The Musical Conquests of Brian Bergeron

For those who may be concerned or might recognize the play on words of the title of the post, I’m tipping my hat to the CD released by Josh Ritter this year (2007) entitled “The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter.” This is a detailed biography (some will inevitably think too detailed) but we’ll see how it goes. It will start in 1985 and catch you up until October 03, 2007…after that, you’re on your own (or you have to painstakingly read through the rest of the blog).

1. The Beginning

I was born July 28, 1985 in Lowell, MA. My family is still from Lowell and though I live in Cambridge, MA with my rock buddies Cahill I still consider myself from Lowell. Lowell is famous for three things: gangs, textile mills, and Jack Kerouac. Make sure you take note of that because there will be a test later. I’m not going to say much about my upbringing but I will say that music was never really stressed during my adolescence. Truthfully, I have a huge family (over forty cousins combined over both sides of my family) and we are all incredibly close but no one is really musical. I started playing guitar within weeks of my cousin Dave (he dumped guitar shortly thereafter) but other than that I don’t think anyone was musical save my cousin Jeff who played guitar (and when I was about 17 or 18 sent me about a dozen demos that he recorded in his apartment to varying degrees of completion). Even today when I think of those demos, I picture him crouched in his bathtub singing the songs (people often record vocals in bathrooms because of the reverb and echo of the room)…so yea, that was a tangent and there will probably be a lot of them.

I was deprived a musical upbringing and I curse that sometimes when I think back about how much catch-up I’ve had to play but that’s me just feeling sorry for myself. BUT, if we were looking at how much of an underdog I am, look no further than my dad’s musical collection which includes heavy hitters such as Yanni, Gloria Estefan, Steely Dan, and those recordings of blue whales singing in the ocean (pacific blue maybe?). In particular, I’m not bashing on Steely Dan but when I recall other musicians talking about their musical upbringing they’re always like, “Yea, when I was three or four my parents always used to spin their vinyl copy of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and I had a cool uncle who got me into Zeppelin at a young age” but I still to this day can’t listen to those singing whales.

Disclaimer: My dad did have some good music. It was because of him that I got into Van Morrison (not until I was like 17) and though as a kid I did not like James Taylor (he sounded too wholesome and happy…I know otherwise today about his past) I have definitely come around to him

2. That Thing You Do

Of course, it was in a most uncool fashion that I started playing guitar. In 1996, the movie That Thing You Do came out. I’m not going to get into much plot detail because it is REQUIRED viewing in this blog to see this movie but it is about a Pennsylvania band that came out of nowhere and exploded and had hits but then broke up…very Beatle like in some ways but an American version of it. I don’t exactly which band they were supposedly based on. The tagline for the movie is as such: In every life there comes a time when that dream you dream becomes that thing you do. I hope that shows how great this movie is…

…I don’t really know if the movie was in fact great but I was an impressionable youth and it looked cool to me to try that. I don’t know, however, why I gravitated towards guitar instead of drums. The protagonist in the movie was a drummer and the guitarist/vocalist was a prick but I guess that’s what we call a paradox and was probably my future ego rearing its ugly head.

I picked up guitar soon after that and started taking lessons at a store I think was called The Music Mall…It was a big blue house in Chelmsford and they overcharged for lessons and everything else. Guitar lessons were on and off for two years. When people ask, I say I was a combination of lesson taught and self taught. The first song I learned was “Aura Lee”, a dumbed down transcription of “Love Me Tender”. My dad later told me that he played guitar for a short time and that was the first thing he learned…Then in my imagination I think he popped on some Gloria Estefan.

My first memory of performing publicly was at St. Margaret’s Middle School. I was in sixth grade and may have been the only musician in my class so I brought in my guitar to play what I had recently learned (’Everybody Hurts’ by REM) but my guitar was slightly out of tune. I didn’t own a tuner and tried to tune by ear but I’m not so good at that (I’m STILL not so good at that, 10 years later…which is kind of pathetic, actually). I spent five minutes trying to tune and just worked things more out of tune. My music teacher scoffed at me and directed the class elsewhere. That was actually a pretty scarring moment on me so if I ever in my future career lash out at people on stage a’la Ryan Adams, then it is probably a back lash to that trauma.

