helpful was just that so many people in Seattle play in bands. It made it more feasible to find a job where I could leave to go on tour... That aspect of the city’s music scene was definitely helpful.
ES: I was wondering if you just wanted to hang out with Ben Gibbard or if you’re really into Nirvana…
CB: I did like a lot of Seattle bands, so I'm sure that influenced it. We’d come through on tour and it just seemed cool… But yeah looking back on it, it seems kind of crazy. Like, wait why did we do that?
ES: I only ask because in the early 2010’s, there were not a lot of bands in the punk-slash-emo scene really coming out of Seattle.
CB: The music scene didn’t really play a part [in our decision making process]. We never played locally in Seattle, at least until a couple of years ago… The only time we would was when we were on tour and the routing came through Seattle, which is kind of insane. It was more about living there than about the music or anything.
ES: Was it always you and Robin in the band? In my mind, it was always sort of a thing where you were doing a lot of the instrumentation.
CB: Robin played a big part even before she was playing in the band, behind the scenes, whether it was helping edit or produce. When I’m writing a song, it’s easy to get so lost in it that you just have no perspective at all. She’s always been that second set of ears to get perspective on it… Then she started playing bass for the band, which solidified her as the other permanent member.
We’ve had other people come and go, some of whom have played really big parts in the band. Did multiple tours, played on records and stuff. But it was always kind of me and Robin working on the songs, flushing everything out and then getting other people involved. So it just made the most sense for it to be our thing. We have more stake in it than anybody else.
ES: Is there anyone that you want to give a shout out to? Who helped shape the sound or played on certain albums?
CB: We’ve got a guy named Topher who’s been playing drums with us in Seattle for the last few years who's really amazing. He’ll play drums on our next record for sure. He’s getting a little bit more involved with the creative process too, which is fun.
We also had a guy, John Momberg, who played drums with us on Doom Loop and Deserter and toured with us for a while.
ES: In my mind, you’re a singer-songwriter. But going back through the discography, you guys write some heavy songs. It’s a tightrope walk that not a lot of people can do.
CB: To me, at its heart, Mansions is a singer-songwriter thing. The songs have to work with just me and the guitar… But at the same time that’s not really the kind of music that I like, you know? It’s probably bullshit, but it feels like there's a finite window to do loud rock songs. So it’s been important to me to take them from these acoustic songs and turn them into something that’s a little bit different, a little bit more like a band. Even when sometimes that works against me, when it should just be a solo acoustic song. That feels lazy to me in a certain way.
ES: Let me know if this isn’t an interesting question, but I’ve always been very impressed by your use of distortion. It seems like you put a lot of thought into how to layer these different tones together… Big Bad especially has some really interesting dynamic ranges happening.
CB: I appreciate you noticing that. A lot of it is just what I respond to sonically. Listening to other bands. I like stuff that is kind of dirty, a little bit fucked up, not this pristine expensive sounding thing.
Simultaneously, our records, except for the first one, have been self-produced and self-recorded, and trying to make it sound expensive is just like a fool’s errand. So you embrace it for what it is. The other thing is that, as self-recording has become more common, you can make things that sound pretty good, pretty easily… A lot of my demos sound like that, where they’re just kind of nice. A lot of the work of turning the song into an actual record, and not just a demo, is roughing it up, whether that’s running stuff through guitar pedals… On Big Bad I would record to cassette and then play it back from cassette, which puts this weird kind of dreamy haziness on things that’s a little hard to pin down.
I just think that’s a lot more interesting to listen to, and it’s more interesting to play to the strengths of self recording.
ES: I gotta ask… you smoking a lot of weed there in Seattle?
CB: Laughs. Not particularly. It’s just what I’m into. I don’t know if things sound more authentic to me, the more raw and ragged they are…
ES: It reminds me a little bit of the guy who did designs for R.E.M. in the eighties and nineties. Even if he designed something on a computer, he would go in after the fact and fuck it up. Either with an exacto knife or with photocopying. Just finding a way to bridge the analog and the digital.
CB: Like, I love recording on the computer. I have a lot of plugins and stuff… but you can spend hours tweaking a distortion plugin to finally get it sounding cool. Or you can take 30 seconds to run it through a physical pedal… and that’s always going to have something that the plugin doesn’t. Even if it’s worse or less flexible, I just feel like it’s a really necessary thing to do when so much is done digitally these days.
ES: Were you more of a perfectionist at the start of your career? It sounds like you’ve sort of learned to embrace the imperfections or the blemishes in your recording…
CB: I was never that good at recording, you know? I’ve taught myself to where now I think I’m pretty good at it, but like, my tastes are established. Whereas before, it was like, “Well, I just can't get this guitar sounding that good, so I'll just make it sound sort of fucked up,” you know?
