Introducing Floating Collective
This article originally appeared in the December 15, 2020 Pirates & Poets Newsletter. CLICK HERE to subscribe to it.
On October 23 Mailboat Records released "On The Run," the debut single from Floating Collective. Floating Collective is a new Laurel Canyon inspired act that includes our friend Brendan Mayer. We caught up with Brendan a few weeks later to discuss the project. The following is a lightly edited portion of the interview. CLICK HERE to listen to the entire conversation.
Jon Burns
All right folks I'm on the Zoom call with Brendan Mayer, a longtime friend of Pirates & Poets. We wanted to take a few minutes to catch up with him and his new project that he is collaborating on. The project is called Floating Collective and Brendan, tell us about it. How did, how did it come about?
Brendan Mayer
What's up JB man. Good to be with you again, Floating Collective. This is kind of one of those projects that could only come out of a year like 2020. It's me and my good friends Mick Utley and Erin McAnally, his wife, and the respective son and daughter of Mike Utley and Mac McAnally.
Mick was kind of the one to first put the idea together, but my understanding of how it happened was that Jimmy had mentioned to Mike or Mac, like, "Hey, it would be pretty cool, you know, we've got all these musicians in the Coral Reefer family, and the next generation, would they be interested, in putting together a record of some kind?"
Like, I don't know what you'd call it, but it's this idea based on second generation Reefers making music together.
And Mick is a fantastic piano player and singer and songwriter and producer. So he was kind of tasked with helming this thing. So the year went on and all the craziness happened with the pandemic. And what started out as a full record, kind of got scaled back. And we thought that whole project was probably going to get scrapped.
Mick, Erin and I were kind of the core musicians behind this whole thing. So we got together and said, “Hey you know what, let's just get together and write a couple songs and we'll send them around to Jimmy and other folks in that world. And if they like them then we'll do something small at least.”
So we got together and wrote a couple of things and it kind of just snowballed from there, as they tend to do. And we all kind of, it feels like a truly collaborative thing where we all kind of put ourselves into it. It feels like a really good mixture of our three different personalities and sent it off to Jimmy. And he, thankfully he liked it and they gave us the green light to go ahead and put it out. And now I guess I'm in a new band!
Jon Burns
So the song is called “On The Run." Was that a co-write between all three of you?
Brendan Mayer
Yeah. The three ways. I mean, it was crazy like how even that was, because most co-writes, there's usually one person who kind of like either brought the idea. Clearly they kind of like take over a little bit and it's a co-write, but it's clearly their song that they helmed from the beginning. But with this, it was crazy. Like I had the initial chord progression. Erin had the lyric idea, Mick kind of contributed equally on both sides and it managed to fall into place.
Jon Burns
Well cool. The first time I heard it, you're the vocal on it, or the lead vocal. So my first thought was, “This is the happiest, bounciest, Brendan Mayer song I've ever heard.”
Brendan Mayer
All it took was forcing me to play with other people, I guess, to get some joy out of me.
Jon Burns
That was literally in my head.
Brendan Mayer
Well, then I'm glad to hear it because I've been telling myself, you know, one of these days I should probably write something that people can actually feel good listening to. Or along to a little bit. So I'm glad we finally came up with something.
Jon Burns
Yeah. I mean, it's a great song, great track, great production, but it's pretty basic in production as well. There's not a lot of crazy stuff going on in the background.
Brendan Mayer
Yeah. I mean, my usual M.O. is to kind of throw as much as I can at the wall and see what sticks and this was intentionally not that. And I really got to give credit to Mick and Erin for kind of insisting that it be a certain way.
You know, we went into this project saying to ourselves that we really want to have a focused idea of what this band is. You know, we didn't, we wanted it to be clear like, “Hey, this is the sound we do. And if you listen to a floating collective song, you have a general idea of what you're going to get.”
So we were really inspired by a lot of the California, Laurel Canyon, Folk Rock from back in the day. And you've got Mick and Erin singing three part harmony with me on it. We wanted to do something kind of in the vein of the Eagles, Jackson Brown and Joni Mitchell. And then kind of mix it with some more modern Nashville Americana as well.
Jon Burns
Well I think you got it. Who else is on the track?
Brendan Mayer
Thank you. Well, it's just the three of us. And then, uh, the only guests we got on it is Mr. Eric Darken of the Coral Reefer Band. He was the only guy we knew who could give us what we wanted in terms of a rootsy, kind of stripped down kit, percussion sound.
Jon Burns
Is he on an actual drum kit or is it more of what we think of him as playing?
Brendan Mayer
I actually couldn't tell you because Eric is one of those guys, you send him a track and he goes into his secret laboratory and he sends you something back and you don't always know how he got the sounds, but they're generally, almost always amazing.
Jon Burns
I mean, I would have guessed that it's a traditional drum kit, but now that you said it's him, he plays very similar to Melanie, I guess in some ways he does.
Brendan Mayer
Yeah he does.
Jon Burns
A Cajon? So who knows? That's interesting.
Brendan Mayer
I'm guessing it's probably some sort of hybrid kit where he's got a real snare in there, but maybe a kick that he overdubbed, along with the Cajon. And he's got some shakers and stuff. So he's a Maestro when it comes to that stuff.
Jon Burns
Oh cool. Like I said it’s a great track.
Brendan Mayer
Thank you.
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