The other early memory I have of guitar is going into The Music Mall to buy guitar strings. For those of you who play guitar, they come in different gauges or thicknesses and people customize them to their particular playing habits. Unfortunately, at the age of 12, I didn’t know what gauge I prefered. The clerk at the store chose to ridicule me over this point. He gave me a really hard time but I bet he was doing so because he was a dead-end store clerk Metallica reserve guitarist wanna-be and I was 12 and had my whole life ahead of me. Still, he was a real jerk.

I got my first guitar from my uncle’s ex-wife (she was not an ex-wife at the time). It was a dinky little classical guitar and got me through my first four or so years. I wanted an electric guitar but my parents wanted to make sure I’d stick with it so they told me not until I got my first year of playing under my belt. The first Christmas a full year after I started playing I got an entry-level Epiphone Les Paul sunburt guitar and it sucked. I bought it more for the color than anything and God did I hate that guitar. It played like crap and that’s probably why I favor acoustic guitar now-a-days.

3. I Tried To But I Can’t- that girl

We fast forward now to my Sophomore year in high school. The only highlights between 6th grade and high school were that I tried playing piano for 6 months but got frustrated and quit. I also in this stint bought a drum set that I probably played twice. I don’t know why but I have good intentions to learn other instruments but I always drift back towards guitar. Ah well.

I also started writing songs. Awful, terrible songs. When one of your biggest songwriting influences is power-pop/trash trio Everclear then you have songwriting issues. That was not the best musical period for me. Everclear was the first concert I ever saw (with Soul Coughing and DJ Spooky) and I had a great time. Apparently, the lead singer for Everclear just got out of rehab and he gave a lackluster performance but I didn’t know any better. It rocked me hard.

Anyhow, I wrote a bunch of bad songs and my earnestness towards songwriting came directly with my earnestness towards reading beat literature. Like I said, Lowell is famous for prodigal son Jack Kerouac who was born and raised in Lowell only to move to New York and in later years he came home to Lowell to get belligerantly drunk and died I believe in Florida. Lowell has a love/hate relationship with Kerouac who has a mixed legacy in literary circles. My grandfather knew Jack Kerouac from the bars and said he was a real dick so that’s the closest thing I have to personal knowledge/contact. He was, however, a reluctant figure head for a moment that favored the dreamers and the disenchanted and that’s what I fancied myself to be in two years for high school.

Side note: If I could meet with Brian Bergeron from high school, I would punch him in the face for being a pre-Emo little punk. I was whiny and complain-y and ick. No wonder I didn’t have many friends…

So songwriting + beat literature + tragic high school break-up = strong musical foundation/obsession …I call it the perfect storm.

Towards the tail end of Freshman year I began dating real live girls and it was cool. The second girl that I dated broke up with me just before sophomore year but quickly re-negged and asked me back out. My pride was hurt and I said no and soon after that I began to regret my decision so I spent the next year or so trying to get her to go back out with me. I call that the “stupid year”. It didn’t work out, obviously. It did, however, serve as fodder for songwriting for me for the next 3 years (which sounds kind of pathetic but I can still draw upon that for residue tragedy when I need something to write about…which sounds equally as pathetic, yikes) and was when I first started writing anything with any kind of weight.

I can’t believe how much of an idiot I acted like during my beat literature period. I’ve kind of backlashed the other way and have little respect for beat literature although when I was on tour last year I brought Kerouac’s “On The Road” audio book read by Matt Dillon and it was pretty dang good.

