The Growlers: “I decided to get really good at being poor”

Frontman Brooks Nielsen has revitalised the garage rock band’s name after the release of his 2025 solo album ‘Grain of Dirt’.

After years at the forefront of one of the best bands to come out of America, frontman Brooks Nielsen is reclaiming The Growlers’ name and continuing to water the plant he sowed the seed of. Famed for songs like Black Memories and Going Gets Tough, Brooks shines on album cuts like Tijuana or What it is, and has made a name for himself as someone who can write a psych-tinged tune or two.

Brooks and co. brought their A-game to London for a revitalised, new-look Growlers without all the bells and whistles. Six years ago, I caught the band at Manchester’s Albert Hall, where the setlist then would send fans into a fit of rage to have missed out on, but the one we experienced in London never missed the mark, and ended with a promise of a return; a full UK tour, not just London.

We caught up with the musician the day after his first show back in the UK.

How was your gig last night, first of all?

It was really good. That’s the icebreaker, right? The first show. So there’s some nerves, but I did like 24 [to] 25 songs.

Yeah, last night went really, really well. I mean, it’s the first night you’re sitting with all this equipment and stuff. We had some technical problems, but nobody noticed, and we kind of played through it.

How did you choose the setlist for this tour?

Well, this band probably knew almost 50 songs because we prepared for Australia and, after some time passed, I was like, ‘That is a lot of music, I need to calm down. I’m just going to pick maybe ten songs to learn’. So, we did a week of rehearsal before we left and just got it up to 60, and now I can change it every night.

You have a lot of music to go through.

Yeah, and these guys are cool; they’re fearless, and it’s not like, ‘Oh god, what are the surprises?’ I send them the setlist kind of midday, and that’s enough for them to wrap their heads around it, and [it] keeps it interesting for us and fun. Otherwise, it gets pretty monotonous.

I remember back in Manchester in 2020, you took a request for Dull Boy halfway through the set.

Oh, really?

You wouldn’t be taking any requests this time, would you?

We learned that one, too. It’s difficult; there’s so much music now. Even last time, people were yelling off solo album stuff — and we did not learn that.

Do you still enjoy touring as much as when you first started?

Yeah, when we got forced off the road from COVID, taking a forced break, that was really quickly, like, ‘Wait a minute, I was pretty ungrateful’. That gave me a new perspective, and I think just this romantic thing; beginning touring times, but we’re lucky that we’re playing some well-off venues, tour buses and nice hotels and things. There’s nothing I can really complain about. It’s really good to see people. I hear a lot of sweet things from fans.

You actually do have two people already waiting outside to come in.

Yeah, I met them.

One of them travelled from Ireland to be here.

Since we just played London, I feel like we’ve got a lot of travellers.

You played in a few different cities last time. Why is it just London this time? Is it easier?

We decided to do a shorter tour this first time around, and the next time we’ll come and do some festival stuff or some more expansive tour, but yeah, it's very expensive to come.

Yeah, all the logistics and stuff. You’ve got to sort everything out, and it’s hard work.

Yeah, everyone makes it a nightmare. I feel like every country’s mad at each other. Like, you give our people hell coming over there, we’re going to give you hell coming over here, and it’s very complicated.

What’s the life balance like? You’ve got children. How do you balance that with touring?

It’s hard for them, much harder for them than it is for me. When I’m at home, I’m as hands-on as I can be. I don’t have any type of life outside of family. If I’m going to write or make a record, that’s it. I’ve probably never gone out since I’ve had children. Like, gone out with a buddy drinking or something. I’ve never done that. I literally only hang out with my wife and kids. So, that helps. I guess there’s some guilt when I take off. I just really devote myself at home, but I also really enjoy it. It’s just the three funny little buddies that crack me up.

Do they listen to a lot of your music?

I don’t show them it, but my wife does, especially when I’m gone.

That must be cool. Especially in music videos — to see you when you’re not there.

That kind of depicts what their favourite song is at first when they’re young.

Like, ‘play the insect song’, based on the Problems III video. But they do; they’re all very musical. My wife is more musical than I am. They’ve all shown little bits of brilliance.

Would you ever feature them on an album?

