A Quick Burr-ographgy
By Chazz Rodgers
Hollis-Brookline (HB or HBHS) High School doesn’t really distinguish itself well from most New Hampshire High Schools. The income is high, the ethnicity is pale, and the only time the news might mention us is for school cancellations on treacherous, icy days. We even had the token talent show where student bands often played their one and only show each year. It may certainly be said that HB’s show stood out as being non-competitive and exclusively for music, as it was named “Guitar Night.”
Photo contributed by Cam Johnson photo
It’s funny, while we were waiting for our gig in Keene, Mitch Bailey, our trombonist and newest member as of this year, mentioned to me the ubiquity of white kids forming funk bands in high school. After a moment, I thought to retort, “Yeah man, that’s like EXACTLY what Burr was when we started.” We formed in 2014 with the intent to cover the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song “Don’t Forget Me” off of their By The Way album, as well as “Hey Ya” by Outkast. At the time, we were a cliquey elitist bunch, who thought we were the best players around the school, and we decided to name our band “θ θ” and insist it be pronounces as a strange and distinct grunt that we were making at that time.
So yeah, we were pretty fun people.
Following guitar night, we decided we didn’t want our group to go the ephemeral way of the prototypical HBHS Guitar Night ensemble, and set out to create an EP by the end of the summer. Throughout the summer, we all wrote various riffs, lyrics, and melodies that would become The Warming of the Days. The 27-minute ditty was recorded in a Manchester mill at a pretty under whelming studio-space, that led us to take our project later that year to a studio in Milford, NH, and spend lots sessions doing something none of us had really done to that point: Record a studio album.
It’s rough to listen back to it for all of us now, but The Warming of the Days was a formative project, wherein we demonstrated our affection for funk rock, but ultimately cut some more clean-sounding indie tunes that have more and more come to define our sound even three years later as we begin cutting new tracks, which will be released in the coming months (We promise!).
These days, we attend college or pursue such other professional music endeavors as teachers, free-lancers, and in one case, a salesperson. We are spread out across New England, but still hold what we do with Burr very near and dear to our hearts. Our creative process is slow, as these circumstances lend themselves to being, but we are always growing as musicians and people. Whenever we get the chance, we perform live, and it is always the greatest pleasure to get a crowd moving or feeling emotional, what have you. Keep your eye out for more shows to come-it’s our favorite part of the job.
Members:
Ben Cooper – Vocals/Keyboards
Andrew Carr – Guitar
Mitchel Bailey – Trombone
Chazz Rogers – Bass
Zach Nardone – Drums
Location: Southern NH
Genre:
Indie, Alternative, Cool, Nice, Good, Sad sometimes
Upcoming Events / News:
As of now we have one scheduled show way off in December at Union Coffee on New Years Eve, but will be gigging when we can make it happen in the November as well. We have two songs that we having been fine-tuning for a while now that are going to be out very soon, and are working on at least two more with our friends down at Umass [University of Massachusetts] Lowell’s SRT program.
Where to find us online:
Bandcamp – https://burrtheband.bandcamp.com/
Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/burrmusic/?fref=mentions
Instagram page – https://www.instagram.com/burr.band/
