We Are Augustines

Contact

Tito Belis
Big Hassle Media
tito@bighassle.com
212-619-1360

Bobbie Gale
Big Hassle Media
bobbie@bighassle.com
323-456-3490

Biography

We Are Augustines
Rise Ye Sunken Ships

Written by Stephen Brolan

“Keep your head up, kid/I know you can swim/But you’ve got to move your legs…”

March 2011 – a ship on the River Thames in London. Though the weather is unusually clement for this time of year, the waters beneath us continue to ripple at a seasonal gallop, rocking the ship’s hull back and forth in a rhythmic canter. Billy McCarthy and Eric Sanderson, the engine room behind Brooklyn, New York’s We Are Augustines, are themselves no strangers to turbulent waters. McCarthy in particular, whose volatile upbringing is candidly documented in both his band’s biographical notes and the lyrics of his songs, has felt himself frequently capsized by the vagaries of life. Having spent much of his formative years in foster care – a castaway from a schizophrenic mother and a non-existent father – a sense of self-reliance is perhaps more finely attuned in him than most. Sitting here now on this floating pub, prior to his band’s first major UK gig in front of 1,000 people, McCarthy’s enthusiasm for his current situation is addictive (“Hey! – we’re on a fucking boat in London!” he realises with frequent relish), yet his affable characteristics also betray a certain gravitas. Like a child who’s been told one too many lies, there’s a sense of restraint – like the very fabric in front of him could vanish in a puff of smoke at any time. He says the word ‘present’ a lot – though not the gift-wrapped kind – like a man holding on to the NOW with white-knuckle determination. He is also given to shaking his head, with an almost cartoonishly grim disbelief, especially when hitting upon something fortuitous. Through all the upheaval and broken promises that have come, Billy McCarthy is a man who takes nothing for granted.

“It’s quite gratifying to be where we are now,” he says, reflecting on the past two years, which has seen We Are Augustines rise from the ashes of his former band Pela, which had achieved significant success with debut (and only) album Anytown Graffiti before collapsing from personal tensions brought about by the industry at large.

“With Pela, we made great songs and did great shows,” continues Sanderson, the other survivor from the Pela wreckage. “We stayed away from labels for so long, but the minute we opened ourselves up to the industry, it got us!”

Since parting ways in 2008 with Great Society, the indie label that released much of the Pela material, the partnership – which has since been fortified by the arrival of English drummer Rob Allen – have remained unsigned, taking a more cautious stance into the Augustines project. But there’s more to this hypersensitive tiptoeing than simple contractual concerns – something far more personal lurks beneath.

Much of the material on forthcoming album Rise Ye Sunken Ships – most of which was written and recorded when Pela still existed – documents perhaps the most traumatic period of Billy McCarthy’s life. Having undergone the pain of a mentally ill, drug-addicted mother taking her own life when he was just nineteen, in 2009, McCarthy was to undergo a virtual déjà vu experience as his younger brother James, also a diagnosed schizophrenic, hung himself while still in the apparent care the hospital that was supposed to be treating him. Having been songwriting for only a couple of years following the death of his mother, initial forays into compositional catharsis fell short (“I lacked the vocabulary and subtlety”), but by the time of James’s death, a virtually obsessive McCarthy had assimilated his understanding of the world with the nuances of his craft.

“There were years of my life that just blend into each other, because all I cared about was writing,” he recalls, shaking his head. “It was just pure dedication…” His trails off, wrestling with a notion. “When you believe in your art – whether you’re a writer or musician or whatever – you’re essentially believing in yourself. I never put that together until recently.”

“Billy is incredibly passionate,” Sanderson continues. “For him, writing is not just sitting down with a pen and paper – it’s a lifestyle you live and breathe every day…” – to which McCarthy, whose conversational lunges are frequently housed in story-telling, recalls an anecdote from his days working at a restaurant. “There was a painter, a writer and a photographer,” he begins, almost joke-like. I ask if it is one; it assuredly isn’t. “There was this big debate when I said I wasn’t working the next weekend, and they were giving me a really hard time about it. I just slammed my fists on the table and said: ‘I don’t know whether you know this or not, but there’s no such thing as a part-time artist!’ They all just looked at their shoes. I felt really bad about it, but I also felt it had to be said…” – a pensive pause – “As much for my benefit as theirs, in hindsight.”