Maybe one day. I can tell that they want to. They do little things to kind of impress, like, ‘look what I made’. So, possibly.

It would be cool to have a hidden tambourine or maracas, and nobody knows it’s them.

My son’s been going around for years saying he’s in a band with me or he’s going on tour with me and these things. Maybe one day.

What about your Demastered album? Do you play any of those songs live?

We’re playing Feel My Funk and a few others from there. But the version that I re-recorded them. It’s not far off from how they were as demos. Well, they’re mostly demos from other albums, like Chinese Fountain.

Yeah. I really like Someday, the Demastered version.

Oh, I forgot to put that on the list. This band did learn that.

How do you feel the landscape has changed musically from when you first started to now? Because you’ve got streaming and vinyl coming back as well. A lot has changed.

It turned into everything I always wanted. I really didn’t understand the industry, and I thought it was confusing and pretty unfair towards artists. It must be really difficult to start now, so I feel bad for those guys. Being established and having fans is exactly where I want to be right now.

I don’t want to be attached to any label. I want to go home and make a little song factory and start pumping them out, putting them out as often as I want to: single, single, a couple songs, a few songs. Just doing it that way.

As far as what’s going on in the world, I have no idea. It’s pretty ridiculous how much of an old recluse I am. I don’t think I’ve heard of a new band in ten years.

We never really got the love from that, from the industry in terms of press and stuff. I never really, I guess, wanted it. I never paid attention to it. I mean, I like to read about music in books and things.

Do you still listen to records?

I listen to records. I don’t listen to vinyl anymore because my kids destroy it. But yeah, I’m finding things through Spotify and whatnot. From friends, mostly, telling me about something. But generally, old stuff.

I don’t really have my finger on whatever contemporary music is. If I take a guess, I’d say it seems like it got far away from bands playing music right now. Hopefully that comes back. But, then again, I don’t know. It’s to each their own. I guess whatever inspires you, whatever they’re doing, good for them. It’s a tough business, though, if someone can find a way to be successful and stick it out.

It took me so many years to get any form of success, to even get a pay cheque. Maybe ten years. I was fine with it. I felt like all the people that I idolised or looked up to — that’s what they did. So it was just, I thought, romantic. I decided to get really good at being poor. It kind of shaped me. I’m still this way. I mean, I feel like I’m walking around looking homeless.

For a lot of artists these days, there’s really not much money in music, it seems like. Especially during COVID, it’s probably quite a struggle. You’re on tour, you can’t do anything.

Yeah, that was tough. It drove me to be creative. I got tired of complaining. It was actually an introverted person’s paradise.

I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I really don’t have to go hang out with anybody or do anything’. I was Dad all day and then would work from eight o’clock at night till three in the morning, every night. I wrote over 100 songs with some friends, and it was the most productive time. I look back, and I’m like, ‘Oh, fuck, I could really use another world shutdown’.

I got a lot done in COVID times. The point where you have nothing else to do, you can actually focus on what you’ve been ignoring sometimes.

Yeah, I would have been pretty regretful if I decided to just fuck off that entire time.

What are some of your go-to classic albums to listen to?

I’ve been listening to a lot of The Kinks lately, going through each one of their albums. And the Village Green record — I never really paid a lot of attention to [it]. I’ve been making the whole band listen to it. I’m sure there are a lot of things I don’t even understand because it’s very English.

I just love The Kinks. I feel like they didn’t have this desire to be American, like all the other English bands did, to really try and cross over to America and be this American rock ‘n’ roll, blues thing. They’re just so much more funny and strange and prideful of where they’re from, in a small-town kind of way.

I’ve really been in love with that lately. I always go back to ‘70s punk music — that I first got into — so a lot of that. With the band, we were looking at covering The Stranglers songs right before we left, which would have been fun to play over here, but we learned some other stuff instead.

But I don’t know. I think I move around a lot. It’s on the weather too. If it’s raining, I’m going to put on my old blues records. Or, if we’re going out on a bike ride, we’re listening to The Ventures or something silly. A lot of stuff for the kids. They tend to like a lot of the old reggae music when I play that for them. My son really likes old hip-hop right now.

