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Award-winning British guitarist and songwriter Oli Brown recently returned with his new band Oli Brown & The Dead Collective and their debut EP ‘Prelude’. The four-track offering is more organic and alternative-sounding than Oli’s previous outfit RavenEye, and with much-respected drummer Wayne Proctor alongside him, Oli has produced the most personal music of his career to date. And also the best. We spoke to Oli a short time after The Dead Collective had performed at Planet Rock’s Winter’s End annual gathering and he offered up a brutally honest chat on what the last eighteen months or so have been like for him, why he had to take a step back from music, and why he feels rejuvenated and back in love with music.
How was your weekend at Planet Rock’s Winter’s End? Quite hectic it would seem.
It was emotional, really. Amazing, I loved it. With these new shows as Oli Brown & The Dead Collective, there is more at stake for me as a musician, and it’s just nice to know that it worked. It’s also nice to know that it was received so well. I think for the first time as a musician I was actually quite nervous about playing! But yes, I loved it, and it was surreal to be out playing again because for a time I thought that I wouldn’t be doing it anymore.
It’s strange to hear that someone as highly experienced in the music business as yourself would still get nervous…is this because instead of your previous band RavenEye, this one has your name on it?
I think it’s because there is a lot more discipline in the show, and I can’t just rely on being theatrical and yelling at people. RavenEye was such a visceral show that it was like me yelling at people and getting that energy out, and even if they didn’t like the music then I could entertain them enough that they still would be part of the show. The Dead Collective show is very much about the music, the atmosphere, and the soundscapes, and – for the first time for me – it’s about putting trust in the music to do all the talking, which is something that I’ve never needed to do…and that’s what makes it so terrifying!
And because of the lyrical content and what the songs are about, it’s all so personal and quite exposing. Before we played people were wondering if it was going to be a blues show, or if it would be RavenEye II, and we’ve really gone out of our way to make sure that it is neither.
At Winter’s End, you had Wayne Proctor alongside you on drums, Sam Wood from Wayward Sons, and Black Star Riders on guitar…no bassist?
No bass, no. We have a bass amp up onstage and some of the show has bass on track. We used to have a bassist…well, we had a bassist for the first show last year then he got covid, so he bailed the week before the show and we had to get a stand-in bass player…who did a great job. Then we had the next show, at last year’s Heretic Festival, and for whatever reason…he didn’t practice the songs. So he left us in a difficult position, and by that point, we had already had a rehearsal without him…and we just said “mate, this is just not working”. I already had the bass tracks because I mixed the album and we just ran the bass tracks through a bass amp, and at this point in time because of all the budgets involved in touring, it was more important to use that budget to get a sound engineer and a lighting engineer. It’s definitely not ideal and I’d love to have a bass player onstage, but right now the chemistry onstage between the three of us is so nice that I don’t want to mess with it.
And two very experienced musicians have your back…
Yes, it’s a very positive atmosphere and it means that we can lock in with each other. It’s such a demanding live show that I think that seeing it all unfold because one person wasn’t keeping up…seeing the foundations starting to shake… was not what I wanted the introduction to my new music to be like. It was just not worth it.
Will both be with you during the tour with The Answer in March?
Yes! Thankfully there are no clashes with Wayne or Sam, but we know that with Sam there will be at some point, but we have someone in mind as a backup and Sam knows that. He’s the first point of call, I love having him with us, he’s a wicked energy! He is properly buzzing about the Black Star Riders tour!
You’ve previously said on social media that you have had the songs that make up the debut EP bubbling under for some time, what was it about now that made it the perfect time to release them finally?
I released ‘Haunted’ as the first song in April of last year, and I was so close to getting the ball rolling then but I don’t think that I was in the right headspace then to commit to it. At that point, the jewellery company that I had set up the year before was doing well [Black Feather Design], but I recognised that it could do really well if I dug in, and I thought that if I was smart with the jewelry side of things then I could afford a living. And that’s what stopped me from doing this last year. I put the guitar down for the rest of the year, I hadn’t sung, and I just focussed on building the company up and creating a lot more designs. A lot of opportunities came in…I ended up doing a pin for Papa John’s Pizza Halloween campaign! [laughs] And Christmas 2022 was just phenomenal, I mean, we have passed 14,000 sales now so it’s not just a hobby anymore, it’s full-time.
