Photo by Yassine el Mansouri, courtesy of Alex Braden.

Bella Russia, an instrumental trio comprised of brothers Josh and Alex Braden, and Nathan Mitchell have already garnered lofty comparisons to some of the city’s other instrumental (or primarily instrumental) acts, but interestingly enough, they seem to fit well on a bill with just about anyone. Their skill at creating patterned compositions complements the experimental free jazz arrangements of Janel and Anthony but with their ability to dig in and churn out gritty guitar riffs, they can also make preceding the nouveau Springsteen guitar gods of the future Diarrhea Planet seem sensible. Tonight they’ll be headlining at the Velvet Lounge and we talked to brothers Josh and Alex about their unconventional childhood education, recording a song in three hours and playing locally.

Find them online: On Facebook and Bandcamp

See them next: Tonight at the Velvet Lounge.

Where are you originally from?

Alex: We moved here from Rhode Island. We were both born in Michigan though. And now, our immediate family has since moved down to North Carolina which is totally foreign to both of us. But our little sister Hilary moved up here a little later and Ben’s up here and he’s living with Josh. Ben moved here from North Carolina. We never lived there. There are still four siblings left. There are eight of us in all.

That’s a lot.

Alex: It’s a brood. It’s a hefty sum.

How was that—growing up as one of eight?

Josh: Better in retrospect.

Alex: Josh and I had different experiences for sure. It was a very unusual situation. We were homeschooled the whole way through and it wasn’t your typical sequestered Amish situation. It was more like—my mom was pretty religious but she also divorced my dad and there was a bunch of other crap going on so for most of our formative years it was us, kids and mom was working so the homeschooling was us reading books to each other. She did a lot, obviously, but it wasn’t a farmstead sort of situation at all.

Josh: Not at all. We were the kids on the street who were chilling out in our garage ripping up our jeans and spray painting them with the music blaring to get the attention of the girls who lived across the street.

Alex: It was nice though because all the time that we spent at home, we were forced to do a huge rigorous academic and musical schedule. Our daily schedule was 14 hours long or something like that. We were extremely disciplined. So towards the end of it—we had this music room and my mom wanted us to be a family band. She’d been watching The Brady Bunch and everything. We never wanted to do that but Josh and I have been playing music together since I was, like, ten. Somebody was always practicing piano and I was always practicing guitar. I used to practice for three or four hours a day. Josh would practice for two hours a day.

Josh, when did you switch over to drums?

Josh: It just kind of happened.

Alex: He’s an amazing pianist.

Josh: Definitely loved playing the piano, loved music and was really interested in seeking out cool bands at that point, but the drums were a cool instrument to play. Also, my dad had played drums for a little while. Our mom would buy up music gear for us. Basically what we needed was a drum set in our music room because we had a music room in our basement and we would practice all the time. So, somebody had to learn and I wanted to. It just made sense to me really quickly.

Alex: Josh and I are a lot different in that I was always more disciplined with the music stuff but he always had better taste. So, I’d be practicing and practicing and he was the first of us to find out about Bright Eyes and as a 14 or 15 year old kid, I was like, “Whoa! This is weird!” It was a really religious environment so when we found out about some of the rock and roll sort of things—I remember when we found Sigur Ros, we were like, “Oh, this will never catch on.” And then, “Oh, this might catch on!”

Josh: At that point you couldn’t seek out music as readily on the Internet, so I would grab Under the Radar and magazines like that, literally go to the back and read through all the album reviews and then kinda look for something that sounded like I would enjoy it and then walk out of the magazine section into the CD section and buy like five CDs.

Alex: $19 each!

Josh: They were less, but definitely still overpriced.

How did you guys meet Nathan?

Alex: I think I met Nathan first. He went to school with my wife and all her friends. They all went to this small elemetary/middle school called Rivendell in Arlington. I think he was in the same graduating class as she and her friends. So, after I met her, he was sort of on the periphery of the friend groups. I knew that he played music and he also plays guitar and sings in a band called Prisms which is more of a shoegaze outfit. So, I’d seen him play a couple of times and had no idea that he wanted to play bass or that he could even play bass. But I’d hung out with him a few times and saw him play in a Chinese restaurant once. But we parted ways with this previous group of people and I was walking up Washington Boulevard feeling really distraught and despondent and Nathan just drove by and said, “Hey, what’s going on?” I said, “Oh, we just broke up with this band.” So, we went and got a drink at some dive bar and he said, “You know, I’m a bass player, actually. I’m not a guitar player. I’d really love to play bass.” The best thing about Nathan, besides being a great bass player is having a great attitude. He really complements Josh and I in that he is super positive and he can handle it when Josh and I freak out at each other.