4. Step Into The O

In my junior year, I started doing the whole band thing. In all cases it was some incarnation with my cousin Bret on drums. We had this kid Tom on guitar who was very into Nu-metal which was the hot music at the time (unfortunately, I owned a Staind album at one time) and for a short while the ex-gf from the last section’s brother was in the band but he was into pop-punk, which I didn’t fancy. What was I into in that time? Good question. If, as a high schooler I wasn’t into punk or nu-metal, what left was there? Like I said I was into Everclear and Van Morrison but I started getting into Dylan a bit but I was never a Dylanophile. I started liking Radiohead a bit and whatever was pop at that time (Dave Matthews and Matchbox 20 and the like).

The band with Tom and ex-gfs’ brother was short and stupid so yea, that didn’t last. About that time I started going to a local coffeeshop called The Sugar Shack. It was there that I started performing at open mics and my friends would come out and check me out. The Shack was owned by this cracked-out beat looking guy named I think Tommy and I can’t believe he kept the place opened as long as he did. I can’t fathom in retrospect why my friends supported me through those times because I sucked so bad, haha. They were good friends.

Oh yea, that band incarnation was called Self-Titled, which I liked because it was ironic. Not only was I whiny and emo and depressed in high school…I was also ironic (which I have evolved into being incredibly sarcastic at the age of twenty-two).

The next band had Bret and this kid Kyle on bass. We were called Overture, which was named by Bret. We rehearsed songs that I wrote and practiced and all that good stuff. Our first show was going to be at Lowell High’s talent show in March of my junior year. Get this, like four hours before the gig, our bassist Kyle called us and said he hurt his foot playing basketball so he couldn’t play bass that night. That didn’t quite add up to me. We ended up playing that show as a two-piece and promptly kicked Kyle out of the band. The talent show itself was strange beacuse it was a combination of crappy bands and brakedancers/hip-hop acts. Lowell High has a very strong hip-hop contingency though there is enough of otherwise to make it be a nice blend but basically half of the auditorium was cheering and the other was booing. Made for a nice blend.

That fall we played our first real ’show’ in the basement of a local parish. As a two-piece I’d like to say that we were way more White Stripes than the White Stripes…for the record. We had a couple other acts on the bill including local musical celebrity Will Brierly who was like the first local musician that I looked up to. That was kind of cool. By all accounts the show was a success. I did, however, break my string during the first minute of our first song and that song was reduced to me turning red faced and trying to ‘compensate’ for the broken string but looking like an idiot. Luckily, we had a spare guitar that I could use…yikes. After that show we were approached by a kid who went to our school named Matt who would later become our bassist.

Soon after that we had our real ’studio’ experience and by studio I mean a friend of my cousin by the name of Dan Carney recorded 8 songs for us in two days in the upstairs of his house, which is called “Two Days in December”. We sold about 300 copies of that and if I had it my way, I would collect all the copies of it and steamroller it. We designed our own artwork and cut each copy and burned each CD and assembled them ourselves. I was enamored because it was my first recording but it sounded really really really really bad.

We spent the rest of my senior year playing shows at The Sugar Shack (which eventually closed down because of a combination of noise complaints, its cracked out owner Tommy, and the floor and ceiling were simultaneously caving in). There was definitely an element of romance in that place, however, and I loved playing and hanging out there even though it was run down and by all accounts crappy. It was OUR place, and it was cool to have a place.

After The Shack closed down we began hanging out at Higher Grounds, a newer, and 1000% nicer coffee shop downtown. They eventually had us playing there a couple weekends a month and let me do some booking outside of that. I was running an open mic there for a while and that was a much more pleasant experience.

The Overture thing continued through our graduation from high school and our first year in college. We added a fourth member, Andy on guitar (Andy currently plays bass for me) and continued to play any local show that would have us. We could tell by the end of my senior year (though I wouldn’t admit it to myself) that things were growing stale and that I was the only one really taking it seriously.

One of the penultimate events was when we hosted a show at the local Elks lodge. We had three bands on the bill and the theme was “The Greatest Show on Earth”. We had tons of balloons, face painting, cotton candy machine, popcorn, pizza and other circus themed things. We put a lot of effort into the show and it would have been great except for two things: 1. no one showed up and 2. I left my guitar in Plaistow, NH the night before…by accident. I can’t believe I left my guitar at our show the night before in Plaistow. I had to play with a very unfamiliar guitar and our performance suffered as such. Also, I don’t know why but no one really made it out to the show. So yea, I think we lost money on that show and when you’re 17, that sucks.

