The Night That Richmond Died: A Chat with Brandon Peck (Mouthbreather)

Discography:

The Night That Richmond Died (Kiss of Death Records, 2008)

Mouthbreather was a Richmond based punk band who burst onto the scene in the mid-'00s and came raging out of the gate. I became familiar with them when the website I was working for, punkbands.com sent me the advance CD for review. It was amazing and I was disappointed when the band imploded several years later. I've always kept the band in the back of my mind and when the time came for an interview I reached out to Brandon and he was more than gracious to share his memories of this great band. Yet another example of Richmond being a hotbed of great punk rock.

Pete Crigler: How did you get involved in playing music and particularly hardcore?

Brandon Peck: I have been playing in punk and hardcore bands since early high school, and I moved to Richmond in 2001 where I met a bunch of likeminded kids. The music scene was exploding here at the time and it was only a matter of time before some of us had assembled ourselves into our own groups. 

Pete: Tell me about Wow Owls and how Mouthbreather eventually came together?

Brandon: Wow, Owls! began when our singer, Jeff, reached out to Tyler (bass) and myself about playing together. Tyler and I had been playing in a band called Crash Diagnostic where he’d been drumming and I was singing, but we’d both played guitar previously. Jeff was playing bass for Light the Fuse and Run and was about to embark on a US tour and follow it up immediately with a European tour, and had been itching to play in a band again with his old band mates John and Brian. They’d been in a screamo band called Juniper that had broken up around 2001. Anyway, Jeff wanted to do something new and played matchmaker for us, and then left town for like 3 months and we started writing. 

Flash forward to a couple years later, we were all kind of struggling with what we wanted out of the band and life in general and we decided to end it, so we recorded the last three songs and had a last show. It was bittersweet for most of us, as Wow, Owls! was something we were all super proud of, and some of us just were not quite ready to stop. John, Tyler and I started talking about what we would do next since we wanted to continue playing and writing together, and wondered who would fill out the lineup. Our friends The Setup, who we had released a split 7” with were also calling it quits around the same time. So we talked to their drummer Gene and bassist / singer John about playing together, and Mouthbreather was born. 

Pete: Was the scene in Richmond supportive of the band and where do you think the band fit in?

Brandon: It always seemed like every show was packed around that time. Shows were parties and they were beautiful drunken messes. Richmond had so much music at that time, it still does honestly, but the lines were always kind of blurred between genres. The lineups were diverse and so were the crowds.

Pete: How did the band sign with Kiss of Death?

Brandon: Mouthbreather ended up working with Bryon from Kiss of Death because our friend Troy had expressed interest in releasing our record, and asked KOD if they would co-release it. We did a 7” first and Troy ended up not being able to do it, so Bryon was kind enough to follow through on our full length. What a solid guy. 

Pete: What was it like making Thank You...?

Brandon: We recorded Thank You For Your Patience in Louisville, KY with Chris Owens from Lords. He’s just recently done a record for Cloak/Dagger and we were super stoked on how that sounded, and wanted an excuse to hang out in Louisville for a week. We slept on the floor of the studio and tracked during the day / evening. It was in an industrial part of the city so there wasn’t much to do nearby and it was before Uber and Lyft so we would take turns paying for a company called city scoot to come throw their mini scooter in our van, drive us home and then zoom off into the night. I made friends with a guard dog next door. 

Pete: What was touring like during this time?

Brandon: I think my memories of these times are a little colored by nostalgia at this point. I remember the tours with Wow, Owls! almost always being a blast, friends in every city, but there were almost certainly flops along the way. Going to Europe was eye opening because we got to experience hospitality in a form we’d never seen, and it set the bar impossibly high for the future. 

In Mouthbreather we experienced what it was like to have the momentum of your previous work pulled back and having to start from zero. By the end of the band we were having the best tours I’ve probably been on. Great shows, promoted well, food for the bands. We got to tour Europe with our friends Zann. It was a blast til things kinda fell apart. 

Pete: Was work attempted on a second record?

Brandon: Gene quit Mouthbreather shortly after Thank You For Your Patience was released and we courted our friend Chris about replacing him. We went on to release two more records, one was an EP of five songs that Robert from Zann released on a 10” record through his label Adagio 830. We also did a split 7” with our friends Worn in Red on Rorschach Records that are arguably the best two songs we ever wrote and recorded. There were a handful of other songs we had written when we split up but those are lost to the ages at this point. 

Pete: What caused the band to break up so seemingly sudden?

Brandon: It just kind of fizzled out at the end for some of us. John Hall and Tyler were both working towards careers, we were practicing on our drummer Chris’s farm 30 minutes outside of the city and interest in playing shows was waning in general. Eventually we decided as a group that it was time to close the chapter. 

Pete: How did Sea of Storms come about and how has that been going?

Brandon: During the time that our productivity was dwindling, and due to an hour’s worth of travel to the farm to practice, I started to feel like some of us could get a little more out of the evenings. I had been starting to amass some cooler effects pedals and really wanted to sing in a band again. John Martin had mentioned several times wanting to get back to playing bass again and stop singing, and Chris was playing music as much as possible and was seemingly down for whatever. We started jamming before and after Mouthbreather rehearsals, and eventually after MB split up it was all we had. Sea of Storms has been a band for nearly a decade at this point. We’ve added a guitarist, parted ways with Chris, released two LPs and survived a pandemic. Our last recording with Chris will come out some time in the next year, and hopefully we will be playing shows again soon. 

Pete: Tell me about what you're currently up to.

Brandon: I manage a cocktail bar that just reopened after being closed for 14 months. We have been picking up some momentum with Sea of Storms, hoping for a return to playing live again soon. Other than that, I’m reading a lot and trying to set up a rudimentary recording studio in my house. 

Pete: Are you in touch with the other guys?

Brandon: All of the Wow, Owls! still talk pretty frequently and we’ve been talking about doing a cover band as an excuse to play music together again. Jeff just released an awesome record under the name the Northeast Regional Band (bestpractices.bandcamp.com) last year, and John Hall and Tyler Worley play together in a great band called Sharpening (https://vimeo.com/361632426?fbclid=IwAR3kIGSRrGf-oRA-w1yMkIg6JP3iAzZdtfXd72oN7WVhF-xthch_0Yfs7Iw). That about covers most people from Mouthbreather as well. John Martin and I still play together in Sea of Storms, and Chris Brown went on to play in a band called Dark Waters that are pretty awesome (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HnCs_EyfRjQ&feature=youtu.be). Gene Byard does a lot of Muay Thai training and does video production stuff, but I don’t believe he is still playing any music. 

Pete: What has it meant being a musician from Virginia?

Brandon: I’ve lived in Virginia my entire life so it just feels normal. I’m proud to have been a small part of the music that comes out of the state and I don’t ever plan to stop. 

Pete: What do you hope the band's overall legacy will be?

Brandon: I don’t really think about our “legacy” much. These were bands that I did with my best friends over the last twenty years, and I’m just happy to have most of it recorded for my own enjoyment. If people are still stoked on the music we made, even better. I won’t speak for Jeff or John, but personally my lyrics have always been a way for me to express the things I struggle with and if that reaches someone else and helps them process the trauma that they’re facing, that makes me feel pretty good.