Josh: It’s like Alex is on one spectrum, I’m on the other and Nate’s kind of like, “Get over it.”

Alex: So, Josh and I had been writing this song on our own and Nathan attended a few practices and we were like, “Hey, why don’t you try this bass line” and we ended up writing a song and it was really good. His attitude was all go go go. He sort of fell into it really. We had no intention of being instrumental but we were having a lot of fun and we felt like what we were doing sounded pretty alright. That was a year ago.

How was that different from the last band you were in?

Alex: They didn’t even have a name. That was in the formative stages, too, when it fell apart.

Josh: I’d say in Bella Russia, we’re all very open to pushing the boundaries of music. I think it’s important to all of us. We were inspired by musicians growing up to be able to inspire other people, so it’s about the song, but it’s also about the details and the parts and doing something new and different. Whereas the last band was more song formative.

Alex: The last band, we sort of joined a band that was already going. There was just variety of expectations that weren’t aligning and a variety of ambitions that we couldn’t really meet for each other. We’d joined a band that already had a bunch of songs written. Good songs.

Josh: They definitely had a method, a trinity in the way they played together.

Alex: They really only wanted a drummer, and I was like, “Well, why don’t you take both of us!” So, Josh and I were fighting really hard to feel like we were expressing ourselves and this other band was fighting really hard to maintain their identity and it just wasn’t working. I think it was good for both parties that we were able to go off and do something else. Josh and I are doing something that for the most part we feel extremely fulfilled by and they’ve since got a drummer and they’re doing great.

Josh: We attend each other’s shows now.

Alex: They go by Humble Fire now.

In fact the first song of yours that I found was a part of a recording project by Hays Holladay to record a song in three hours. How was that experience?

Alex: Josh really enjoyed it. We all really enjoyed it. Hays is awesome.

Josh: He’s really good at what he does and he has a good method. So, if there was anyone you could record a song with in three hours, he’s that person.

Alex: Josh really enjoyed it because Hays would let him punch in on drums at whatever point. Josh could lay down an entire track and then go back and then maybe do a bar or two bars. And that’s boring but in the studio, that’s so huge. Josh really enjoyed that. The drum tracks for that song—a lot of it has been spliced together in post-production. It was really Hays’ project. We wrote the song, we played the song but everything that happened in our experience was all Hays. You could tell, too. I could see him start to mix things as we were tracking. He would be patching up different spliced in cymbal crashes and stuff while he’s tracking bass. The only reason it got done in three hours is because he was doing it. That guy’s awesome, which is why we wanted him to mix our record. Unfortunately, we’ve realized that mixing cross-country is extremely difficult and time consuming so we’re going to try to get him to master it. He’s in L.A. now. We want some Hays. He’s got to Hays-ify it.

It seems like most of the shows where I’ve seen you around the area, and maybe this is a function of being a new band, have been in DIY spaces and house shows.

Alex: We’ve tried to book Rock and Roll Hotel just to really do it. We got really good feedback from Jimmy and apparently Nathan knows him because he’s a big fan of Prisms. I think I just didn’t follow up enough on that. We’ve only played DC9 for Nerd Nite. We’re about to play Velvet Lounge for the fourth time. We’ve played Galaxy Hut a couple of times, which has been great.

Josh: Comet. The live recording is from Comet, too.

Alex: We did Space Bar in Falls Church which is Galaxy Hut’s sister.

You’ve actually been breaking your own rule this month and been playing more than once a month.

Alex: We’ve seen a lot of bands that we really enjoy that live in the area that take on too many gigs and lose their freshness. If I can see you next week, than it doesn’t matter.

Josh: Alex is a tease.

Alex: I’m not a tease, but I understand that a lot of the reason that these national acts tour so well is that they’re only in town for tonight. Or they’re only in town for two nights. Animal Collective added a third night and they’re from Baltimore and they’re amazing. That’s totally appropriate. But if Animal Collective was playing the 9:30 Club every Friday—if they were the house band—who cares? I don’t care. I love Animal Collective. I don’t care if they play there once a week. Also, I don’t want to demand too much. We’re still sort of burgeoning and we’re relying very heavily on our social group to support us. I don’t want to ask too much of them. “Hey, I know it’s a Tuesday and you have to work tomorrow, but we’re playing.” “But you played last Friday.” “I know, but could you still come out?” “I love your music but I’m sorry. Eleven p.m. on a Tuesday doesn’t work for me.” I don’t want to ask them. I’d rather do one show a month than once a week. But it is really fun meeting a bunch of out of town bands. At some point though, you have to stop asking so much of your local support. It’s not fair.