In college, we played like four shows and then we packed it up:
Show 1: A homecoming Thanksgiving show at Higher Grounds which was awesome. It was packed and everyone was home for school and it was great.
Show 2: UMASS Amherst. Bret goes there and we played a cafeteria type show and I think it was OK but the only highlight was Andy getting absolutely plastered and having to be cared for by Bret. Andy had serious surgery recently and shouldn’t have been drinking ANYTHING.
Show 3: The All Asia in Cambridge. It was literally the coldest day of the year in December. Like 3 people came out and Andy couldn’t make the show so that was depressing.
Show 4: Our last show at some place in Derry, NH. Oh yea, except for the fact that we took separate cars and the rest of the band got lost in traffic. I ended up performing SOLO without the band and that was the end of the band.

It’s kind of weird because I enjoyed Overture even though it was definitely a pain in the butt to maintain. I did like 90% of the work and was the only one who took it remotely seriously. I mean, of course in high school you can’t expect everyone to have a passion for what will ultimately be their career but most of the time I was just trying to maintain something that wasn’t worth maintaining. It was kind of like a bad relationship that was good when it was working but was not healthy for any of the parties. Truthfully, we could have been good. I was by far the weakest link. I still contest that Bret was one of the best drummers that I have played with or seen on a local level. Matt killed at bass (which he has since quit and taken up being a whiz kid of economics) and Andy is incredible with all things musical. At this time I ache for a fully collaborative band instead of what I have now, which is being a front man for a band where I’m in charge of EVERYTHING but I guess that’s not much different than what Everclear was. Still, it may have been naivety but we did have a great chemistry that I kind of miss.

Onto college!

5. The Solo Guy

I started attending Northeastern University in 2003 for English but at orientation I had an identity crisis and changed my major to Music Industry. Up until that time I honestly thought that I was going to be a writer, which probably stems back to my old Beat Literature days. Truthfully, I wrote a lot in middle school and it started stemming off in high school when I started writing music and less literature but I don’t think it was until I was a freshman in college that I accepted my doomed fate as a musician. I made the switch and immediately began taking the Northeastern acoustic music scene by storm.

By this time John Mayer had all ready become successful and there was no dearth of acoustic guys with guitars so I kind of fell into that. There was definitely a good network for music there and I began plugging pretty hard into the music scene. Within the last year I had discovered a couple of artists that would become pivotal to my musical growth (Matt Nathanson, Ryan Adams, Wilco) and during my first week in school I saw Matt Nathanson perform a solo show in the basement of a dorm at Wentworth Institute of Technology and was blown away. I knew my first goal at Northeastern was to play with Matt Nathanson who was definitely much further ahead in his career than I was but not so out of reach that it was impossible. I was also involved my freshman year in Northeastern’s radio station and got free tickets to go see Josh Rouse at the Paradise Rock Club and became enamored with that music room. It is still my favorite music room and my second goal in college was to play the Paradise Rock Club. I was foolish enough to think that if I plugged for a year that it would be possible. I didn’t happen for four years but it doesn’t matter because it happened!

Anyhow, I saw Matt Nathanson solo which I still contest as one of the best solo live shows in this particular genre and I started playing shows in Boston. My first performance was at Afterhours, Northeastern’s campus club (I’ve played there a billion times) at an open mic where I played R. Kelly’s “Re-mix to Ignition” which went over very well. my first real show in Boston was at The All Asia in Cambridge. I can’t accurately explain the All Asia to people who have not been there but I’ll try. It’s this dirty, little crappy chinese restaurant that hosts shows from like 11am to midnight every day with the hopes of having tons of music that obligates people to bring in their friends to buy drinks and food. It sounds awful and is always a terrible place to play but it’s like a required step for any local musician to suffer at The All Asia before they move to legitimate rooms. I played there like 3 times and vowed never again.

