BAMBARA is a gothic post-punk band originating in Athens, GA. Comprised of twin brothers Reid and Blaze Bateh and schoolmate William Brookshire, the band was formed in 2009 and has been releasing records since 2013. Utilizing a heavily narrative songwriting style, the band tells intricate stories about people and places around central themes like death, as most portrayed on their most recent record Stray (2020).
Megan: So, for the people, who are you guys, what do you make…?
Blaze: I’m Blaze. I do drums for BAMBARA, make beats.
Reid: I’m Reid, I sing and play guitar for BAMBARA.
M: Alright, awesome. So one immediate question I had was who do you find takes the most
creative control when you’re starting a new project?
R: I feel like it’s almost on a song by song basis for that.
B: Yeah, I agree with that.
R: Certain people become more involved in and take a leadership role in certain songs, but
overall I think it’s pretty democratic.
B: I think whoever plants the seed that sort of starts the song is whoever we defer to in the
beginning, at least.
M: Do you have any songs that you consider your baby? Like you made the basis for it and let it
grow and now you’re like “that’s mine”?
R: That’s a good question! I don’t know, we all get so involved in each other’s songs that I don’t
know if I ever keep that feeling throughout just with how it all works. It’s hard to say, I don’t have
any specific “my baby” song but I do have ones I like more or I tend to find myself listening to
more if I were to listen to old stuff. Do you have any, Blaze?
B: I don’t know, there have definitely been ones that I’ve been excited about that have come out
of something I made, like Stay Cruel or something, but like you were saying we tend to jump in
on stuff together so it becomes a collective baby.
M: Kinda like an ‘it takes a village’ type thing.
R: Totally!
M: Alright, so I had also kinda read that Reid, you tend to get ideas from things you’ve found at
thrift stores, especially for Stray with things like the name for the dog Lobo. Has there been
anything like that on your recent project or is it mostly from your life or imagination?
R: Yeah! So what I did with Stray is I had a wall of just photographs I bought from a thrift store
right in front of my desk while i was working just so when I was zoning out i wasn’t purely zoning out, more zoning into someone’s story. So with this one I kinda had a thing where during lock-down I had this feeling of being disconnected from the city, I mean it felt like it wasn’t even there since it was all locked up. It was just this feeling of being locked away from all the chaotic, wild energy that made me search for it in other things. I’ve always been interested in photography even though I’m not very good at it because I tend to write and think in images, so I was looking at a lot of pictures from Nan Goldin’s collection The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. She has a lot of pictures of New York that are snapshots that sort of capture the energy of the city, so I used those a lot as inspiration. That along with things from my life and other people’s lives who I’ve encountered, but it was a big inspiration for me. It kinda took the place of that wall of photos for this record.
M: Do you guys feel like New York is sort of your chosen home as opposed to anywhere in your
home state of Georgia?
R: It’s hard to imagine living anywhere else at this moment. We’ve lived here almost 11 years
now. I don’t know if I’d ever choose to live in Atlanta.
B: We’ve been here what feels like forever but it still doesn’t feel quite like home necessarily.
M: Do you think you’re still finding new things about it that thrill you?
B: yeah, there’s just so much, it’s so big. It’s constantly changing. I prefer it, I love living here,
but I do get more of the feeling of home in Georgia. Maybe that’ll always be the case.
M: I grew up near LA and it was this monolith for me, I never quite knew what I was looking at or
experiencing. I felt like if I ever dipped my toe in I would have to learn to swim all over again just
to know where I am. Just a completely different language and way of life there.
B: Mmhm, exactly. New York does everything possible to spit you out, too. I think we’ve made a
lot of artistic choices I’m proud of as we’ve been forced to swim upstream.
M: So I wanted to talk a little more about Love on My Mind. Of the first two tracks we’ve heard,
one has sort of a bombastic rock sound on Mythic Love but Birds has that sort of Gothic, moody
sound we’re more used to from tracks like Miracle or Sweat. Does this variety foreshadow what
we’re gonna be hearing on the new EP and future projects, or are you just going with the flow?
R: Yeah, I think in a way it does foreshadow the EP. Since it’s only 6 songs I feel like each sort
of carries the weight for one type of song that we do. So each song feels pretty different, but in a
way it’s just a microcosm of the different environments you experience on Stray, just with more
clarity, more focus.
M: When you were making it, would you say you were reflecting on the experience of making
Stray?
B: Yeah, in a lot of ways any record that follows another will be bouncing off the ideas and
experiences from what you just did. Things you wanted to expound upon or revisit, and I think
this EP there’s some newer territory we’ve never really gone into that hasn’t been on these
singles. Just things revisiting – like Drew Citron, who sang a lot on Stray, she sings on the last
song on the EP. You can feel there are little bits of shrapnel from Stray in there. It’s a sonic
pileup with some new production on that side of things.
R: Like you said there are definitely some new areas we’ve never explored before which is
exciting, but it’s funny because things like that always seem very big and obvious to us, but I’m
interested to see how people feel about it once it comes out, if they feel like it’s Bambara but just
slightly different.
