Hello My Name Is…with The Walkmen, A.i., and The Brobecks

The Walkmen

Fresh off the release of their latest long player You & Me, The Walkmen are currently touring throughout the Pacific Northwest. We caught up with drummer Matt Barrick to get the story on how the band got their name.

“I don’t think there is a very interesting story,” he says. “None of us are particularly fond of the name. It was a long time ago, just a random thing, I think Walt (Martin, organ/bass) came up with it, but it might have been Hamilton (Leithauser vocals/guitar). And, we just had a long list of bad names, and we just sort of crossed them off, you know, then we had our first show, and we just had to have a name, so we picked one,” finishes Barrick. ” It doesn’t  really make for a great story.”

A.i.

A power trio from West Los Angeles, A.i. have had the weird experience of first being signed to a major label, only to end up going the independent route due to the nature of their hard-to-market, electronically-based music.

“We used to be playing in the back of our folks’ house, when we were youngsters, you know, doing a little psychedelia and writing songs,” says lead singer Nick Young. “Pablo (Manazarek) brought over his Dad’s (Ray Manzarek of The Doors) keyboards, all these really cool synthesizers and stuff, and we started experimenting with writing with electronics, with triggers and electronic drums. My younger brother has a really unique drum set with about 19 triggers on it, so he can play electronic drums with his live drums. Anyway, he was in his dentist’s office, and he read an article on Artificial Intelligence, and it clicked, like, ‘hey, this would be a cool name for a band.’ It just stuck with us.”

“We came up with it way before that movie came out,” he laughs.

What an awesome dentist office! Mine always had nothing but those lame Highlights magazines, for kids, you know, with the Timbertoes?

The Brobecks

What, on Earth, is a Brobeck?

“It is the name of a girl who Mike Gross (guitar) and Dallon  Weekes (lead vocals) went to high school with,” says Dave Chisholm, the former trumpet and keys player for the Salt Lake City, Utah-based band. “She always got called to the office, but nobody knew her. The name is an ode to the unpopular, so to speak.”

How interesting is that! A girl who is always being heard over the intercom, being called to the office, yet no one really knows who she is. Kind of creepy, actually.

-Matt