Interview: Brenden Ramirez
Discussing Bory's Excellent Debut Album, 'Who's A Good Boy'
This has already been an incredible year for new music, but the guitar pop gods aren’t done with us yet.
Bory’s debut album, Who’s A Good Boy (Earth Worms Music), sneaks in under the wire with a December 8 release. Two stellar singles have emerged so far—“We Both Won” and “Five-Course Meal”—both perfect for fans of hooky indie rock artists like Hurry, Diners, Uni Boys, and Mo Troper who produced and played on this new collection.
“Hurry is great. I play in the Mo Troper band and this year we played with Hurry in Philly! We also played with 2nd Grade at that show who I love so much. Mo and Blue (Broderick) from Diners are huge inspirations for me when it comes to songwriting,” Portland-based singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Brenden Ramirez said.
“I love the latest Alvvays record, Blue Rev. Not really a modern pick, but this year I’ve been listening to a lot of the Apples in Stereo. I’ll have to check out Uni Boys!”
Although many tracks on Who’s A Good Boy have the fullness and energy of a band, Ramirez wrote the songs while all the music is played by him and Troper—from guitar, bass and drums to piano, mellotron, omnichord and beyond.
“My writing process kind of changes from song to song, but one constant is that I never start with lyrics. It’s always melody or chords first. Maybe chords come first more often? Sometimes it feels like I’ll get gifted a melody out of nowhere through some kind of divine intervention and it makes me stop what I'm doing and pull out my voice memo app,” Ramirez said.
I chatted with Ramirez via email to discuss the making of Who’s A Good Boy, his songwriting process, and his approach to sequencing the album.
Brenden Ramirez Interview
Congrats on the great new album. Opening track "The Flake" absolutely soars. Can you talk a little about how that one evolved?
Brenden Ramirez: Thank you so much for having me, Steve! Out of all the songs on this record, ‘The Flake’ has definitely been through the most. The final version of this song is like the fourth attempt at re-recording it from scratch.
The first version of ‘The Flake’ was a lot softer and kind of slower and had acoustic guitars instead of the crazy fuzz guitars. My second attempt was more in the style of the final version. After I finished recording the whole album, my friend Mo Troper convinced me to re-record all the songs in a proper studio (we split time between Trash Treasury and Red Lantern Studios!) where we attempted ‘The Flake’ again a couple more times.
We were both super excited about this song so we just wanted to make sure we got it right. Couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. Mo’s production really took all these songs to the next level.
The guitars are fantastic on "The Flake," "Feel The Burn" and "North Douglas." Who are some of your guitar heroes?
Brenden Ramirez: Thank you! Mo played some rhythm guitar on the 12-string Rickenbacker on ‘The Flake’ and also added some lead lines in ‘North Douglas.’ I love all the things he added.
As for guitar heroes, oh man. I feel like I don’t really closely study guitarists as much as I should. Elliott Smith was obviously an incredible guitar player and is a huge influence for me. I love how his guitar parts often acted as rhythm and lead all in one and even his pure lead lines were great too. Like in ‘Stupidity Tries,’ those arpeggiating lines are crazy.
You announced Who's A Good Boy with the first single, "We Both Won." Why was that the right track to launch this new collection of songs?
Brenden Ramirez: I think I originally wrote this song for a new band that me and some people were trying to start a few years ago but it never ended up happening. It made a lot of sense to go with this song as the first single just because it’s short and sweet. It felt like a good way to show people what the new project sounds like compared to the EP I released a couple years ago.
Part of me wanted to have ‘The Flake’ be the first single because of how different it sounds from the EP. Maybe it would’ve been too jarring.
"We Both Won" has the line "don't worry about me"—but I'm not convinced. Should we be worried about you?
Brenden Ramirez: You don’t have to worry about me, Steve. I’ll be just fine, I promise!
The second single is the chugging and sparkly mid-tempo groover "Five-Course Meal." What was the inspiration for that one?
Brenden Ramirez: ‘Five-Course Meal’ was one of the last songs I wrote for the album and I remember thinking about how most of my songs don’t have bridges or some sort of middle section. It’s always just like an endless cycle of verses and choruses.
I also remember listening to Mo’s music and really appreciating how the chords in his bridges really take you for a ride, so when I was writing the song I forced myself to try and make kind of a wild chord progression and have it sound very different from the rest of the song.
The first half of the album generally seems to rock a little harder than the moodier second half. Was that by design?
Brenden Ramirez: Yeah, definitely a bit by design. I had a plan for three songs: ‘The Flake,’ ‘End Of The World,’ and ‘Take It From Me,’ since they are kind of the three most different sounding songs compared to the rest.
I wanted ‘The Flake’ to start off the record by really kicking the door open. I thought ‘End Of The World’ would be good in the middle as kind of the separator of the two halves. ‘Take It From Me’ just made sense at the end for some reason.
Any plans to tour for the new album?
Brenden Ramirez: No plans are on the books yet, but am hoping to get something going! I need to make a few phone calls. We’ll make it happen!
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Excited to listen to this next week!
Digging these Bory tracks! Great tip RtL