I spoke with Loring on the phone Monday, after the band returned to Maine. Tweedy received his map of Maine, and wore a Brenda pin during his solo set Sunday. If the point of the festival was to shore up the band’s confidence for their future, which I and other Portlanders hoped it would, it succeeded. I asked Loring what happens next. “We have to get on the road as much as possible, and do cheese-monkey business shit [endless self-promotion], and figure out how to get money . . . and record a new album, a better album,” he said. They will hit the studio in October.
As Brenda exit a fortunate summer and enter a pivotal year, they seem aware that fate plays a tenuous hand in making or breaking a band, and determined to narrow that gap as far as possible. It’s been really heartening to watch them try to vault that chasm with ambition and integrity.
Christopher Gray can be reached atcgray@phx.com. Brenda are online at mckeenstreetmusic.com.
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