Sitting between Sanderson and McCarthy is like watching a game of conversational table tennis – a to-ing and fro-ing made all the more dizzying by the fact it’s happening on a boat. Like an old married couple, the pair seem to be completely aligned to each other’s thought patterns. With Sanderson having shared very similar personal traumas to McCarthy – particularly his own family history of substance abuse – it’s small wonder the pair are so reciprocal. In fact, after the collapse of their previous endeavour, the two isolated themselves against what had gone before – with the exception of maintaining contact with one other. By then, amid the remnants of Pela’s demise, a disenchanted McCarthy, armed with a batch of these songs that documented his own personal turmoil, felt the respect and trust he and Sanderson had nurtured together was the vital element that could allow them to continue onward.

“We’ve had to realign the way we approach our music,” Sanderson insists. “Not creatively as such – that’s stayed the same. It’s more how you interact, and the people you choose to surround yourself with. We had to adjust because we recalibrated everything, and the only way for us to go on was through complete ruin and destruction. For us to follow the same path again would be lunacy!”

And so, from out of the lunacy their previous contractual agreements had bound them to, We Are Augustines essentially self-financed the completion of the new album, unsure exactly how the record was going to reach its audience but certain only that the personal nature of the material was far too precious to surrender to just anyone. To launch Rise Ye Sunken Ships, McCarthy and Sanderson needed to be captains of their own destiny – the vessel they were sailing charting waters only they feel they could navigate. “You have to remind yourself you do have control over things,” McCarthy says fervently.

“The timeline to where we’re at now, we don’t feel robbed or any remorse,” continues Sanderson, reflecting very briefly – reluctantly – on their past shortcomings, before insisting: “We try every day to focus on the immediate circumstances and seeing the bigger picture. As hard as it is when things aren’t going well for you, it’s important to recognise that’s just part of the puzzle…”

Essentially existentialists, both Sanderson and McCarthy, who have traversed personal and professional turmoil to be where they are now – literally and figuratively bobbing up and down on an uncertain vessel on strange waters – know too well that life cannot be lived in isolation – that turbulence is just another ripple in the bigger picture. For Sanderson in particular, it is important to acknowledge the course you’ve taken.

“We couldn’t be where we are now if Pela didn’t exist and if it wasn’t destroyed by the industry. So to look at that as a bad thing would be disrespectful to my friends and the time we spent doing that. The lessons have been invaluable…”

McCarthy picks up the thread. “The lessons we’ve learned are like lanterns illuminating a path for us,” he says earnestly, again shaking his head. “And like Eric says, if we didn’t crash and burn, we probably still wouldn’t know where we’re going…”

With navigation essential to survival, We Are Augustines are steering a course by way of a chart speckled with the fragments of shattered dreams and guiding lights long extinguished. Not the easiest of paths to traverse, but then plain sailing was never their command. With Rise Ye Sunken Ships, however, a titanic struggle and musical vision is at last about to come to the surface.

Stephen Brolan
April 2011.

Press Releases

RISE YE SUNKEN SHIPS -- track-by-track
RISE YE SUNKEN SHIPS
track-by-track written by Billy McCarthy
(excluding “The Instrumental” written by Eric Sanderson)

“Chapel Song”
This song is about lost love and witnessing an old love and bride-to-be walk down the aisle to be married. So often in life it is difficult for us to keep a good face on the outside (while our insides are burning). Hollow handshakes and blank stares at a wedding sum up the sentiment here. Burn baby burn.

“Augustine”
A tumultuous relationship between brothers, and an increasingly urgent attempt at helping someone who is in a downward spiral. This song was written in one day and initially on piano.

“Headlong Into The Abyss”
A story about my brother in a car and running from cops. It’s a refusal to comply with doctors, police and the dregs of small-town life. Sometimes pills kill the spirit, and often the individual is very aware of that fact. The song seeks to envision the moments of exhilaration at taking a stand against authority and driving hard and fast away from one’s fate.

