"On a whim, we decided to shoot the bands playing at the house," Brass Tree member Leighton Peterson says of the raw film. "After looking at the footage, we just wanted to get it out there as soon as possible." Peterson, who is also a member of the Skeleton Show and Safe Boating Is No Accident, says that initially, the camera was set up as a live feed into another area of the house with a television so all could enjoy the bands from two rooms. Popping a tape in and catching the trio of sets was almost an afterthought, one that luckily turned into an excellent slice of some of Denver's up-and-coming bands.
While Lust-Cats of the Gutters are no newbies, this was the debut performance of the Skeleton Show (a band that comprises Brass Tree members and housemates Peterson, Ben Mund and Tyler Campbell, along with Pink Hawks' Zay Rios on drums) and only the third show for teenage high-school sweethearts SAUNA. Along with additional footage and stills from Luke Bender and his roving camera, Peterson, Mund and Campbell got together and edited it all into a nice thirteen-and-a-half-minute package, and with that singular experience, Brass Tree was born.
"It just seems like the next logical step -- bands in indie music need to become the content providers themselves and produce their own media," Peterson says about the desire to capture live shows on film. Quick turnaround of the footage, too, is key, Peterson iterates, as bands can -- through collaboration with a project like Brass Tree -- virally share videos of performances that just happened last week.
Brass Tree hopes to release a new episode every month, with the next one due out in mid-February.