I also performed at The Skybar and that was my first 21+ show. I brought like 5 people, which sadly was more than the rest of the acts brought combined. I got scolded by the club booker for the crappy show and learned one of my first valuable lessons at college: Don’t book a show if you can’t draw. That has been kind of like my Achilles heel when it comes to expanding my career…bringing heads in the door (which is typical for most young artists).

I spent my freshman year just playing shows and messing around recording bad demos at Northeastern’s recording studio. In the fall of my Sophomore year I took a recording class and recorded my first real demo as a solo artist called “First Impressions.” It was a step in the right direction (though like all my recordings in retrospect had a LONG way to go to being legit) and I got those ones professionally duplicated for the first time. I had this geeky photo of me pulling a weed in the Fens near my school:

I am really bad with photo shoots and went out with my girlfriend a couple times to take pictures for this disc…so yea.

It was in January of my Sophomore year that I accomplished goal number one. By some stroke of luck Matt Nathanson came to Afterhours and I went and spoke to the manager to see if I could open but she had all ready asked to other artists and threw me on as a third for a short opening slot, which was fine with me. What ended up happening was Matt’s agent said he was bringing his own opener and we were all kicked off the bill but the manager was able to fight to get one opener and she picked me! What further made things crazy was the night of the show Matt’s other opener cancelled so I was the only opener and I played to a packed club and it was until that point in my life, the best night of my life.

Sophomore year continued as such and in April I got another cool show opening for The Pat McGee band and it was packed but there was like 4 openers and I got the shaft overall so it wasn’t much of a highlight but still pretty cool.

Junior year was kind of a pivotal year for better or worse. I did a self-directed project through school in which I recorded and released a new EP, moved to New York to concentrate on songwriting and establishing myself in a different music scene, and really spent time addressing my career goals and book for the following (most specifically a tour for my spring break). It is worth noting, though this is a musical biography, that I was changing much as a person when I moved to NYC and it brought out some bad facets of my personality that affected most importantly my relationship with my long term girlfriend.

Anyhow, what resulted for my career through NYC was mostly good though I did discover that I wouldn’t be able to live there and hack it as a musician and I’m glad that I was able to discover it over four months instead of a year or longer. I recorded during July and August of that year (we’re in 2005 now) an EP, which was called “The Closer EP” with Andy Renault who played guitar in Overture and is currently playing bass with me. He also played bass on the album before he was really a ‘bassist’ and Bret (from Overture) played drums. At this time Matt was nowhere to be found and part of me wished that we could have remedied the issue with the band to get back together. We recorded it at Waltz Audio in Boston where Andy was interning so we were able to get good rates on the recordings rooms. Unfortunately, neither of us had much recording experience so we did the best we could with the material.

I called it “The Closer EP” because it was the closest thing I had done at the time to a recording that I was happy with and which best showcased the sound that I was going for. I’ve been fortunate enough that none of my recordings have been a step back from the previous one. Everything I’ve released has been progressively better and I’m hoping that it will culminate with a full album release sometime soon when I feel like I have the material together.

Anyhow, I recorded “The Closer EP” in July and August. September was spent putting together the artwork with my cousin Dave who lives in New York. We came up with this for the artwork:

I finished that and was working on writing lots of songs in New York and doing my booking for the Spring. I was learning what it would be like to be a full-time musician and I was seeing if I could keep myself self-motivated enough to do it full-time (I’m partially lying. I was working at Starbucks at the time. A miserable experience in Brooklyn but I needed the money.) I was unhappy in New York most of the time even though the city had a particular vibrancy and life that Boston doesn’t have. There were things I liked about New York but I’m happier now going there twice a year for a weekend and having that be it.

I came home at the end of December and was back at school at Northeastern. I opened for Matt Nathanson again at Afterhours in February of 2006, which was a lot of fun. That also opened up a stretch of 10 shows in 14 days that took me to NYC, Maryland, NJ, Providence, CT, and a handful of Massachusetts date. It was my first proper tour and though it was short, it was a lot of fun.

