[Text and live concert photos by James Sigman; from the Ithaca Times]
Don’t be fooled by the nickname. Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner is pretty comfortable moving in fast motion, too.
The Friday night I catch up with Brenner in Philadelphia is a two-gig night, capping off an already-full workday. The first gig is a happy hour show with Philly folkers John Train, who set up shop on the second floor of an Irish pub and play originals and covers for a crowd of family, friends and a few strangers.
Then, after squeezing in some daddytime with 20-month-old daughter Ruby, Brenner crosses through the parking lot and heads down the block to the next gig, providing a little atmospheric music for the patrons of a French restaurant with compadre Hoagy Wing. Finally, at just past 11pm, dinner was served.
“It was a little easier when I didn’t have a day job, but then it was like the gigs were more financially important,” Brenner said, in between set breaks. “Now, it’s more fun just to play.”
Those who have seen Brenner at GrassRoots these past two years can testify that he and his bandmates know their way around fun. And this Saturday night, those GrassRoots fans and anybody else in search of a good time can find Slo-Mo — the white-suited man and the band — at the Chapter House for a rare show outside the Philadelphia area. The show is the finale of what Brenner calls “their big New York state tour,” which begins the night before in Jamestown. Yep, only two shows.
“I’d love to do it more, but everyone’s got day jobs or music commitments. We keep it easy on each other,” Brenner said. “And I’m sort of past the days where it’s, like, ‘150 dollars to play Alabama? Cool! Let’s go!’”
Brenner (whose nickname was thrust upon him based on his basketball skills) and his trusty lap steel/Dobro have certainly traveled their fair share of miles, first with another GrassRoots favorite, the Low Road (whom some may remember from their shows at the ABC Café) and later touring and recording with country duo Y’All, Philly rockers Marah, and Jason Molina’s country rock band Magnolia Electric Company, among others. But as good as those gigs were for Brenner, he found his home with his own music, a blend of folk, pop, country and hip-hop that is as hard to define as it is easy to enjoy.
The first Slo-Mo disc, Novelty, found Brenner matching his lap steel to various electronic beats with the help of famed producer Tom Rothrock. Gigs soon followed with a band that included current Slo-Mo bassist Steve Demarest and drummer Mark Schreiber (who also plays with Brenner in John Train).
Brenner then did some shows with a DJ and added percussionist Hoagy Wing to the mix. His touring schedule with Marah didn’t leave him much time to work on his own thing, but as he was putting together the songs for his next disc, he finally came upon what he needed to take the music further. Or, actually, whom he needed. Enter rapper Mic Wrecka.
Brenner was working on the song that became the title track for his second CD — “My Buzz Comes Back” — when he realized what the song was missing.
“That’s the one that really defines what we’re trying to do — I knew that from the get-go,” Brenner said.
“I had the track, I did the chorus, and we had the whole thing really nice and mellow. And then it was sorta like, ‘We should put a rapper on this.’”
And after hearing the results, Brenner made the decision to scrap what he had already recorded and start anew.
“As soon as we did ‘Buzz’ and then ‘Shackamaxon,’ I was like, well, this stuff sucks compared to that,” Brenner said. “It was just more exciting.”
Adding an MC to the Slo-Mo musical stew injected new life into a project that needed a little push.
“We’d played some good shows and the DJ thing was cool, but it didn’t really come alive until Wreck eventually started to move to the front,” Brenner said.
After My Buzz Comes Back came out, Brenner finally had some time off the road to focus on making the band a live powerhouse. With Mic Wrecka now fully established as the group’s frontman, the band settled into a residency at The Fire in Philadelphia. These shows were bolstered by two more additions to the band, Sue Rosetti and Steph Hayes, whom Brenner originally asked to help out on a few shows, which turned into a few more, and then, all of the sudden, they were in the band full-time.
So, as work began on the third Slo-Mo CD, Brenner had a new set of voices to work with in the writing process. “It was cool because I was writing with their voices in mind, and that’s when it started to shape itself as not just a band that was trying to learn the studio version of a record,” Brenner said. “We started to sound like who the people were, using their voices. Now we couldn’t do a gig without them.”
With Hayes and Rosetti in the mix, plus keyboardist Lauren Hart (whose duties as the Philadelphia Flyers’ national anthem singer prohibit her from making the Ithaca trip), the band headed to another level.
Shows that were mellow and slightly subdued soon turned into all-out parties, and that sort of atmosphere fills the band’s most recent CD, Smokey Mountain, which captures the band at its peak powers. With covers of TLC’s “Waterfalls” and Zapp’s “Dance Floor” and strong originals like “How Do We Win the War?” and “Going to the Moon,” the disc stands as a strong studio representation of the band’s on-stage vibe.
Of course, a band with such a party-ready sound is tailor-made for the summer festival setting, which explains the band’s popularity at both the Great Blue Heron festival near Jamestown (where Slo-Mo will be making its sixth appearance this summer) and GrassRoots.
At last year’s GrassRoots performance, Slo-Mo took the stage to a small gathering of the curious and the converted, but soon had most of the Cabaret Hall filled with smiling faces and frenzied footwork. The band wound up taking two encores (a cause of slight concern for the event organizers) before finally calling it a day, winning over another crowd.
“We’re definitely an odd thing to come across, especially at GrassRoots. It’s very varied there, of course, but we still stick out as kind of an odd band,” Brenner said. “But we like that. We like the looks we get at the beginning of shows like that. You’ve gotta kind of worm your way into their hearts and then hope by the end of the set that you’re able to crush the crowd and just rock out.”
Brenner and crew will be bringing that quest for conquest to the Chapter House Saturday night, and the smart money’s on them being victorious.
Slo-Mo plays the Chapter House (400 Stewart Ave.) on Saturday, Feb. 9, at 10pm.
