As the battle for 2011 hots up, Nick Brown, frontman with buzz band Mona, talks up a good fight and lays out his ambition to put the punch back into rock
AS POP'S NEW intake elbow one another for position at the start of the year, there's already one act throwing the kind of shapes we haven't seen in years. Hailing from Nashville, Mona already swagger and sound like a band on a mission. They've shown that they have the chops to write barnstorming anthems with big guitars, passionate vocals and lots of soulful, raw power (check the blistering Listen to Your Lovesingle). Their live shows to date have been full-blooded, spine-tingling gatherings for the faithful who've found a new band to believe in. In Nick Brown, they have a lead singer who very definitely leads from the front.
When you read some of Brown’s quotes in print, you may think you’re dealing with the biggest pop ego on either side of the Atlantic. Mona have done relatively little of note to date, so Brown has little reason to be as outspoken as he often is. But it’s a long time since a band has come along with so much passionate, articulate conviction from the get-go. And, as we all know, the media are suckers for gobby, outspoken lead singers.
“I’m the frontman for this thing and I have to be the asshole,” Brown says, as the Mona roadshow leaves Glasgow and heads for Manchester. “People these days don’t want to be seen as the one who stands out of line. I don’t give a f**k. I’m all for swimming against the tide.
“When people hear you talking about ambition and standards, they call you arrogant. I’m not going to apologise for that or for speaking my mind. We need people in politics and music and entertainment who say what they mean and not do the fake smile and handshake thing because they don’t want to piss people off. Honestly, man, if you have the goods, you have the goods and you don’t have to play someone else’s game.”
It was while attending Pentecostal church with his family as a kid growing up in Ohio that Brown first got hooked on music. “Back then, music wasn’t about rock’n’roll or pop – it was a church thing.” When his parents would drive him to school, he’d sing along to Otis Redding and Frankie Valli tapes in the car. It was pure, it was simple and it was fun. “I thought music was something which brought people together. I certainly didn’t know there was an industry involved.”
It’s a much different story now. “We want to be a human band for humans, but people in the industry have forgotten about that. The talk is all about sales and marketing and demographics and data capture and that’s just bullshit to me. All that bullshit never enters your mind when you come to write a song and it probably isn’t in your head either when you listen to a song.
“But we’ve been programmed by the business to think that. I know people have to make a living, but art is alive and well and human. It’s full of emotions and other humans can relate to that. That’s what we sing about and reference. We’re not thinking about sales for the quarter.”
When Brown met up with the other Mona members in Nashville for their first rehearsal, sales projections were not on the agenda. “We talked about life and our favourite albums and everything else we were about. I think a good artist is a sponge and you soak up everything you hear and experience. Once you squeeze it, all those things come out. You can hear that in the music, man. You can hear when I was dipped in hate and dipped in heartache and dipped in hope. Those emotions come out in the music.”
Brown sees Mona in much the same way as he once saw going to church. “I didn’t come from a place where religion was shoved down my throat. The church was family to me. When religion is done right, it’s family. It’s the same with music. I never used to look at things as categories, but when I got older and less naive, I realised things were divided and divisive and competitive and more like a machine.”
It sounds as if Brown has already had a few run-ins with the music industry’s machine. “There were a lot of things along the way which could have damaged the integrity of this band if I had let them. It takes strength to protect the purity of the roots of something like this band. We’re all about rock’n’roll and partying and leather jackets and fast cars, but we’re family-orientated; we’ve got each others’ backs and we want to write stuff which matters. We don’t want to be in a flash-in-the-pan band or one driven by ego. We want to be seen as something substantial.”
Time and time again, Brown uses the imagery of the boxer and the boxing ring to conjure up a picture of him-and-Mona against the world. “I like the idea of perseverance and the underdog and that’s where the boxing imagery comes in. It’s about going blow for blow while being watched by an audience so I really dig the analogy with what we do as a band. There’s a tenacity to us which you find in boxing. I’m extremely competitive with myself. I’m a very vicious and focused person when it comes to certain areas in my life. As a band, we’re competitive with ourselves too because we want to be the best version of us.
“We’re not saying we’re better than anyone else and we don’t thrash other bands. We give respect to other musicians who are out there trying. But at the same time, we have our own standard and that is set very high.”
Mona play Auntie Annie’s, Belfast on Feb 16 and Whelan’s, Dublin on Feb 17. Their debut album is released in May
