Scott Brodeur was barely in his teens when his first band was tapped by John Eddie to open up some shows.
"I was 14 years old, and John was the biggest thing in Philly, where I was growing up," Brodeur recalls. "Him, The Hooters and Robert Hazard—and he was supposed to be the next Springsteen. People would mob his shows, and he used to let us open for him. We were like 14 years old, playing bars. It was great, until one of the guys in my band put up fliers that said, 'Bring Your Fake IDs.' Clubs didn't like us doing that, so we were sneaking in and playing."
Thus began a musical journey that has taken the singer/songwriter and guitarist through numerous bands and just as many cities, culminating a few decades later with a home and family in Northampton and his current long-running project, Storybox.
"Storybox started in 2000 as George Lenker and I and others getting together to do a three-part harmony, Jayhawks kind of thing," says Brodeur. "Then George split, and I had never met these other guys—George knew them—and they go, 'Well, we'd still like to play.' So we replaced George and kept going."
Brodeur and original members Mark Manganaro on drums and Ron Saloio on bass, together since the beginning, have subsequently gone through a few roster changes, in one case tragic. "It built up to seven pieces, and then we had a percussionist, Kevin [Richard], who died," Brodeur says. "When you get older, you start losing band members for reasons other than girlfriends, you know?"
The loss of Richard hit the band hard. "It's still tough," says Brodeur. "Kevin was just 40 years old, always smiling, loved music more than anybody. The reason he played percussion with us is because he couldn't drum. He had Marfan syndrome and he couldn't carry equipment."
Next to leave the band was vocalist Hannah Stogner. "We lost Hannah when she had her second baby," Brodeur says. "She didn't really have time, but I bet she's second-guessing that now—an automatic night out to practice."
After a hiatus it was time to regroup, says Brodeur: "Replacing those two took awhile, but now we've got another percussionist [Glenn Morin] and another female vocalist [Debi Salli] and it's great. The idea was to build it up, and it's an interesting band because the music is all over the place. The percussion adds this crazy Latin feel to it. Our trumpet player [Bob Kuhn] used to play with Lenny Gomulka playing polka and touring the country, so you have that element, and a bass player who grew up on jazz and that sort of stuff, and I was an indie rock guy, so we have this whole potpourri of different stuff, and it's just a lot of fun."
The current lineup is rounded out by lead guitarist Jared Quinn, whom Brodeur personally and ardently recruited, calling him one of his favorite guitarists and "one of those Valley treasures."
For a self-proclaimed indie rock guy with a love for artists like Poi Dog Pondering and Calexico, Brodeur claims that having a seven-piece band playing more exotic, embellished music affects the way he writes. "It's so funny, because it's the opposite of any band I've ever been in," he says. "I'm used to bringing in ideas and going over them with the band and fleshing them out. With this band, they want me to bring in finished ideas and then we do it. I'm not going to write out charts for the trumpet player, but I'll sing parts. I'm not going to tell the drummer or bass player what to play—they get it, and bring it. But having it set up this way, along with the fact that we don't practice that much—the songs come in much more finished than I've ever had to bring them in before."
Has the change been good for his songwriting?
"No, it's too hard," he says and laughs. "It's a challenge. You know, I love interplay, I love hearing a drum part and thinking 'I'm going to build that part over this,' and that's limited here, so the songs emerge from my bedroom and they come out and they pretty much sound a lot alike. But they become a lot more ornate. We build them up slowly, adding a whole bunch of parts."
Brodeur says he has increasingly heard his bandmates' instruments in his head as he writes: "When we first started, I didn't used to [hear them], but I'm definitely starting to now. I still really want them to come up with their own stuff."
Storybox shows are a family affair: feel-good events that stand in sharp contrast to Brodeur's early days sneaking into clubs. "We like to organize our shows as events," he says. "We always try to make it so family members and kids can hang out before or after, or even come up on stage. It's a more relaxing, socializing atmosphere."
Storybox has one full-length album to its credit so far. "We recorded Empty Canvas with Mark Thayer at Signature Sounds Studios in Connecticut," Brodeur says. "It was a great fit; he was amazing to work with. Plus he cooked for us. We ate well, and were able to really focus on making the record."
The band is working on new material, with plans to record a follow-up album sometime down the road."
For more information on Storybox, visit storyboxonline.com.