M: I know when I first heard Mythic Love I was like “this is a new angle!” but it definitely still felt
like you guys, fell completely in line, so I’m excited to hear the rest of it.
B: It’s funny because I guess for me being in the action, Mythic Love sounded more familiar for
Bambara than Birds, but i think people are hearing it the other way around. Being the one
creating things you just hear it completely differently.
R: Yeah, when you’re that close it’s hard to see it from a wider angle.
M: On that note of having a different insight than maybe what the fans have, are there any
songs you’ve made that you feel are under appreciated?
R: I mean yeah there’s a few over time. One of my favorites is Steel Dust Ocean off Shadow on
Everything.
B: Yeah, that’s a good one.
R: And then there’s one way back that I really like that I feel like we didn’t give people enough of
a chance to like since it’s so short, but it’s the last song off Dreamviolence called Disappear. I’ve
always liked that one a lot. There are always gonna be some that are looked over though, it’s
just the nature of the beast. Do you have any, Blaze?
B: Steel Dust Ocean is definitely one I feel is under-appreciated. On Stray I’d say maybe
Sweat?
M: I fully agree! I love that track so much.
R: That’s good to hear! That’s definitely one of my favorites off the record and I think it got
overlooked. And Ben and Lily!
M: Whenever I show people Stray there’s such a variety of favorite tracks that comes out of it. I
think the storytelling style on it is so interesting too, the narrative line as opposed to the direct
chronology of Shadow on Everything, it’s just so fun to find where everything fits together.
B: It’s good to hear people are taking the time to do that, it’s all so interwoven.
M: Speaking of the songwriting style, I recently read A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery
O’Connor and I was wondering about what led you to be so intrigued by her character studies
and the aspect of ‘meanness’ to incorporate it so heavily into Stray.
R: I think the first time I realized I was interested in literature or writing of any kind was when I
read that story in high school. We had a Southern Gothic literature section, I guess since we’re
from Georgia, and Flannery O’Connor was from there as well. Something about it just resonated
with me, something about the way she writes these characters just feels so real and so vivid, it’s
horrific but calm and beautiful all at the same time and I think that drew me to it. The use of the
word meanness is something that I’ve always been drawn to as well. It can be used for really
awful things but it sounds so weak and small, almost. It’s the way Southern people speak, trying
not to make a big deal out of anything. It always stuck with me, especially from that story.
M: I kinda noticed that across the album there were these glimpses of hope around it. Most of
the characters are doomed, I mean Death is a character for a reason, but in songs like Serafina
when Sera and Sadie are in love and are able to experience that, declaring that they’ll never die
even though they know it’s coming eventually. Do you think that that might be influenced by
O’Connor’s concept of Radical Grace, that idea that something good can come out of a situation
that isn’t necessarily good?
R: It’s so funny you bring that up since no one’s really tapped into that before, but i think about
that a lot, her concept of grace. It’s always in the back of my mind so I can’t say if it influenced it
directly, but that is something I think about a lot especially when im writing these usually very
hopeless scenarios or pessimistic stories with characters that are doomed, that idea kicks
around in the back of my head a lot. Sometimes it doesn’t make it out because it almost doesn’t
feel like grace is a possibility in that world. But yeah [in Serafina], I needed someone to not feel
smothered by the concept of death in that world, to be sort of a ray of hope or someone to
whom death wasn’t this sort of suffocating blanket over them. It’s just an inevitability they’ll have
to face eventually.
M: So for both of you, are there any tracks off this new EP that you’re especially excited for
people to hear or any you’re particularly passionate about?
B: The first track Glitter in the Rain I’m really proud of, it’s one of those in new territory and I
really like the mood and atmosphere it creates.
R: Yeah, I’m also excited about that one.
M: I was curious if there were any like the Night Chimes EP, something more dark and ambient
or if it’s more going for the directness we’ve been hearing so far.
B: There’s definitely some ambient leaning moments on this one. That’s funny you bring up
night chimes, we were doing an interview with someone in Poland and they brought it up too.
R: There aren’t any straight up ambient tracks like on Night Chimes, just because it’s only 6
tracks and we wanted to keep it pretty tight. One song I’m really excited for off the EP is Little
Wars, different territory for us as well. Tt’s got those female backing vocals and some of the
orchestrated vibe like some of the stuff off Stray but it’s a little more minimal and the
instrumentation and texture choices are very interesting. I’m also really happy with the lyrics on
that one.
M: I’m excited to hear them all! I’m very much looking forward to it. So what influenced you guys
to go for an EP this time rather than going for another LP?
B: All of 2020 was supposed to be touring for us, so once everything got canceled I don’t think
we were mentally ready to approach a full album again.