When it came to this year, I felt more positive about music because I had my finances sorted out which meant that I could look at music in a more positive light. The Winter’s End gig was a committed date, we had a tour with Cheap Trick lined up but that was cancelled, and that meant that we got The Answer tour which helped us out because it was gutting that the Cheap Trick tour was cancelled. So these shows were in place, and there was a point last year when I was nervous to play the shows, I wasn’t sure if I was really in it. I hadn’t picked up the guitar in so long and I really quite loathed music, just because music had caused me a lot of mental health issues and I blamed it, and I didn’t think that I wanted to go through all that again. So when we looked at this year and with the dates that were guaranteed we just thought; let’s dig in and put out an EP and tease a few songs…and in a day the EP had sold out…which was unbelievable. And that changed a lot for me because we didn’t expect that. And then we did a vinyl launch and that sold out in seven hours! It felt like being welcomed back in such an amazing way, and the last few words have really motivated me to dig deep with the music because you can’t enter the music business in halves…you cannot just dip your toes in…and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go through that all again just to be disappointed…or not to be able to pull it off because the songs are tough to sing and I didn’t know if I could anymore. It’s been intimidating putting these shows together but now that they are all booked I’m super excited and we have plans for the whole year. We are drafting more shows and it’s the first time in the last few years that I’ve been excited by music and felt positive about it rather than looking at it hoping that it would make me money…I realise now that there is no money in it, but there are ways to sustain it while I earn a living.
Was it the lockdown that made you fall out of love with music?
It was before the lockdown. There were a few issues with RavenEye and the second album getting finished. It was hurdle after hurdle and some other things with RavenEye that I never expected to happen because it was my baby, I bled that band, it was everything to me, and it just sucked. It wasn’t good for me, and I ended up in Wayne’s spare room for a year without any money. I had spent years in the music industry and had nothing to protect me…I had no money, no house, and ended up in Wayne’s spare room! Up until that point, RavenEye was getting bigger, we were playing to five hundred people at Dingwalls in Camden, and we felt that it was going places. And then it was just knockback after knockback and it felt neverending, everything just caught up with me and I was sick of it because I had put so much time into it and it had caused me so much emotional grief.
Wayne putting you up like that is a great example of how someone else’s humanity can make all the difference.
I don’t know what I would have done without Wayne’s help. I wasn’t in the best of places anyway so Wayne definitely saved me. He also pushed me to get these songs done, he was instrumental in getting me focussing on something. When I was setting up the jewelry company I was taking photos of everything – had blue-tac everywhere from taking pictures of rings – and packing everything on Wayne’s dining room table! He was very patient with that because it did get quite busy quite quickly and all of a sudden his house had become a packing room! I was really lucky as I don’t know what I would have done without Wayne.
It must have been quite humbling for you when you saw the EP selling out pretty much straight away.
It was, yes. It was emotional. We made 250 copies because the intention was that we would sell some online, and have some for the first headline show in Newark and the show at Winter’s End. And then within an hour or so, it was like “Shite, Wayne…we’ve sold 100 of them already!”, and it was such a surreal thing when it sold out. After taking a break and being away for so long on social media you kind of lose your relevance because there are always new bands putting new music out, so it was really overwhelming that people got behind it.
And now the EP is on its second edition…
Yes! I know! We recreated the artwork with vinyl in mind and it’s nice to have fresh artwork. It’s another limited run and once it is gone we will have a standard touring CD available for the support shows. We want to give our audience – whom we didn’t know that we had – the opportunity to have something fresh to thank them for supporting us.
The first edition has the death’s head moth on the cover, and the second has a ship sinking into the sea, who came up with both concepts?
