Interview with Silver Machine at The Brittin Banger
Rob and Mike Bara of Silver Machine
Hi, I’m Natalie. Nice to meet you guys.
[Rob] I’m Rob. This is my brother Mike Bara.
This is my first time seeing you guys, and I really love the energy that you guys bring on stage, even though it’s just the two of you. So, I just wanted to know, how you would describe your sound?
[Rob] Um, I don’t know. I mean the whole band kind of started, to be honest, because I just hit him up one day. I mean he’s my brother, and you know, we’ve played music for years but never played together. And I said, “Hey. You love AC/DC. What if we started a band like AC/DC?” And that lasted like 5 seconds as you can see. I mean the two of us are into a lot of like space-rock, so I think it’s a lot of like mesh of like, that. And also, both of us are fucking nerds and we love The Twilight Zone and horror movies.
I can tell. It’s very cool. It’s very interesting.
[Rob] We take a lot of inspiration from that. So, I would say we try to be some kind of space-rock band, but it kind of drifts around.
[Mike] We mix some punk, some alternative, a little bit of shoegaze, you know.
Poster made by @milkyfuel
Nice! What is your favorite part about playing a show like this – a local show where it’s just a bunch of people in someone’s backyard?
[Rob] Personally, I love playing Brendan’s house. It’s always a great time. I played here with my other band, Gorf, like a few months ago, and we actually recorded a live album here.
Oh nice!
[Rob] Yeah, I just love the atmosphere. Especially for something like what we put on, and I feel like in general the way I perform, I try to give people a show rather than just like two dudes.
Definitely.
[Rob] So it’s definitely cooler than like, a sort of more intimate setting. We get to know the audience more. Especially when they’re really dancing with us. You know, it’s hit or miss, but we just have a great time.
You guys have the best energy ever performing.
[Rob] Do you have any comments on that?
[Mike] This is like our third gig and our second backyard show and so far, both of them have been pretty cool. Yeah. All the shows we’ve played have been pretty fun, but this is my first time being here so it’s totally new to me.
Going off that, how do you guys prepare for a gig?
[Mike] Band practice in Robert’s basement.
[Rob] With my shitty electric drums, yeah. Mike still lives at my parents’ house, so that’s up in the Poconos and I live in South Philly. We kind of have a long-distance band relationship thing.
Nice.
[Rob] It’s kind of interesting. You know, so it’s a lot of just like, “Oh! What weekend you coming up on the month.” It’s like, “Oh, let me figure it out,” you know? A lot of last-minute kind of shit.
I know you just released a self-titled EP back in June, correct?
[Rob] Yep.
How was the process of making that together?
[Mike] Well that was kind of like the start of this band really because we wrote a bunch of songs and then recorded them really quickly. It was just a matter of practicing them and recording it, and then I mixed everything. So, like mixing and mastering and editing and all that kind of stuff. By the time we released it, it was almost time for like that first show we played, so it was like, “Okay. Get it out before the show,” that way people can listen to it and stuff. Since then, we’ve been working on new stuff, and we were just talking today about figuring out when we’re going to start recording. Some of the songs we played tonight we haven’t recorded yet. We’re still kind of finishing up some other ones, but hopefully we’ll start recording again soon and release that next year.
[Rob] I would also comment, it’s very easy since it’s just the two of us. I literally would just come up, we’d throw up some mics in my parents’ basement, and it just fucking happens, you know? We just kind of knock a bunch of stuff out in one day and then, you know, it gets done. ]
[Mike] Yeah. As far as like writing songs, I actually play guitar and stuff as well, so –
[Rob] Yeah, I would say he’s written more of the riffs than I have.
Okay, okay, nice!
[Mike] Yeah, we’ll both come up with something on guitar, and then I figure out drums to it, and then we kind of like collaborate on lyrics. Some songs Rob writes all the lyrics. One or two songs I’ve written lyrics, and he changes some lines. Some are like 50/50. It fully depends on the song and what we’re going for.
[Rob] Yup.
Okay, nice! Well, that’s everything I had, so thank you guys for –
[Rob] Thank you for interviewing us. I feel so famous right here. We are in the Brittin Banger, being interviewed!
Exactly, exactly! Yeah well, thank you guys!
[Rob] All right. Thank you!
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