R: It felt like Stray didn’t really get its chance, since once it came out COVID hit and we couldn’t
give it a fair shot at being out in the world, like touring with it and all that. So it was hard to just
let that go and move on to a new album. We wrote an EP to try and respond to the fact that
everything had been cut short, so we wrote one to convince ourselves everything was fine. We
got pretty much done with it, mixed and everything, until we realized we really didn’t like it. So
we scrapped it and some of those things stayed, others didn’t, we wrote some more songs and
that’s how this EP came to be. We kinda had to get rid of a lot of weird leftover feelings from the
pandemic stuff, clear our heads.
M: I’m sure a lot of the fanbase will find that empathetic. I wonder if that scrapped EP will ever
make it onto any B-sides and rarities collection anytime.
R: Not if I have anything to do with it. Laughs
M: I feel that, sometimes I get to the end of an art piece and I just think “no one will ever see this
and I’m glad.”
B: It’s important to be able to scrap something. I think a lot of people think they put so much time
into something then they have to put it out.
M: It’s very freeing to be able to put that much into something and then just let it go.
B: There were days working on the older version of the EP where we’d go into the studio and
we just felt so cumbersome, we weren’t really stoked on anything. It just felt like this lead
blanket.
M: So I know you guys have been trying to get back into the touring space now that things are a
little more open, I believe you’ve been doing things with Midwife?
B: Oh yeah, so Midwife was on tour with us and Nothing in December and that was just sort of a
10-day run of the United States, and even then we had to schedule the last 2 days once
omicron hit and we just redid those dates. So now we have March, which is supposed to be all
of mainland Europe. Each country handles it differently, Germany and Italy are both kind of in
question.
M: When you’re able to fully get back out in the world do you think it’ll be a Love on My Mind
tour or more of a joint one between Stray and the EP?
B: Definitely joint.
R: Yeah it’ll be a combo for sure.
B: There are some songs from the EP we’re not going to play, so that alone makes us need
both. There are also so many Stray songs people have never heard us play live.
M: How do you guys plan out what’s gonna be on the setlists for your show? Is it mostly crowd
reception or personal desire to play something?
B: A little of both, but if you’re going out every night and playing a song and it’s just not getting
any reception at all it’s hard to get excited about it.
R: Sweat was kinda like that. We kept playing it and it kept getting this sort of lukewarm
response.
M: Aw!
R: I know, it’s sad!
B: We kinda had to take it back into the workshop.
R: Definitely, they’re never dead, you just gotta tweak ‘em, but it’s been retired for a bit.
B: That’s the thing, a song is never really set in stone until you record it. It stays this malleable
thing and that keeps it fun for us.
R: We finally got Machete working, which is one we’ve been trying to get working forever and
we got it just in time for this tour. It was gratifying to be able to play that one live since we all
wanted it so bad.
M: Was that one challenging to write lyrically since it’s sorta a standalone story?
R: It took a while for sure. Sometimes the shorter ones are even harder since you don’t have as
much space to work with the ideas.
M: I was curious which of the tours you guys have been on has been your favorite since you’ve
been a part of a lot of them, either your own or with other people.
B: The IDLES tour we did in the US was pretty amazing just ‘cause they were fairly unknown when we started that tour, so they all happened in these packed rooms, small venues they don’t play anymore, and it was just a really cool month. We’re supposed to play 10 more shows with them in March, so hopefully that happens.
R: Yeah, that one was really fun. Each tour has its own thing that makes it unique and
awesome.
B: Every band we’ve gone out with has been really cool, we’ve all remained friends long after.
M: Of all your peers in the punk and post-punk space, which ones do you find yourselves most
inspired by?
B: Honestly I don’t listen to too many bands like that. We see our peers live and honestly the
energy of the show is most inspiring.
R: My inspiration doesn’t really come from my peers, I don’t think. There are bands I like, but I
don’t find myself inspired by them. One that does come to mind is Sloppy Jane, she’s really
great. Her approach is very passionate and she has a very singular vision, she knows what she
wants and she finds a way to make it happen. That new record I like a lot. Dougie Poole might
be another one, there are label mates on Wharf Cat that I like a lot like him and Palberta, P.E. is
really great, there are a lot of really good ones but it’s hard to think of since I haven’t been going
to many shows lately.
M: That’s interesting, it seems like the inspiration is very internal within the band then. I mean
you’re just coming up with things off the dome and banging it out, and next thing you know you
have a song?
R: Laughs I mean yeah, we’ve been playing together since we were little kids so at this point
we’ve kind of found that we draw from what’s established between us.
M: Really solid band chemistry.
R: Yeah, so we just kinda pull from our pool of influences that have been cemented between us.
B: And it’s not to say we’re not inspired by music, it’s just more moments in songs than anything
else.
R: Yeah! Less like a band and their vibe and more just moments, that’s a good way to put it.
M: Alright, well I think that’s pretty much all I had on my mind. Thank you guys so much for
talking!
R: Yeah, thanks for having us!
M: Anytime.
BAMBARA’s EP “Love on my Mind” is out February 25th on Wharf Cat Records and the two
lead singles, “Mythic Love” and “Birds,” are out now on all platforms.
A huge thank you to Reid and Blaze for such a wonderful interview!
