Milwaukee-bred/LA-based indie rock band Big Mother Gig certainly knows a thing or two about songwriting and crafting flavorful indie songs would certainly be at home on a coming of age Richard Linklater film soundtrack. With a wistful nod to jangle rock song producers like Gin Blossoms and a knack for raw story-telling, Big Mother Gig keeps it vividly real and melodic. While the band might as easily fit in amongst ’90 DIY indie stalwarts like Yo La Tengo, there are plenty of modern nuances that make the band pandemic era poignant.
The crafty songwriters recently returned with a brand new full-length album titled Gusto on April 30th . A celebration of sobriety, Gusto is first and foremost a recovery record. “I celebrated my first year of sobriety alone over a stormy Spring weekend in a desert cabin with some recording gear,” frontman Richard Jankovich recalls. “The album just flowed out of me–13 songs over three days. I wrote from morning until night and it was cathartic.” Addressing family, marriage, addiction, anger, serotonin, despair and, ultimately, hope, Gusto is a wide-ranging, emotional journey that focuses on second chances.
Written by music vet Richard Jankovich and performed by Michael Datz, Albert Kurniawan, Micah Lopez as well as Jankovich, Gusto, the forthcoming album from LA’s Big Mother Gig, was originally going to be titled For Those About To Rock Bottom, a sarcastic reference to a rock band learning to sober up. Continuing with this creative thread, Big Mother Gig recorded the album that would go on to be mixed by Dan Long (Local Natives, Spiral Stairs) and mastered by the legendary Howie Weinberg (Nirvana, Spoon, The White Stripes).
Gilde is premiering the new video for “That Day” off of Gusto, which severs as a nostalgic touchstone, yet brings awareness to otherwise unspoken happenstances. Check out the pensive video below and read on for Jankovich’s take on the song and video…
“That Day” explores the idea that trauma experienced by one generation can be passed down to the next. The song details real childhood events that deeply affected my Dad and which I believe impacted me. It makes me wonder – will those events also, in turn, maybe in a watered-down way, also affect my daughter? There’s been studies that show that trauma gets encoded in DNA and can be passed down. That idea fascinates and terrifies me.”
“For the video, the only way to tell this story was to use authentic home video footage from all 3 generations. My Dad grew up in a time when video cameras were a luxury so I only have still photos of him (interspersed with public domain scenes from his hometown during that time). When it transitions to my own childhood, there’s more to choose from. And, of course, my now 8-year old daughter has thousands of hours of footage. Odd how technology helps us save our memories. The video ends with my daughter and my Dad who have their own bond. Not a dry eye in the house…”