I am a perfectionist in certain ways… I definitely overwork songs. That can be the hard part of not having deadlines and just recording yourself. But theoretically, I like stuff to be a little more unfinished.
ES: Your band has never taken a hiatus. You have been pretty productive the whole time. But you also don’t tour much. What are you doing when you’re not doing Mansions?
CB: Normal life. I have a job and Robin does too. And they’re good jobs. We haven’t toured since 2014. Touring is hard, it’s always a little unclear what it’s actually doing [for your career]... I’m really glad that we did it. But at a certain point it’s like, would I rather use my vacation time to go on tour or to go on vacation?
For me, the writing and recording has always been the most important part. We still play a few shows a year and that’s fun and that’s important to me. But otherwise the plan is to keep writing songs, and once there’s enough songs to make a record, then make a record and put the record out. It’s not that complicated, especially because at its heart, it’s still my thing. Like, there’s no reason to take a hiatus - what am I going to do? Go on hiatus and then reform the band a couple years later?
We haven’t been that successful that there are these big expectations of what a Mansions record sounds like. We can do whatever and call it Mansions… I guess you get that nice reunion pop, but it just seems sort of silly to me.
ES: A Dig Up the Dead tour probably would have moved a couple of units…
CB: I know. It’s not the best business strategy, but I like being that little band that keeps chugging around and still doing stuff, whether or not we should be.
ES: I think it’s very interesting that you have found a working model for the band and sticking with it.
CB: Yeah, I found a good balance with it… I feel like all bands should have 9 to 5 jobs. Not having that financial pressure and that creative pressure – that this thing that I love to do also has to be paying my rent. I was in that world for a while and it sucks. It takes a lot of the fun out of it. I don’t think it’s good for people’s mental health. It’s not good for their life to have to be on tour the majority of the year. That sounds cool for a while but when you’re 50-years-old doing that shit, it’s just a hard thing.
I wouldn’t want to just have my 9 to 5 job either. Being able to have that balance and do both things is a pretty cool setup to me.
ES: Do people at your work know that you’re a rockstar by night?
CB: Laughs.
I used to be kind of cagey about it. I like keeping the worlds separate. But yeah, people know and they’re supportive about it. They’re funny and they’ll come to shows and stuff like that.
ES: What do you think about the current emo revival we’re seeing right now? Are you wishing you were asked to play When We Were Young?
CB: Not really. There was this one weird emo revival. I don’t know if you remember this one. It was… maybe 8 years ago? But there was a time when other bands that kind of sounded like us were getting picked up and we didn’t... I was a little bummed about that at the time.
But this stuff, to me, it’s not what I think of when I think of emo anyways. It’s a different kind of thing, and I’m very glad to not be a part of it. Not because any of it’s bad or because I don’t like those bands, because I like a lot of those bands.
Another big thing with Mansions is, because we never got that big, I don’t think we’re a total nostalgia act either… As much as the money can be good. I think it’d be hard psychologically, for me at least [to be a nostalgia act]. So those kinds of festivals or whatever, I'm sure they’re super fun, but it’s nostalgia. That’s not the kind of festival that I would want to play.
I guess I probably shouldn’t say that. If they paid I would totally do it.
ES: Are you an emo traditionalist, then? Like are we talking Mineral here?
CB: I feel like emo is whatever you heard when you happened to be in high school. The real traditional emo is not my emo either. My emo is more Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World than Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance.
ES: Speaking of Fall Out Boy, I was doing a deep dive in the archives and saw that the last time you played Vancouver might have been when you opened for Fall Out Boy in 2014. Do you remember this and is this true?
CB: I know that show for sure, for sure. That probably was the last time because we haven’t played Vancouver very much…
We played Commodore Ballroom. It was totally random. Fall Out Boy was on tour and their opener was, I think, a European band. They had visa issues so they couldn’t leave the United States. We have some friends who work for their management company, who had been very helpful to us. Pete Wentz even kind of played into the history of Dig Up the Dead at one point, which is a weird thing.
ES: I’m gonna need that story, but please continue.
CB: So yeah, we played that show. It was on a week night and we drove up, played it. It was super cool. I think I accidentally insulted the guitar player. But the show was fun and we drove back that night. I went to work the next morning answering phones in an office. It was pretty surreal.
It’s been a useful thing to explain to people that… [Mansions] is a real band. You say “Oh we opened for Fall Out Boy and people get impressed.”
ES: OK, please tell me the Pete Wentz story.
CB: We made a version of Dig Up the Dead, our second album and our label at the time wasn’t really interested in it. They kinda weren’t returning my emails. We sent it around to various people. Most weren’t interested… And there’s this one guy, John, who’s been really helpful to us. He worked for Crush Music, which also manages Fall Out Boy. And he was into the songs. Then, one day, I get this call while my car is getting serviced. It’s John. And he tells me that he had just played the songs for Pete Wentz and that he really liked them. But I misheard what he was saying… At first I thought he was just telling me about some random person. And I was like, “That’s cool.”
