Cary Brothers on Album Designs

New CD Who You Are literally Takes his Music to new Heights

Jun 20, 2007

When Cary Brothers released new album Who You Are, he didn't want just another singer/guitar album cover. In part 4 of our interview, he discusses what he did instead.

Genre: Alternative / indie / rock
Cary Brothers (vocals / acoustic), Jason Kanakis (guitar), Marco Meneghin (drums), Matt DelVecchio (bass)
Sounds like: Pete Yorn, Badly Drawn Boy
Home: Los Angeles, California
Cary Brothers

Taking Music To New Heights

It's the question that every artist has to face at some point - what can they do to make their album sleeve stand out, and not be just another boring band or singer shot. With Who You Are, Nashville indie artist Cary Brothers faced the same dilemma.

However, as his earlier EPs had shown, he's no slouch when it comes to different ideas for the cover shots. But not even Cary was prepared for what actually happened for his debut full-length release...

Special thanks go to Cary for being such a wonderful and genial interviewee, and to Jenna LoMonaco at Girlie Action Media for arranging everything.

Cary Brothers Interview Part Four: Reaching The Heights

Suite: Your album cover is pretty different from standard profile poses – you got your friend Michael Muller (a well-respected L.A. photographer) to get aerial shots from a helicopter of the Los Angeles freeways. How did that idea come about?

Cary: Well, I used to paint and am a very big graphic art fan. Usually when I've done my EPs, I've liked to dabble in my little graphic experiments – sadly everything else I've always liked doing, like short stories, poetry, etc, has all gone out the window for the music to be concentrated on. So with the EPs, it was fun to get back into the art side and experiment. The second EP cover, for instance, was a result of me just messing about with my digital camera and taking close-up snaps of my TV for 2 hours.

Suite: I wondered what that was! (laughs).

Cary: Oh yeah, that's stumped a lot of people (laughs). Anyway, when it came to mixing this album, I just never had the time to do any of the photography this time around. So I just called up Muller and I said, "Muller, I need your help". I actually paid for my first EP by working as his camera assistant, so he and I are old friends. He's just done the whole Spiderman 3 campaign – he's massive, so compared to what he's used to working with, even though I'm a friend, I'm just small potatoes. So I called him and told him that I needed his help – I knew I wanted it urban, I wanted it night, and I wanted crazy lights, but other than that, I had no idea. And he just goes "Brothers, get me a helicopter."

Suite: Just like that – get a 'copter? (laughs).

Cary: I know – I was like oooo-kaaaay… (laughs). I mean, I didn't know how you got a helicopter! But I got a helicopter, and that Saturday night we went up. I mean, we have a budget for different parts of the record, but this was new to the plan! But Muller being a great guy, he did all his work for free and that cut thousands from what he'd normally charge. So there we were, and people were saying they'd go out, but I'm like "Hold on a minute – if I'm paying for a helicopter, I want to be the one out there!" So me, Muller, his assistant and the helicopter pilot went up, and Muller's strapped to the helicopter and leaning out, thousands of feet up above the city.

Suite: That must have been a little hairy!

Cary: Well, what made it better was that before we went up, the pilot turned to us and said, "You know Muller, just so you know, if we're up there and you drop your camera, it'll get swept up into the rotor blades and we’ll be going down like a ton of bricks, so you guys have fun up there!" and off we went (laughs). But Muller's a genius, and I'd say every other shot he took was a record cover. The guy from the label, John Morrow, he had so much trouble picking the right shot, they were all so good. See, to me, no one really buys records anymore, so if someone takes the time to go into a store to actually buy a record, I want it to be that little bit special. I don't want it to be some cheese ball shot of me and an acoustic guitar – that's not me at all.

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