Garrett Deming

Best known as frontman for long-running blues rock group Broken Glow, Garrett Deming is a local favorite who will be appearing solo at the Sentient Bean for a night of acoustic songs and stories. This is set to be his final show in the area for the foreseeable future, as he heads off for a life in other parts of the world. Don’t miss what is sure to be a great night.

Thurs., June 6, 7 P.M. - Connect Savannah

In March 2016, Dope KNife (Kedrick Mack) found himself onstage in Atlanta opening up for one of his heroes: rapper Sage Francis.

A few months later, he got an email that launched a new beginning.

Mack, a rapper, producer, director, and original Dope Sandwich member, has released several full-length LPs, EPs, and singles of his own, recorded up-and-comers, crafted beats, and shot videos, honing his own recognizable flow and shadowy boom-bap style over the years. When Francis asked Mack to release an album on Strange Famous Records, 33-year-old Mack had an opportunity to present Dope KNife to a whole new audience.

The album is called NineteenEightyFour, a title perfectly fit for the union of personal storytelling, literary digs, and searing sociopolitical commentary. Instead of using samples as a base, Mack called on a stellar crew of musicians, including Matt Duplessie a.k.a. Clandestiny, Broken Glow’s Garrett Deming, Omingnome’s Tony Bavaro, Aaron Fisher, Ceschi Ramos, Jeff DeRosa, Bradley Wilkerson, Tristan Brennis, and Hotplate’s Patrick Hussey to create entirely original compositions.

Longtime Dope KNife followers will find a fresh, raw spirit and unapologetic consistency in NineteenEightyFour; newcomers will see the portrait of an artist who honed his craft in Savannah and is ready to take it all to the next level.

Mack talked to Connect about his production techniques, bringing back classic hip-hop, and how Dope KNife will greet the world on Strange Famous Records.
click to enlarge GEOFF L. JOHNSON

Geoff L. Johnson

You’ve been working on this album for a while.

Yeah, May 2015 is when I started doing the beats and stuff. In January, all the beats were made and it was time to start writing. And around that time we were still putting out the [collaborative project with Miggs Son Daddy] Happy Thoughts album. When I started making it, there was a bunch of stuff that came out in between. I did the Cult Cyph project, I was working on that KNife “Smash” EP...

How did you balance and prioritize all that?

I just put it off because everything else that came out before it was when it was supposed to come out. It was like “I’ll get to it when I can.” By the time I started working on it, I didn’t have anything but that to focus on.

How did you want to distinguish this release from your other work?

Well, I’ve never produced all the stuff. The average album that I’ve done, there are usually about 12-13 tracks...this started out with 18 tracks—it was going to be massive—then it got cut to 15, then cut to 12.

Lyrically, how did you approach this one?

I started really, really writing it around February 2016 and wrote all of it together in a one-month span. I knew it was going to be somewhat of an introduction. Normally, when I’m writing music, I’m writing it literally with y’all in mind: ‘Okay, I know who follows my Facebook page, I’m going to put it on Soundcloud, I know who follows me.’ This one, I was writing and approaching with a nameless, faceless audience. I wanted to make it feel introductory, but at the same time, I’m 33, I’m not a new artist. It can come out sounding kind of corny if you’re not a new artist but are trying to pretend you are. So I was trying to find the balance: the majority of people who hear this one out of everything I’ve done don’t know who the hell I am, and it’s going to be their first time hearing what Dope KNife is.

Deciding on NineteenEightyFour being the title, I was born in 1984 and obviously there’s the book. Everybody knows I’m on some, I guess, far leftist political views. I assumed everyone thought if was going to think if I put out an album called NineteenEightyFour, that’s what it’s going to be about. But it’s about making aspects of Orwell more metaphorical. NineteenEightyFour is much more a reference of my age. The subject matter is stuff I felt would represent that.

My approach is, I have a bunch of terms and phrases from the book that I like. “Memory hole” means one thing in the context of the book—what does it mean to me? It means a literal definition of the two words. Let me make a song taking those memories and putting them in a hole so they don’t stop you from moving forward.

It’s much more metaphorical than it is conceptual. I’ve done concepts before...this is more a character portrait. I like to take that movie director approach...this is definitely my Taxi Driver. There’s a plot to Taxi Driver...but it’s a character portrait, and that’s what is what NineteenEightyFour is about.