But that was the first encouragement we had really gotten about that record. [John] was like “He likes them, but thinks you should write some more songs for it.” I went and wrote more songs and ended up writing half of what the album turned into, we ended up swapping out a bunch of tracks. It didn’t lead to anything with Pete Wentz, but it was a real confidence boost that led to that album being an actual thing. So I’m very grateful.
ES: Since we’re talking about Dig Up the Dead, I saw one of your tweets acknowledging that this is a cult record for you. How does it feel to know that record still resonates with people and, in certain pockets of the scene, is considered a classic?
CB: It’s weird, man… The idea of making anything that 10 years later, or whatever, anyone is still conscious of, that’s super cool. That’s the most that you could ever ask for from any piece of art.
Simultaneously, I always just believe that it’s [enjoyed] by these random little pockets of people, you know? We played a show where we played the whole album for the anniversary. Seeing that in a room, and feeling that and hearing it back from people, that was the first time that I really believed that it had resonated with people… Getting to witness it in person really had an impact on me. Like “Oh yeah, that’s the record.” I’ll keep trying to make good records, but you’re lucky to ever get one of those, so I’m thankful.
ES: That album also has some of the most iconic Mansions artwork on it… has anyone ever gotten the Dig Up the Dead art tattooed on their body?
DB: Yeah. We’ve seen a lot of them which is a total mindfuck. It’s interesting seeing how different people do it because I think it’s hard to get just a square design tattooed [on you]. Some people just get the [astronaut] head.
ES: You’re a little tatted yourself. You got any band tattoos you’re willing to admit to you at this point?
CB: So I have a Ryan Adams tattoo, but he has been sort of cancelled.
ES: Oh buddy, I got a Brand New tattoo. You’re in good company.
CB: For me, it was never really about the artists or whatever. It’s about a certain time in your life. What’s your Brand New tattoo?
ES: It says Fight Off Your Demons. It’s regrettable in so many ways… I am working on getting it covered.
CB: Tattoos are meant to be, I don’t know, a little weird. Anyways, that’s OK.
ES: I wasn’t planning on asking you about Brand New, but… were they an influence for you at any point?
CB: They definitely were a big influence on me. We did our first record, New Best Friends, with Mike Sapone who produced them. Their stuff was the reason for that. The Devil and God… was an influence for sure… doing rock songs, but in a slightly bigger, more interesting kind of way…
There was a cool set of bands around that time with them and Manchester Orchestra and The Colour Revolt...
ES: Speaking of Brand New… how did you meet John Nolan?
CB: We met John when Straylight Run was winding down and he wasn’t back in Taking Back Sunday yet. We did a tour together. It’s funny to look back on now because it was probably the most down and out period of his life. For us it was a normal tour but this guy played in two very big bands and we were, you know, crashing on people’s floors. Maybe we traveled together for some of that [tour], but we were definitely staying at the same places. It was just one of those tours where we were buddies. Like, we were in it together, whereas sometimes you do a tour and you don’t see the other band very much. But especially when you’re both crashing with people, you get pretty tight.
We did a few tours together. We were on tour with him when he got the call about rejoining Taking Back Sunday. I remember we were in Salt Lake City and it was pretty fucking wild… We’re still friends. I haven’t seen him in a while, but we still text every once in a while.
ES: Is there anything that you learned from him that has stuck with you? Or was it never as serious as any of that?
CB: I think he did influence my perspective around what it’s really like to be in a band full time. Taking Back Sunday had been very successful. It was what I was hoping for. But suddenly he’s sleeping on floors next to me, you know? And that’s not to say there’s anything bad about that, but there’s a certain realism to it. You just really gotta love it, you know?
He’s just a really good dude. Really funny, really down to Earth. Really normal.
ES: He seems very level headed, despite being in one of the angsty-iest bands of all time…
CB: He’s so mellow and laid back. It kind of doesn’t match the… scream-y guy in the band archetype..
The other big influence he had on me was just how egoless he was about it all. He didn’t big time anybody. He had no chip on his shoulder about what he had done or anything. It was just like “We’re all just equals playing in bands, playing in people’s basements.” He was up to do anything, play any show. And that definitely is something that I respect and admire.
ES: Big Bad is a really great record. But it’s heavy. I was like “Is Chris OK? Should we be checking on Chris? Has anyone heard from Chris?”