I continued to play for the rest of my junior year and continued to book more college shows, which proved very profitable for me and a great way to get experience. In November of 2006, I began to consider recording a full-length record but was advised by a few people close to me to record an EP and keep recording EPs until I could financially and artistically commit to a full-length. I checked out a few studios and eventually committed to 6 Media Group in Haverhill under the guidance of Dennis Carroll.

5. The Late Greats

It was around this time that I began to put together a band, which featured Andrew Renault on bass, Anthony Funaro on drums and Scott O’Brien on guitar (from Cahill…he was only a part-timer in the band). I had been talking to Andy for a while and he said he was interested in playing again and had been drifting away from guitar towards bass.

Over the course of weekends in January-March of this year I recorded “The Great Escape EP”. Dennis has an incredibly comfortable studio in his house and he is a Pro Tools editing guru. It was the first experience playing with the band and I am happy with the EP and think that it shows further growth with our sound.

In February my second goal in college came true. I performed on the stage of The Paradise Rock Club. My band, The Late Greats (which is named after a Wilco song of the same name) paid homage to our band’s name by dressing up as historical figures. I, as our band’s leader chose to dress as our nation’s former leader Abraham Lincoln:

I’ll backtrack a bit. The reason we played at the ‘Dise is because we were chosen as Northeastern’s band in the Qdoba Rice and Beanpot Battle of the Bands. One band from each of the following schools (Northeastern, BU, Harvard, and BC) was chosen through text message vote to play at the Paradise. We won the text message vote overall but came in third place by crowd vote at the competition, which was fine because it was an awesome night.

The day before, however, I cut the tip of my finger really bad on a refrigerator unit blade at Starbucks. I had to superglue the cut shut and it still came undone and I bled all over my guitar. It was really rockstar and it hurt like hell but I guess it’s a good story.

ALSO, two weeks before the battle I got a call from Will Dailey, a local Boston musician whom I have known since Freshman year to open for HIM at The Paradise Rock Club. That was by far the most flattering thing that has EVER happened to me. That he thought of me to open on a 3-band bill and to play right before him. It is definitely the most encouraging thing ever.

That show, which took place on March 24th, was my favorite show ever. It was packed and we played well and it was awesome. Unfortunately, the night itself is definitely a blur but suffice to say that it rocked and it rocked hard.

So I finished up college having accomplished my two big goals. The plan was to work at Starbucks part-time for health insurance and guaranteed income and to supplement it with music but I had a big falling out at Starbucks around March and quit and am left now with only music. I’ve had to grind but so far I’ve been able to make things work!

During this past summer I recorded my most recent EP with Will Dailey. He acquired some recording equipment and again thought to work with me on a new recording. I have to say that far and away, this is the best piece of work that I have done. It was also the most relaxing recording experience because I let Will control so many of the aspects of its recording.

That brings us to the current state of October 3, 2007. I have a show on the 18th opening up for Stephen Kellogg at The Paradise Rock. Opening up for SK was one of my big goals for this year and it is incredibly validating to be able to have the opportunity.

6. The End…or is it?

So that pretty much brings things up to speed. I think it may have been a tad lengthy but I do this as much for myself as a way to keep a log of my career as for other people to read. I hope others who will read this are able to get something out of it. There is much I have left out but I hope that gets fleshed out on other journal entries. It has been incredibly tough to get this far and I hardly consider myself successful as a musician. I am blessed that at this juncture I get to play music full-time and if it holds up then I am even more blessed. I haven’t talked as much so far about just how hard it has been. How much second guessing and how depressed I used to get over things and how I wanted to quit but I wasn’t able to quit. How I COULD NOT quit. These are recurring things even now and I think they will get mentioned ad nauseam so don’t you worry.

Thanks for reading, those of you who read this. I’m sure there’s much I forgot so we’ll see if I supplement it or not.
I’ve been writing for like three hours so I need to get food.

Bye now.