Well, that makes a good introduction. Were you consciously playing up certain elements of your style and character for a new audience?

One of the things Sage Francis told me when he wanted me to get down with the label was that I have a...not necessarily traditional hip-hop style, but there’s a classic emcee element to it. The flow and the rhymes are very much the forefront of what I’m doing.

I have a song on there with Ceschi Ramos, the head of Fake Four, Inc....I remember having a conversation with him almost seven or eight months after I started NineteenEightyFour.

I was like, “What do you think I should do next?” He’s like, “I think the next thing you make, do it less boom-bap and more experimental.”

I thought Iconoclast was super-experimental and drastically different from what I do! As he said that, I was having conversations with Steve [Baumgardner] and Miggs: “I think the next thing I do is going to be some unapologetically boom-bap hip-hop shit.”

When I was younger, I used to be a lot more eclectic, or pretended to be. If you asked me what I listened to, it’d be like “I don’t even listen to rap, I listen to everything.” That was cool back then, but hip-hop is as legit a form of music as anything else. It can be just as experimental or just as edge-bending as anything else and it can be primarily based in rap...that’s why I’m really into Run The Jewels.

I wanted to make something reminiscent of the sort of stuff I grew up listening to in the sense that it was all rap music. Biggie Smalls wasn’t like, “I’m going to make a Parliament Funkadelic song.” It was like, “My mom listened to that, and I’m going to use those influences to make a really slammin’ rap song.”

After first 10 songs, were recorded, I thought this could be one of the illest throwbacks. Every song is based in the principles of break beats samples, basslines, and rap.
click to enlarge Mack at Panhandle Slim's recently crafted mural on Drayton Street. - GEOFF L. JOHNSON

Geoff L. Johnson
Mack at Panhandle Slim's recently crafted mural on Drayton Street.

Do you like it being called “throwback?”

Not really, to be honest. The sentiment has been cheapened. I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to imitate a sound that long since has had its time. It’s just drawing inspiration from what you grew up listening to as opposed to what’s contemporary.

At the end of the day, everything’s been done... it’s just a matter of putting your own twist on stuff, that’s how you end up creating something that is new or sounds new. If you go into it like, ‘I’m about to revolutionize the game with my greatness,’ that’s how you spend a lot of time staring at a blank piece of paper. At the end of the day, I just try to make something fun to listen to.

You brought in local musicians to build your samples.

I had never done anything on a label, so one thing I was worried about is that I’m a sample-based producer. When you’re putting out a mixtape on Bandcamp for people that come see you at the bars, it’s different. I just didn’t want any problems down the line, so since I’m pretty formidable with sampling, instead of sampling from old records, I know all these musicians, I’ll sample from them.

What was it like building those tracks?

It’s a lot easier for me...I was building up songs by the instruments individually. If I want to sample bass lines, I’m only listening to bass. You’re layering it up to where I’m very confident I could get a guitar player, bassist, drummer and could play the whole album out. I wanted it to sound like it was organic and it didn’t sound like it was just a drum machine making all that stuff, but at the same time make you wonder. That’s why I really like The Roots...you listen, it sounds like someone’s there with an MPC. It doesn’t have that band quality to it, but live people are playing. I wanted to have that sort of sound without having a band so it could be reverse engineered, in a way. - Connect Savannah

Review Fix chats with Broken Glow’s Garrett Deming, who discusses the band’s creative process, goals for the future and their standout song, “Sun Comes Up.”

Review Fix: How did the band get together?

Garrett Deming: Paul (on drums) went to high school with founding members Brenner and Jon, who then recruited me (guitar/vox) in the spring of 2008 after college. The band began in Hartford, CT and has also lived in Brooklyn, NY before moving to Savannah, GA (current home) and recruiting Sara to fill in the vacant bass slot in 2014.

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Deming: Generally I come up with the germ of a song, then brings it to the band for complete arrangement. Some of the songs emerge from rehearsal free-form jams, which are recorded live and then tweaked based on the live organic version. Lyrics are inspired by anything from personal struggles and observations to life events, literature or the ever-changing world around us.

Review Fix: What’s your standout song? How was it written?

Deming: That’s hard to say, but one of the crowd favorites in “Sun Comes Up” from our 2014 release Live Like An Animal. The riff emerged during an impromptu jam between Garrett and a few other local musicians, and the verses were written long before the song was completed, salvaged from the countless notebooks full of lines and phrases that the band members keep.