CB: Music has always been kind of an outlet for my negative emotions, whether that’s anger or sadness or whatever. That’s just the way that I deal with it… I think the other thing that makes that record feel that way is that there’s a lot of [musical] build up and not much release. There’s a lot of parts where you might expect loud drums and guitars to come in, and we very purposefully decided not to do that. We tried to make things feel big without that. But I think it creates this environment where… you’re never crying it out, but it’s sort of like you're on the verge of tears for the whole record.
ES: It feels like a late night record…
CB: It came out in the thick of quarantine, in 2020, but it would have been written before that… I still feel like it reflects that time in a certain way. Lyrically, it’s just all about death… Like, the theme of the record is “How is everything not about death?” How is that not just the constant conversation?
ES: I ask again, how much weed are you smoking in Seattle?
CB: I don’t do anything these days. I’m very, very clean. But I think that’s the point of it. We have all this day-to-day distraction, like drinking or smoking weed or anything. All this stuff that helps you forget the actual thing, you know? Which I just think is really interesting. I don’t find it necessarily depressing. I just think it’s really interesting that the most important fact of life is the thing that you just don't want to think about whatsoever.
ES: And that is also unknowable. Even if you wanted to know, you can’t
CB: Totally. But you know that it’s gonna happen.
ES: I’m joking about all the weed, but are you sober intentionally? Or is it not even a conscious choice?
CB: It was a conscious choice. A little over a year ago I quit drinking. I didn’t smoke much weed before then, but I quit that at the same time. It was a little bit random, but seemed like the right thing for me at the time. I don’t know if it’ll be forever, but it has been really beneficial to me.
I think I remember John Mayer or somebody talking about quitting drinking, and how it’s this thing where you think either you’re an alcoholic or you're not, you know? So, if you're an alcoholic you should quit drinking, but like, otherwise why would you? And I remember John Mayer saying something about wanting people to know that it’s on the menu to quit drinking. And that’s how I feel about it, too. I was just kind of tired of it. I didn’t think it was necessarily good for me mentally.
And so it was great to give up. There are times when I miss it for sure. Like, it’s fun. But overall it’s definitely a net positive.
ES: For sure. I’m basically off of drinking for no specific reason other than I just wanted a different relationship with alcohol. Part of it just came after a period where we were drinking a lot and all of it was in celebration. But like you said, I just got tired of it. And I just felt like, if I’m going to do this, I want it to feel like a special occasion or something.
CB: I felt like it was a crutch that held me back from improving in permanent and lasting ways.
ES: I think sometimes we try to talk about sobriety and consumption in ways where it’s very black or white. And as someone who is prone to black and white thinking, that’s not very helpful to me. For me, it has felt healthy to redefine my relationship with this substance and… to redefine those boundaries.
Let’s talk a little bit briefly about the new album Old Best Friends… At this point in your career, why did it feel important to release an album like this, where you’re exploring songs from the back catalogue?
CB: That’s a good question. I don’t really know. It wasn’t my idea initially and I was a little resistant to it because of the nostalgia factor. But then I did find it really interesting, because… My tendency is to think that just that the acoustic version of the song isn’t enough and it needs to be bigger and I need to spend all this time on it. So this was a cool opportunity to reconnect with these songs, some of which I hadn’t listened to in awhile… and to do it in that natural feeling way… to just let it be that thing.
ES: Was there any song in particular that it felt like you really were seeing with fresh eyes?
CB: Laughs. Let me pull up the tracklist.
I think the main thing for me, more than any particular song, is I forget how sad a lot of the songs are. This was also true when we played Dig Up the Dead. If I really pay attention to the lyrics and don’t just sing them because I know them, there’s a lot of real emotions in there. I don’t even know if, at the time, I realized it… Having that objective distance, I can hear it or sing it almost like I’m a friend of that person. There is a little bit of that “Are you OK, man?” [Editor’s note: we love a call back.]
ES: If I had to theorize, I think part of the reason why your band does resonate with people is that it’s incredibly personal music. Like, it’s not music that I was ever playing with other people around.
CB: I think that’s right. I think that’s played into the economic, financial success of the band. It’s not like you’re gonna call your friends and say “Hey let’s all go to the Mansions show,” or listen to it in the car together.
ES: But it also is gonna be a thing where 5,000 people feel like it’s their band and their personal thing that’s speaking to them… I have very distinct memories and thinking “Wow, this band is so sick” and it’s very important to me.
CB: That means a lot. And I think it is kind of a thing where sharing with other people is exposing something about yourself. Whenever someone tells me what Mansions song they like, I’m like “Oh, OK. I see you in a certain way.”
Chris Browder is the singer-songwriter behind the band Mansions. He lives in Seattle. Mansions’ recent albums, Big Bad and Old Best Friends, are available via Bad Timing Records or wherever you stream music.
Great interview! I love Mansions!
Friggin love Mansions, friggin love this interview