Making Something Happen
Chris Brokaw, instinct, and the space between songs at Town and the City
Chris Brokaw is one of those names that sits just under the surface, something you start to recognize after you’ve traced it backwards a bit, through bands like Codeine and Come, through records that move slowly and leave space where most bands would try to fill it. If you’ve spent any time in that corner of indie rock, you’ve probably heard him already, even if you didn’t realize it at the time.
At this year’s Town and the City Festival in Lowell, he’s stepping in with something that doesn’t have much history behind it yet, a new collaboration with Tanya Donelly that still feels close to where it was made. These April and May shows are the first time it’s really being tested in a room, which means whatever this set ends up being, it’s still in motion. He’s set for Saturday at 8:50 pm at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre.
When I asked him what that feels like going in, I got the wording slightly wrong in the follow up, leaning on the idea of letting things take shape and seeing where the room leads. He caught it right away.
“I didn’t say ‘letting something happen,’” he said. “I said ‘make something happen.’”
It lands heavier than it first reads.
He’s not walking into a room waiting for a moment to arrive. He’s stepping into it trying to create one, even if he can’t fully explain how it works when it does. When I pushed a little further, looking for something more concrete, he didn’t try to dress it up or force it into anything clean.
“I can’t really describe it. That’s sort of alchemical and hard to put into words.”
That uncertainty doesn’t come across like hesitation. It feels closer to the point, especially with something this new, where the music has to be played before it makes any real sense, and that same push and pull shows up in how he talks about playing in general, where instinct carries a lot of the weight but never fully settles things.
“I’m usually happy with ‘first thought best thought’ actions,” he said. “But I don’t know. I always feel like I can do better or improve, but I try to make peace with letting something be finished, too.”
There’s no clean resolution in that thinking. It leans more toward accepting that things are always going to feel a little unfinished and moving forward anyway, which lines up with the way his music holds space instead of rushing to fill it.
When you step back and look at how much ground he’s covered, the different projects and sounds, there isn’t a clear explanation for how it all connects, at least not one he’s interested in forcing after the fact.
“Everything I do artistically comes intuitively,” he said. “I’m always happy for surprises… I don’t have a complete sense of whether my whole body of work is consistent. Everything made sense to me at the time.”
Each piece stands on its own, which might be the reason it all holds together as well as it does, even without a bigger plan holding it in place.
Even the idea of becoming a musician never really settled into a defined decision.
“I’m not sure I ever really made that decision,” he said. “I’ve made the decision not to do many other things, but since I was 12 I’ve been doing this and it’s been constant.”
It doesn’t really come across like a career path. It feels more like something he just kept doing, which makes the longevity land a little differently.
And even now, standing on a lineup like this, there’s still that flicker of doubt that creeps in before the set starts, the kind that doesn’t really go away no matter how long you’ve been doing it.
“Am I good enough to be here? Is my stuff maybe… better?”
It’s a strange place to land after this many years, sharing a bill with people he grew up listening to and still feeling that question in the back of his head, even if it only lives there for a little while.
But that part doesn’t follow him onstage.
“Ideally onstage I’m just inside the songs.”
Once it starts, the comparison fades out, or at least it’s supposed to, and what’s left is just the act of being in it while it’s happening.
Which circles back to that first correction.
Not letting something happen. Making something happen.
With a set this new, that’s probably the only real expectation to hold onto. Not a finished version of the songs or something fully defined, but a moment where the music settles into the room and becomes something you couldn’t have predicted beforehand, something that only exists there for a few minutes and then disappears again.
That’s the version of this worth showing up for.