Review Fix: What are your goals for 2016?

Deming: Our first goal for the year was to have a successful release for our brand new album Filament, which was realized in February as we brewed a custom beer for the release party, held at local brewery Southbound Brewing Company. We continue to play locally and regionally, and have a studio session booked for the summer at Hybrid Audio Solutions in Charleston, SC.

Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?

Deming: We hope that people feel the groove, and that our music inspires good energy from the listener. We’re not one of these aggressive, hate-fueled rock bands that get so much American radio airplay. Instead, we take inspiration from the originators of hard rock, the blues-oriented bands of the 60s and 70s who wrote about social change and love instead of self-deprication and nihilistic apathy.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Deming: Who can ever tell what the wind will blow their way? We just plan to keep rocking and hope people dig it. - Review Fix

Broken Glow, as an entity, is about as fluid as their sound. From Connecticut to New York to Savannah, through numerous members, living situations, and climates, the rock band has thrived—but in its eight years of existence, the project never birthed a full-length album.

All that’s changed. With Garrett Deming on vocals and guitar, Paul Burba on drums, Christopher Horton on guitar, Sara Clash on bass, and Donald Moats of Habitat Noise Studios in the producer’s chair, the band is ready to unveil Filament in a celebration at Southbound Brewing Company.

A monster of a rock ‘n’ roll record, Filament offers something for everyone, from blues to riff-rock to prog to metal. At their release party, with special guests BBXF, the band will perform the record in its entirety. There’s a special beer created exclusively for the event, food from Chazito’s Latin Cuisine, a live broadcast from Rock 106.1, and visuals from Planetary Projections.
click to enlarge broken1-1.jpg


We caught up with the band on their musical and physical journey, their influences, and the fun of making Filament.

On the band’s storied history:

Burba: Technically, it was 2007. Me and two of my best friends from high school reconnected after college. I moved back to New Hampshire and the lead guitarist, who was the brain of the entire thing, Brenner Eugenides, called me up and said, 'I can't keep playing in this cover band. I want to make my own project. Do you want to play drums for me?'

I said, 'When do I move in?'

He had gotten our other good friend, Jon Connors, who met Garrett in college. When Jon moved back from Ithaca, we started the whole thing and realized we needed more, so we called up Garrett, and he moved down.

Deming: We moved into this house in backwoods Connecticut as a band, then in September of 2008, moved to Brooklyn, because Brenner had gotten a job running a studio in Greenpoint.

That's where I met Sara, actually. Some of the other local bands around—Omingnome, Culture Vulture—all lived in the same building. I met Sara at their apartment, early 2011. We were in New York for a couple of years, then Brenner tragically died. I moved down to Savannah—Sara was playing down here.

Clash: We were touring up through the Florida coast and came through Savannah on accident. I moved, then most of our friends moved down.

Maxine Florio had gotten a house down here and used it as a place for bands who were traveling. That’s how we met her, when we came through on tour. It all started at her house.

On recording Filament on reel-to-reel tape:

Deming: We're a rock band, but we're not the rock band that's going to be playing to a metronome and every measure of the song is dissected. We're a bit more improvisational.

Burba: We've always loved those old recordings, like those Led Zeppelin albums that were recorded in like, 36 hours. We wanted to get back to the roots of what rock really is: a bunch of people getting in a room, loving their instruments, and doing something that speaks to them.

Deming: There's something about the air in the room: you can isolate all the instruments, you can triple-track guitars, you can do drum machines, but there's something about the energy of the band that's like when you see a live band. Yeah, you hear all the instruments, but there's something about the chemistry. The bands that have always stuck with me are the bands you can almost hear that as an element in the record. It's not just the song, the vocals: it's the whole package.

On Filament's cross-genre appeal:

Deming: If you look through our record collection, we listen to The Pointer Sisters, Roberta Flack, Jerry Lee Lewis...I think that, because we have a lot of different interests musically, that shows up on this album.

Our last album we recorded with Tyler Cutitta, just me and Paul. We wanted fresh recordings—there was so much tragedy, our friend had just died. We wanted to get new material out. We recorded that thing in nine hours. Those six songs all sit in the same wheelhouse, but it’s very clearly a definitive sound.

On [Filament], we wanted to showcase all we can do. So, ‘Iconoclast’ is probably as close to metal as we get, but then you have ‘Smoke’ which is almost a radio pop song, to ‘Well,’ which is straight 12-bar blues.

