THE BOYS FROM BHAM

THE BROOK AND THE BLUFF

THE BROOK AND THE BLUFF

THE BOYS FROM BHAM

B Y : S A R A H W A T L I N G T O N & STEPHEN DEFRANCESCO

Before The Brook and The Bluff moved to Nashville in 2018, they found their roots in Mountain Brook and Bluff Park neighborhoods of Birmingham, Alabama. Once they established their roots in Birmingham, however, they found themselves going down very different paths. Fred was going to be a first grade teacher. John was going to be an accountant. Alec was going to be a guitar teacher. Joseph was going to be a music educator.

This is what the Brook and the Bluff could have been. But this is not what they are.

You may have heard of the Birmingham-born, Nashville-based band from your college friends. You may even have heard some of their songs on local radio stations. Maybe you heard about their tour across the United States and their goal to play 44 original shows throughout the South and East coast in 2017. There’s more to The Brook and the Bluff than what you’ve heard, though.

The band’s story starts out in Crestline where bassist Fred Lankford and electric guitarist Alec Bolton were next-door neighbors. When Fred and Alec went to Auburn University, they met lead singer Joseph Settine. Joseph was studying music education, but he quickly realized teaching wasn’t for him.

While John was about to accept accounting position, he saw Alec and Joseph at a gig and began to play music with them. A couple gigs on the weekends turned to more gigs during the weekdays which turned into the thought that maybe the trio could make a living off of music.

Alec, Joseph, and John decided to start The Brook and the Bluff, move back to Birmingham after college, and see what happened. Also realizing that teaching wasn’t for him, Fred decided to get more involved with music and eventually joined The Brook and the Bluff as the band’s bassist. schedules; however, they want people to not take them too seriously even though they are gaining popularity. You can listen to The Brook and the Bluff newest album “First Place” on all streaming services and maybe even see them play live in a city near you by checking out their tour dates at brookandthebluff.com/tour.

During their time in Birmingham, the band saw great success. Releasing multiple EP’s and a full-length album, the harmony-centric group started touring more outside of the state. With a growing fan base and a rapidly-growing hunger for music, the band decided to move to Nashville, Tennessee in February 2018 where the music scene seemed to hold more opportunities.

Photos courtesy of Paradigm Agency.

While the first couple of months in Nashville involved lots of Uber drives and Shipt jobs, the band focused on planning a tour while they weren’t playing gigs. Assembling an allstar team proved to pay off in the end as the band found their producer, Micah Tawlks. Being in the recording community in Nashville versus Birmingham helped the band reach higher musical standards because of the more intense music scene in their new city.

With the help of Tawlks and their musical community in Nashville, the band released a full studio album, “First Place,” in October 2019.

“I’d say your sound is just naturally a combination of all the things that you love to listen to...especially for me I’d say for this album it would be Frank Ocean’s “Blonde”, Kacey Musgraves’ “Golden Hour” and John Mayer’s “Continuum”, lead singer Joseph said. “Those are probably the three biggest albums that are landmark points in my life, so I think that those three are what guided this album.”

When asked where they see themselves in the future, drummer John Canada said, “There aren’t limits to our aspirations, but I think for us being on the inside of it, everything for us is day to day. For us to actually make it we kind of have to put blinders on and just put our heads down and be day to day. Only focusing on making the best songs that we can make. And no matter how big we get, we’re still gonna be doing the same stuff. We’ll still be touring and recording, but we’ll have more people listening...it’ll always be us.”

Touring throughout the Spring and playing various music festivals in the fall will take up most of the band member’s