In the middle of the year 2000, after years of playing together in previous bands, Brian Lane, Jesse Lacey, and Garrett Tierney recruited guitarist, and soon to be friend Vincent Accardi and formed Brand New. After a year or so of “doing their time” and the obligatory, and seemingly endless runs of self booked shows and tours, the Long Island quartet finally recorded and released their first record, Your Favorite Weapon. As it set the course for the next decade of music the four youths were to embark on, the record also established what would become both a longtime musical partnership and friendship with local Producer/Engineer, Mike Sapone, who is sometimes referred to as a fifth member of the band.
As YFW went on to sell its 300,000 copies, the band delved into multiple U.S. tours, both headlining and supporting such bands as The Get Up Kids, Dashboard Confessional, and Finch. It was their friends in Finch who eventually took Brand New overseas to the United Kingdom in 2003 where the band played its first shows on foreign soil. In years to come the band would return many times, loyal to the following they had cultivated, headlining show after sellout show including Brixton Academy and Hammersmith Apollo as well as playing a short arena tour with Incubus. The four NY youths also received coveted festival slots at Reading/Leeds, Glastonbury, and Give It a Name.
In June 2003 Brand New released their beloved and best selling, Deja Entendu, which they recorded in North Carolina with producer Steven Haigler. Besides the familiar US headlining tours the band was now playing, they followed the album with two music videos for the singles “The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows” and “Sic Transit Gloria…,” as well as television appearances on Fuse TV, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and MTV.
“It was on the Warped Tour that summer that we had really started to notice things growing,” said singer Jesse Lacey. “We entered Canada on that tour playing to hundreds of people each show, and then I guess people had started to listen to the record, and then the videos started rotation, and by the time we got back to the US we were playing to thousands every day. It was exciting, and we were grateful to be able to watch something we had created take new shape right in front of our eyes like that.”
Deja Entendu was later certified Gold and is touted by many of the band’s fans as their favorite album from the Long Island foursome.
That was until 2006’s The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me.
Brand New's third album and major label debut, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, was released in November 2006. The work on Devil and God was long and went through several iterations. The band worked on some early tracks with renowned mixer/producer Rich Costey (Mars Volta, Ash) in East Hampton in the dead of winter; found themselves in Mississippi with veteran producer Dennis Herring (Modest Mouse, The Hives), and wound up finishing the recordings with old friend and producer Mike Sapone in the rural mountains of New England. Recruiting Jesse’s cousin, Derrick Sherman, to join them on stage as a touring guitarist, more touring followed as Brand New teamed up with Dashboard Confessional and Thrice on separate North American tours, played Lollapalooza, and hit Australia and Europe with a mix of headline shows and festivals.
In late 2008 the band headed back into the studio to start work on their forthcoming album, Daisy, due for release September 22nd, 2009. This time the project started and finished in Mike Sapone’s basement studio where the band slept, ate, and eventually eked out all the tracks for the record which was then mixed by Dave Sardy (Barkmarket, Cold War Kids, Oasis) in California. The band’s schedule for the Spring/Summer of 2009 includes German festivals, a short UK tour, another Reading/Leeds appearance, and a startling return to the small clubs where it all began.
Brand New are aiming to release a new record by the end of the year, their first album in six years.
July 2009