Getting Quichey with Brett Rosenberg

His own website likens Quichenight to 'lo-fi, high-brow easy-listening music for nerds'. Personally I've found it takes me back to the formative years of my childhood- the days of hearing Todd Rundgren's 'hello it's me' coming from my dad's orange Datsun pick up. The days of hearing the theme to 'Welcome Back Kotter' reruns emitting from the t.v. droning on in the background. Popping a Quichenight cassette into your walkman and taking it in, weird things come to mind... perhaps visions of sitting on a Malibu beach circa 1980 and all of a sudden Jack Tripper goes running by, or maybe you're in a vintage kitchen watching one of those clocks with the cat whose tail and eyes that move from side to side. Or maybe you're transported to a different time and space altogether. Who knows. Regardless, I've admired this guys work in PUJOL so much, I thought some of you other Pujol-Pals out there might enjoy learning a bit more about the man behind the guitar- Mr. Brett Rosenberg.

Brett Rosenberg of PUJOL and Quichenight

Hey Brett! Thanks so much for agreeing to this Q&A~

Please give us a brief introduction to yourself… Background? Bands you play in? When did you start playing music?

I took organ lessons in 1st grade, but was such a bad sight-reader that my parents and I concluded I wasn't cut out for it. I kept fooling around with it, though. In 3rd grade, I improvised a 90-minute electric chord organ and vocal record into a tape recorder. I still have the tape. It sounds very eastern. Side 2 is comedy. Eventually I became a teenager and of course played guitar and pretended to like heavy metal and learned the history of punk rock, liked some 90s indie rock, started real bands that played shows, etc. Via my friends/heroes The Figgs, I played guitar for Graham Parker on a couple of tours. In 2007, I moved to Nashville for some reason and immediately took 5000 craigslist music gigs and sort of existed in that perpetual local-shows-with a-bunch-of-total-strangers universe. It warped me. It was mostly posi. Now I play in PUJOL with Daniel and funnel my own creative output into Quichenight recordings.

PUJOL at The Larimer Lounge, Denver, June 2014

Many folks reading this will be familiar with you from PUJOL… How did you hook up Daniel?

I was living in Battle Tapes, the recording studio where Daniel recorded Nasty, Brutish, and Short and United States of Being. I remember him finishing Angel Baby there, too. Standing in the kitchen, I could hear "SPREAD YOUR WAAAANGS." Very esoteric, catchy, raw, goofy, earnest, distinctly Middle Tennessee rock music. I gave him a Quichenight tape, something I'd started recording in the basement recreationally while people were out of town. He listened to it a lot on tour, and eventually asked me to play guitar.

You guys have been all over the country in the past year or so. What are some of your favorite touring memories to date?

My favorite things about travelling are the places in between places. I like the desert. The Grand Canyon is obviously mind-blowing, but so is the view from a Wal-Mart in Montana. I like hotel showers and deserted lobbies at 4am. Nothing sticks out. It was one big highlight for me. Actually, I really like Deadwood, SD and its depressing, creepy casinos that may have been hospitals at some point. 

Click photo above to view Quichenight's 'Fjord Tortoise' performance from Music City Shakedown

Your (primarily) solo effort, Quichenight, has been active and playing around Nashville for a few years now. How did that project come about? What’s behind the name?

Quichenight travels through time because time is imaginary and Quichenight has an imagination, as do we all. So maybe we're in the '60s some nights, but we're still us and we still remember. Some bands do a great job of time travelling but a bad job of remembering how they got there or what they were thinking. I mention those bands because I feel like the tastes and process are at times identical. Anyway, we just go back to get the music. We live and write and assemble here, at home.

Quichenight is full of things from other locations, but it stays home. Quichenight admits staying home is a choice, which is why Quichenight feels so good when you stay home. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quichenotte

With four Quichenight album releases under your belt- all available via limited edition cassette- what was your primary decision behind selecting that medium?

It's cheap, but not totally arbitrary beyond that. We recorded all those albums on 4-track cassette. I listen to tapes. Some of my best times listening to music were listening to a tape. The hardest part is keeping the players working, but there are always more to buy. Trick is to keep 3 or 4 around at all times so if one breaks, you're not stuck with just mp3s, CDs, and vinyl. It's certainly choosing your audience, not the other way around. That said, I'm doing vinyl soon because it is a more proper, reliable, permanent format. A couple people have approached me, but it would be 2017 at the latest. I've been making tapes since I was 4. It's how I think about recorded music.

You’ve recently announced an upcoming release from your southern soul R&B alter ego/ protégé Earl ‘Prince’ King- what can you share with us about that?

Well, let's put it this way: I released that track on a holiday...an old jewish holiday we sometimes celebrate, called April Fools.

What is your preferred equipment set up?

I'll play anything, even the new Marshall JCM 50000 with 50,000 knobs and the Snapple Bluetooth attenuator. 

Official Five ‘Gotta Know’ Questions?

1) First vinyl memory?

Wings, London Town, watching my mom "fix a skip" at the beginning of "Cuff Link." 1984. You can do this at home by applying downward pressure to the needle, pushing it horizontally in the opposite direction the scratch is taking it.

2) What is an album you regularly spin for your own enjoyment?

Gato Barbieri, Chapter One: Latin America

3) What was the last album you added to your collection?

Rupert Holmes, Partners in Crime

4) What was your favorite album or new artist from last year?

I don't listen to enough new music to answer that question adequately and also time isn't real.

5) What artists are you looking forward to hearing more of this coming year?

see above

Again, thanks so much to Brett for participating in this Q&A! Be sure to check out PUJOL's new single 'June Bug', which will be available on a #RSD split with Meth Dad. If you live or will be in Nashville this Saturday April 18th- the holiest of days,  Record Store Day- be sure to catch the boys performing live at Third Man Records during the day or their gig on Queen Avenue that evening. 

... Then be sure to tell me all about it because I'm super sad panda that I'll be missing it.