Burba: This is our influence-based album.

Horton: If you listen to it all the way through, it doesn't sound like anything's out of place. They all flow together and it all sounds like us, but totally different genres.

Deming: I think in naming the album Filament—we've always used lightbulb imagery, but the filament is the part of the bulb that actually produces light. It's about getting to that essence. This is what we're about, without pretense, at the core.

On the band's signature beer, a pale ale with hints of biscuit, honey, and oats, brewed with Southbound for Friday's release party:

Deming: We picked out the malts, barley, and mash—it's going to be a Belgian saison infused with coffee. The cool thing about being a part of the brewing process is, it's not a Broken Glow beer named after us—we had a part in brewing the whole thing.

Horton: It's kind of like, the album is our baby, but the beer is our baby, too!
cs - Connect Savannah

Synesthesia will hit the second floor of Ampersand on July 25, a sensory saturation complete with live music, aerial performers and visual artists painting amid the audience, all while a psychedelic liquid light show is happening. If that’s not enough, it’s just part of an event so big, it takes up all three floors.

“This is about expressing yourself in the moment,” said Garrett Deming, guitarist and singer of Broken Glow. “We wanted to figure out a way to integrate some of the other artistic interests, not only that the band members have, but also members of the community have.”

Synesthesia was the brainchild of Deming and Clinton Edminster, Art Rise executive director and events coordinator at Ampersand. Edminster had booked Deming’s band several times at The Wormhole for Art March after parties and a few months ago, they got to talking about throwing together this type of event.

Edminster and Deming were both looking to help artists find platforms to gain larger audiences and it only seemed fitting to combine the music with visual and performance art.

“Because no art form exists in a vacuum, it makes sense to put them in the same place,” Deming said.

The music starts at 8 p.m. with acoustic songstress Sara Clash. Broken Glow will keep the tunes flowing with their grungy blues at 9 p.m., followed by Culture Vulture’s prog-jazz rock at 11 p.m., and lastly, the Quimby Mountain Band, a rural jam funk band, at 1 a.m. The third floor will feature punk/metal groups Torch Runner, Mourning Cloak and Forced Entry throughout the night.

“We put the set a specific way so that it flows a certain way,” Deming said.

Clash’s acoustics will open up the night, followed by Broken Glow’s riffy-rock pumping it up a notch. Things will get a little more dynamic when Culture Vulture, who’s known to push their music outside typical boundaries, takes stage, and Quimby Mountain Band will bring it all together with a diverse sound that’s part funk, blues, Southern rock, reggae and soul.

While the music is going, Planetary Projections, whose founder, Simon Ross, just returned to Savannah after a six-week European tour with Kylesa, will provide a mind-blowing liquid light show.

The visual feast continues with choreographed dancing by the In-Tent_city troupe, which was recently founded by Kathleen O’Donnell, who has years of performance experience in aerial suspension, formal dance training and cirque techniques.

Amid all the sights, Niki Koutsaris, Danielle Sperandeo, Eric Braun and Courtney Fredette will be creating artwork. Over the course of the night, they will be painting different pieces, as well as selling their original prints and sketches. Sperandeo and Koutsaris both plan on painting on recycled materials and found objects, including wooden pallets.

But the show isn’t just about the artists. Participation is highly encouraged and guests can get in on the action with a collaborative piece that’s open to the public. This interactive, crowd-friendly artwork will be created throughout the night.

“It’s a really amazing thing we’re all doing,” Sperandeo said. “We’re bringing together every artistic aspect of the people in Savannah, the art and music scene and making it something for everybody.”

It may seem like a new feat, but Deming knows that’s not the case.

“Events like this have been going on since the ’60s and ’70s, and that’s where we draw a lot of the inspiration from,” he explained.

Deming drew inspiration from John Keats, a romantic poet from England, who talked about the melting of senses in his poetry.

“It’s not only about senses, but also about blurring that line between who’s performing and who’s observing,” Deming said. “The more you can get people to participate, the more invested they get in it and the stronger impression you end up leaving.”

But it’s not just about blurring lines - they want to prove this is something that anyone with an idea can do.

“There really are limitless possibilities,” Deming said. “The only thing it takes is realizing that you’re not bound to doing something simple just because you’ve always done it simply.” - DoSavannah

They hail from Brooklyn, the venerable mecca for up-and-coming artists and musicians toiling in a city shrouded in certain uncertainty. But one Northeast duo traveled south to find peace, solace and relative success amid Spanish moss and the welcoming musical community of the Hostess City.

