Singer swaps LA for downtown Troon
THEY are both beside the sea but that’s about all Los Angeles, California, and Troon, South Ayrshire, have in common.
There probably are not many people who have swapped the former for the latter, but then US singer-songwriter Addie Brik is not like most people.
In 1998 she left America’s City of Angels behind to move to Europe, eventually settling on the Ayrshire “riviera”.
Asked how she walked that unusual path she laughed as she said: “Step by step! I got record deals in Europe and began, in the late 1990s, being more interested in what was going on here, musically.
“It seemed more interesting with the bands coming out of here and all the sounds and the ethos.
“Everything in LA was very… not that I don’t like R&B, and it sounds rude to say it, but if you listen to a Janet Jackson record or something there was just a certain sound, a more commercial sound, in America and it seemed there were things that were more experimental and interesting going on here.
“It’s very beautiful here.”
Discovered by Peter Gabriel of Genesis fame having handed him a demo tape, Brik was signed to Geffen records and released an album produced by Andy Gill.
She was also present for the birth of one of the world’s most successful bands – the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Brik said: “I had a little studio called the Crooked Cue that was just my rehearsal studio for my band.
“At the time the Red Hot Chili Peppers weren’t even the Red Hot
Chili Peppers, I think [bassist]flea was in an LA punk band called Fear, and there was a band called What Is This? [featuring original guitarist and drummer Hillel Slovak and
Jack Irons].
“They had all grown up together and they were all rehearsing there – a lot of people rehearsed at my studio.
“It was just meant to be a joke, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but they were rehearsing there the first night they ever had a show.”
The Chili Peppers, thanks in part to being given an opening slot by Paisley-born nightclub owner Brendan Mullen, would go on to become one of the world’s biggest rock acts.
Back then they were known for their hard-partying ways, an excess that would lead to the death of Slovak, who died of a heroin overdose in 1988, with frontman Anthony Kiedis almost going the same way.
For Brik, though, there was no real sense of being in the eye of a storm.
She said: “I guess it seemed kind of normal at the time, we were all just really young and having a good time and it was really free in Los Angeles. Everything was cheap and it was just a laugh.
“Nina Hawkin was around. A lot of music, a lot of fun. Fishbone was on that scene too. It was just great music.”
Brik released her new album That Dog Don’t Hunt this week, with the record recorded largely in Troon at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown.
It’s a sound very much borne of the time, featuring as it does meditations on authority and the direction of society.
Brik said: “I had to do a lot of it alone or remotely. We had the National Youth Choir of Scotland sing on a song called Retromingent, but that had to be done remotely.
“There were brief periods of time where you could get outside, so some of it was done together and a lot of it was done remotely.
“It just seemed to me that the western way of life is evanescent, we’re just experiencing so many changes – some of which don’t seem like progress.
“I don’t think progress for progress’ sake is always really great because there doesn’t seem to be any discussion about the externalities of progress
– like corporations being made people and things like that.
“I’m not really so sure losing everything in old-fashioned things is a good idea, especially if there’s not a real discussion about the pros and cons.
“I think it was an intentional decision, I’m not really political but you look at how kids are growing up compared to me – when I was a kid I used to just go out of the door in the morning and you’d come home for dinner.
“I don’t think children can do any of those things that we got to do when we were little and that seems really sad to me, and maybe not very good for us as a society.
“As a writer you have to talk about what’s on your mind, and certainly with all of the so-called lockdowns there was plenty of time to think about it.
“I didn’t necessarily like what I was seeing in society but I wasn’t in a city so I could really focus and buckle down and write.
“I was talking to people all the time, I was talking to musicians and we were seeing each others’ faces and having laughs and stuff.”
Things were more experimental and interesting here – and it’s very beautiful