The first one is the band logo, I used the same person that created the RavenEye logo – a guy called John Williamson – and I love his work. At that point in time, Black Feather Design was doing really well with a death’s head moth ring and that kind of blew my store up, so it made sense to use it. The second one, the ship, was a collaborative effort between Wayne, myself, and AI – there are so many great AI creators now that you can dig in, and I’m handy with Photoshop so we started to play around. One of the most important songs for me on the EP is ‘Sinking Ship’ because I had the confidence to be more creative with the writing, and the arrangements…using different sonic elements. I loved the idea of having this image of this massive overbearing ship, all messed up, and one single figure just standing on its own staring at it. The image of watching something collapsing and falling apart perfectly summarised what the last few years have felt like with what has been going on with my life.
It would be remiss of me if we didn’t talk about the incredible bonus version of ‘Haunted’ that appears on the EP, the arrangement from cellist Jo Quail is jaw-droppingly good…I have to ask; were there any tears shed when you heard it back for the first time?
Yeah, I think that I still get goosebumps even now. It’s a hard song anyway. Wayne is playing acoustic on that because we were recording a demo version of the song for Jo to create her arrangement over, and we sat down and said “Let’s make a killer demo for her to be really inspired by”. I recorded Wayne on the guitar then I did a rough vocal – well it was meant to be a rough vocal but I gave it everything – and I sent that to Jo and said to her to do whatever she wanted to it; to put whatever layers she wanted on it. What she came back with was just stunning so we brought her into the studio so that we could record her performing it…and watching her performing was captivating. We were preparing to go back in – both myself and Wayne – and record a proper take of Wayne on the acoustic and me singing, and I don’t think that I was ready to re-sing it again because the demo version felt real. It felt raw. And it felt like that’s what it needed to be. We kept it raw and that dynamic gave it so much more weight. Originally I was planning to put a guitar solo in there and I was sitting in the studio with a guitar in my hand and as soon as I pressed record… nothing happened, nothing came out. And that’s why you only hear me play slide guitar right at the end, and that’s really just to accent Jo’s string arrangement. What Jo did is just…well..it’s easily my favourite bit of music that I’ve been a part of.
It is something special.
We were so lucky to have her. And she’s currently working on ‘Sinking Ship’. And because she does all her own looping, we were like “Hey, let’s do some Nine Inch Nails!”…so there should be some Nine Inch Nails touches in there. With ‘The Solitude Sessions’…it’s our chance to be ambitious with the songs, and it’s our chance to be something other than just acoustic. We don’t really know what the sessions will end up sounding like, we have some drafts of the songs, but until we get in there…I can’t wait to see what they end up like. We’re just trying to not repeat ourselves.
How are you feeling about music now?
I’m excited. It feels good to be doing it, but there was definitely a point [with RavenEye] where I felt that I was doing it for the sake of it. That we needed a “fast” song, or now we need a “slow” song and a “radio” song. That was the crux of the second album, and you lose yourself as a writer if you start sticking to formulas because you have forced yourself into a habit. And now it’s just writing “songs” and working for them for no other reason than you want to push yourself as an artist. After the Winter’s End gig, I felt a lot more at peace with myself. I know where I can get better, and that’s to get my elasticity as a singer. I’m practicing every day now as a singer and that’s my goal.
Last question, you mentioned designing jewellery for Papa John’s Pizza…does that mean you get free pizza for life? And Ben Poole who of course makes for a smouldering model on your website…
[Laughs] Dude, I didn’t even get a free pizza never mind pizza for life! I should have asked for sure! To be honest, I thought that the original email from them was fake! And it was my partner Hannah who actually said “I think you should reply, it looks legitimate”…and they loved it so much that it got pushed to their international marketing team and the pendants ended up going all over the world. It was stressful as I’ve never worked with corporate before, but we did it. No free pizza though!
Catch Oli Brown & The Dead Collective live throughout March, more information here, and discover Black Feather Design here.
Interview – Dave
Live photo credits – Damian Sollis courtesy of O’Neill PR
Portrait photo – credit Drew Ormrod
