For nearly 20 years, Kyle Melton and Don Thrasher have made records and performed together as Smug Brothers, and the band's current line includes bassist Kyle Sowash and guitarist Ryan Shaffer. On their new album, Stuck on Beta (Anyway Records), the band finds themselves venturing into some new musical territory.
"Some of the songs just were suggesting new ideas, new sounds we hadn't really explored," said Melton in an interview with WYSO music director Juliet Fromholt. "And [Sowash] is like you know I play saxophone...I'm like oh yeah, right. So he's a couple songs on the album he's doing saxophone, and then he threw a curveball at us. We didn't even know he had an electric piano in his basement so that's a new sound for us."
Being open to experimentation came, in part, from modifying the band's approach to writing songs.
"I was definitely trying to do more upfront and building the songs differently than maybe I had in the past, like spending more time like from the demo phase to the actual recording phase," said Melton. "Like what if we add this section here and just trying to develop it a little bit more upfront. Historically, I've just kind of said, well, whatever I came up with the moment I had the initial ideas is how it goes down. And you know, sometimes that works and sometimes you're like well it could have been developed a little bit more so I spent more time up front developing the song ideas.
Despite the expansion, Stuck on Beta remains a distinctly Smug Brothers album, and Melton says the band plans to continue to innovate while staying true to who they are.
"We're not going to do like reggae songs or like death metal or anything like that. That's not likely to come up in our repertoire, but pushing out and coming up with new ideas, new sounds, that's always something we're looking to."
Smug Brothers will perform at Blind Bob's in Dayton on May 31 and at Northside Tavern in Cincinnati on June 7. Stuck on Beta will be released June 6.