“Book of James”
Lyrically, it is my attempt to humanize the homeless and mentally ill, and remove the titles and tar from a once resilient spirit that struggled too much in his short life. Everybody deserves a proper eulogy; this is mine for my brother James. As far as I’m concerned our society at large would rather not think about the topic of homelessness and mental illness. Unfortunately, people who have lived through it are forced to find a place to store it internally. This song is written from that place.

“East Los Angeles”
East L.A. is where we did a portion of the record the first time around. I was frequently up very late, drinking and living in a hotel with Eric. Much of the record’s subject matter was coming clear and it came through a break from the intensity of the darker NYC late nightlife where I had been bartending for a living. I saw celebratory moments between people and I saw heart-wrenching nuances in people as well, all to the backdrop of a dive bar – mostly people not valuing themselves, their potential, and looking for warmth in some distorted drunken way. I think the song is a blurry love story, and the narrator is speaking about a moment of clarity on a Ferris wheel, the concern for his fate on an all-to-welcoming barstool, and the realization of a moment’s beauty and watching it dissipate.

“Juarez”
Ever since I was born I’ve lived around Mexican people. I played with Mexican children as a boy and until I was in grade school I lived in a trailer park that was full of artichoke laborers that were raising families by the fields. The mornings smelled like manure from the fields and on the weekend nights the alcohol whipped the place into quite a state. As it goes with trailer parks, children aren’t always supervised and we ran fast and free through the night as our parents got high. There were frequent fist fights, dogs barking and yelling. It was there where I realized how tough, resilient and full of heart those families are.

My mother got very drunk one night and told me my father was a truck driver from Texas. She met him hitch-hiking and he dropped her off pregnant. I badly cut my hand in Chicago during the recording of the record and received 70 stitches in my left hand and some heavy pain pills. I couldn’t stop thinking of my father and what my mother told me that night so long ago. I’ve been looking for my father since I can remember and it all flooded into this song. I played the initial chords with my cut hand high on pills and wrote this song in about an hour. If you listen to the intro, verses and chorus you can hear that the song is all composed and played by only two fingers. Those fingers where poking out of my bandages and probably have something to do with the tone of all of this. The song has an agricultural backdrop along the border in Juarez and it is there that this story takes place.

“Philadelphia (The City of Brotherly Love)”
A snapshot of a city. Not a world-class cosmopolitan playground, but a real place with real people living real lives. I’m not sure what my fascination with not becoming a casualty of your surroundings is about but it’s, again, a character pleading with great urgency that they can’t succumb to shutting down and accepting this as a life and that there is indeed a world out there, and that once you truly realize it, the window of time is very short to get out.

“New Drink For The Old Drunk”
Not my tune but I was drawn to it because it seems to be talking about the characters I saw as a bartender. Darkly beautiful in it’s lyrics and sadly profound. It was soothing to me in a time that I felt like I was babysitting drunks for a living. I don’t miss those days but I love the song.

“Patton State Hospital”
This song was written when Jimmy was in Folsom Prison. It was a time machine for me to revisit the time I had him live with me on Columbia Street in Brooklyn. He went missing for quite a while and I called every shelter and jail in the area looking for him. I never thought he’d actually be in a prison. My sister and I were always calling his state-appointed lawyer who was nearly impossible to get a hold of and who seemed buried in a caseload that just never let up. We were trying to hammer home that he was mentally ill and shouldn’t be doing time, and that he was in danger and truly needed help … all to no avail. He still sat in solitary confinement for five years and never stood trial. We truly thought when he got his court date he would finally be able to be helped and housed properly. We chose a hospital near my sister’s house and planned how we would visit him when we got him there. It’s called Patton State Hospital.

“Strange Days”
This song has nautical themes. Perhaps I see people like ships and life like an ocean.

“Barrel of Leaves”
My best friend wrote this when his brother, Jeremy, was doing time in San Quentin. It’s funny what happens when you do time – you develop slang to survive. Jeremy went in a confused kid and came out talking like an old ex-con. Prison is a culture, and no matter how hard you scrub your hands or move forward you can’t wash it off your skin. I used to see prisoners when I was riding the Greyhound around America. You could see in a flash how dazed, excited and broken they felt. Avenal, Folsom, San Quentin and Lompoc – they are all over California. They are among the scariest places in the world, for both the prisoners and the people that love them. I hated visiting. Me and my best buddy happened to be going through this together at the same time. He wrote “Barrel of Leaves” on a beat-up piano at a friend’s house. I sang it the best I could.