It’s a tale of trial and tribulation, of overcoming hardships and sticking together for Garrett Deming and Paul Burba of Broken Glow, who return to the Wormhole on Jan. 7 for their live album release party with Cousin Sleaze and Mysterium. Though, really, they never left at all.

The band plays every open-mic night at the Wormhole and at many gigs around town - a city they unrelentingly credit with their continued success, but most importantly, their happiness.

Savannah over Brooklyn? Some might argue that, career-wise, that’s just not the way a band makes its stake in the industry. How did you begin and end up here?

Garrett Deming: Our guitar player at the time, Brenner, got a job running a studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. So we would go there and rehearse and record and we wound up meeting some great bands. We lived in this really cool loft building that was full of artists and musicians and models and just every kind of creative, under-35 you could imagine. It was wild.

So we were in Brooklyn a couple of years. It took us both about a year to get down here.

Our lead guitar player, Brenner, had passed away about a year and a half ago. Being in New York anyway, there’s a lot of pressures. It’s really expensive and it’s difficult, but after a tragic loss, I was feeling like I needed a change of scenery.

We wound up digging it so much I told Paul that he had to come down here.

Paul Burba: I was just kind of biding my time up in Brooklyn because they were semi-planning on coming back up. Then things went south with how I was living and what not, and they heard about it and saved me from the end of my rope, so I came down here about six months ago with two backpacks and a bicycle. We left pretty much everything else up in Brooklyn, including my kit.

When we first got down here, we were going to the Wormhole every week because they do open mics every Monday and Wednesday. That was the only practice I was getting.

You referred to the scene up there as more cut-throat, and found yourselves more at home here. How would you describe the difference to someone who hasn’t been to the big city?

Deming: One thing that I’ve gathered from being down here is that it’s a little bit easier to get people in on a community effort, I think, because New York has that reputation, that hub of culture or whatever. People in New York lose sight that there’s a world outside of New York, and I certainly fell victim to it.

I find that here, in general, people are doing it because they love to do it. Not that they don’t want to make it their main pursuit, but I think the fun of it is easier in a place where people aren’t necessary vying for spots ... It seems to me people do it down here because it’s fun, because they love to.

Paul, what did you mean by “end of your rope?”

Burba: I was going through a rough breakup. I was kind of in between ideas, didn’t know what was going to be happening. As I was going through all that stuff, Garrett and I started talking, and so he told me to pack up and come down to Savannah for a few months and to figure it out from there.

How has that, inevitably, affected your music?

Burba: The last year I was in Brooklyn, I was practicing every day. The drums was one of the things that was getting me through the days after Brenner passed away and my breakup, and stuff like that. It just got too hard. It was too weird. It was too strange. I played with a couple of different musicians up there, but it wasn’t the same. I wanted to get back to playing with Garrett.

As soon as I got down here, I fell in love with Savannah, and the the culture and the people. As soon as I got here, it felt like all the stress melted away. It’s very refreshing to know that everyone is super supportive of what everyone is doing, that everyone is more acknowledgable of each other.

With that said, you describe your music as “rock ‘n’ f***in’ roll.”

Deming: Through the five years that we’ve been a band, we’ve seen some really awesome times and we’ve seen some real hellish times. And we’re pretty affable, clownish, easy-going guys. But we definitely - Paul was talking about using the drums as his release - I definitely can echo that, being on stage being that catharsis. We all do go through s**t ... I think it’s important to find positive ways to deal with those things, so we do that through our music. But, as a result of that, the music is loud.

The band, in its current incarnation, is somewhat of a testament to the last-man-standing idealism.

Deming: Yeah, for sure. We definitely feel that way. We’ve had band members leave for all kind of reasons and for the most part, we’re still friends with the guys who’ve played with us. But for us, it’s like, I don’t know what else I’d be doing.

And this upcoming performance, live album release, illustrates some of that.

Deming: Yeah. The upcoming album is called “Taking It to the Hole.” We’re calling it that because it was recorded live at the Wormhole. The tracks are from the November Art March.

Burba: I want to put out a general thank you to Savannah and the people here, because it’s been very therapeutic here and it’s very much renewed my faith in humanity. It’s a great place. I can’t say enough good things. - DoSavannah