“The Instrumental” (by Eric Sanderson)
This piece was birthed out of the chaos that comes from living in New York City; balancing the draining moments spent at day jobs in the industrial areas like Columbia Street, Sunset Park and Long Island City. With the pure and romantic dreams of being a musician, it is contradictory and confusing (at times even jumbled) but that is its intention. Instrumentals often come to me as a meditation; this particular piece challenges that, indeed, stillness can exist in chaos. And celebrating that struggle can bring peacefulness.
Dec 09 2011
WE ARE AUGUSTINES’ RISE YE SUNKEN SHIPS NAMED “BEST ALTERNATIVE ALBUM” OF 2011 IN iTUNES “REWIND” YEAR-END ROUND-UP

BAND INCLUDED AS PART OF CHIMES OF FREEDOM: THE SONGS OF BOB DYLAN HONORING 50 YEARS OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

BAND TO PERFORM AT SOLD OUT Xfm WINTER WONDERLAND CONCERT AT LONDON’S BRIXTON ACADEMY WITH THE HORRORS, BAND OF SKULLS AND OTHERS ON WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14

Brooklyn’s We Are Augustines are very pleased to announce that their debut album, Rise Ye Sunken Ships, has been named “Best Alternative Album” for 2011 by iTunes in its year-end “Rewind 2011″ round-up of the year’s top albums, songs, apps, TV shows, movies and more. Announced this morning, the top-honor selection from the world’s #1 music store caps off a stellar year for the indie-rock trio. Selections for this year’s iTunes “Rewind 2011″ can be found HERE:

In addition to the band’s iTunes accolade, We Are Augustines have also been included as part of the Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International compilation. Featuring over 80 artists that include Joan Baez, Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, Jackson Browne, Sting, Adele and many others, We Are Augustines contribute their rendition of “Mama, You Been On My Mind” for the collection that is scheduled for physical (four discs) and digital release in North America on January 24, 2012 through Fontana Distribution. It will be distributed internationally through Fontana International, a Universal Music company, on January 30. Chimes of Freedom is Executive Produced by legendary music executive Jeff Ayeroff and Julie Yannatta, who spearheaded Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur – a 2007 collection of John Lennon solo compositions performed by major artists including U2, Green Day, and R.E.M.

Out now in physical and digital formats, Rise Ye Sunken Ships (Oxcart Records) landed in the Top 10 of SoundScan’s New Artists chart on the strength of its first week of digital sales. The album’s August 23 release was succeeded by several appearances during the CMJ Music Marathon in New York City in late October as well as a tour of the UK supporting Glasvegas. The band is scheduled to perform as part of Xfm’s sold out Winter Wonderland concert at Brixton Academy in London on Wednesday, December 14, an evening that will also include performances from The Horrors, Band of Skulls, Kaiser Chiefs and Maccabees.

“Their eponymous debut album is simply one of the best records of 2011, and some of the most emotionally-charged, melodic indie rock I’ve heard in years.” – JOHN SCHAEFER, WNYC

“‘Rise Ye Sunken Ships’ not only drips with emotion but it’s comprised of 12 deeply-layered, life-affirming compositions, and is a top-to-bottom excellent recording.” – MAGNET

“McCarthy’s story is relevant because it is precisely what makes him so powerful. Rather than wallow in the past, the band casts for redemption, treating each confessional track like a lesson in perseverance.” - THE WASHINGTON POST

We Are Augustines was formed by ex-Pela members Billy McCarthy and Eric Sanderson, and includes Rob Allen on drums. Much of the material on Rise Ye Sunken Ships documents the most traumatic period of lead vocalist/guitarist McCarthy’s life in which he lost both his schizophrenic mother and his brother, James, to suicide. “Headlong Into The Abyss” recounts James’ flight from the police while “The Instrumental,” a transcendent, richly textured piece written by bassist/keyboardist Sanderson, closes out the album on a note of hope, suggesting that struggle can ultimately point the way to peace. As a whole, Rise Ye Sunken Shipsrepresents the culmination of many years of personal struggle and eventual triumph in the completion of a shimmering album that had been floundering about for some time.

Publicity

Online Marketing