What inspires your songwriting? I particularly like What it is from Hot Tropics. I love the story that’s told in that.

I mean, I grew up a Catholic boy. So there’s a lot of fear of God and talk of the devil and possession and all these things. It worked to scare me a little bit, but not enough to make me not go out there and try everything at least once.

I was like a freestyle rapper at first. I’d hear a riff and be like, ‘I really like that, stop’. Then, when I hear that, what’s the first thing that comes to my mind? It’s got this spooky thing. Okay, I’m going to write about some kind of ghost thing and go from there. Then, okay, this is what I got. Let’s write the next part. What if it goes here and it becomes hands-on?

Once I get the words, I can really direct; this is where the song [goes], what it needs and what needs to come next. That whole time I was doing a lot of that, for that record.

It was just like, you know what? No one talks about this, and this kind of existential stuff and death. And yeah, I think that’s where all of a sudden people started calling us ‘beach goth’. Like, okay, there’s a gothic element to these guys.

What made you initially go solo?

I was in a fight with one of the guys and was basically holding up the band and holding it for ransom. I was like, ‘Okay, that’s what’s going to happen’. I’m not going to sit around and cry about it. It’s okay. I’ll get to work and do what I do, or see if I want to do this — if this is still what I want to do. This is what I’m good at. It was yet to be proven if I can do it with a new group of people and enjoy it.

It took a month of me just talking myself into trying. As soon as I got a chance to sit at my desk and go for it, it was like it just poured out of me. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is exactly who I am and what I love doing’. It was like immediate therapy.

Like [for] three months, four months straight, just nonstop songwriting and [I] became this really jolly person every day. Like, ‘It was a good night last night. A lot of good shit came out. What do you guys want to do today?’

I’ve always needed little moments like that to convince myself. I did it early on with The Growlers. I’d feel like: ‘What are we doing?’ We have a small amount of songs, we go up there, we try and act cool for this crowd of people. I don’t understand why I’m doing this.

I have to like the songwriting more. We need to prove something. I’d like to make a record a month for eight months, see how many songs we can do, and really push ourselves as far as we can and see if we can write music. We did that for eight months. I pushed so hard; I gave myself shingles. It was the moment I was like, ‘Oh, yes, I think one day I’m going to be able to say I’m a songwriter’. I’m not just trying to be famous or get girls or be cool. That’s not interesting to me, nor was that ever interesting to me in any kind of rock ‘n’ roll story. I was always interested in the weird songwriters.

I still have to do it periodically, to go, ‘Why am I doing this? What am I getting out of it? And is there a purpose?’ I get people rise up and prove to me that this is all worth it. This band is majorly one of them. How do all these people get along? Everyone’s so good. These are magical moments. I feel really lucky sometimes.

Do you go into writing sessions with an idea that it’s a Growlers or solo song?

That was the idea. Like, let’s write a bunch of music. That’s a Growlers one, that’s a Brooks one. And it doesn’t work like that. It’s really got to be in that moment, whatever project you’re working on. I’m not holding scraps off for different things. Then you start going, ‘Who am I?’, compartmentalising each song to whatever personality and multiple personalities that need different songs.

I worked on Brooks for a while; I’ve closed that chapter, then diving back into the old Growlers world, going ‘where was I?’, and I want to do it in the same spirit. I’ve really submerged myself in all the old material, looking through old tapes and cassette tapes, listening to everything, going, ‘oh, wow’, convincing myself. I thought we were pretty good. It was genuine, you know? It got me excited to do it again.

Then playing the shows, of course. I was playing Growlers’ music and Brooks’ music and playing for three hours a night. I’m like, ‘we’re kind of getting it’. It’s different. I’m really focused on trying to sound like the old Growlers and the spirit of it, and picking the right songs and thinking about making new stuff. It makes a difference playing an all-Growlers’ music show with all of that extra thought to detail. It’s a lot different than I thought it was going to be.

How are the three-hour sets? They must be tough.

They’re exhausting. You really rely on people to take musical parts as much as you can. Like, please, take a solo. You can’t do it all the time.

I mean, you hear about other people doing it, Springsteen and stuff, but then you look at their touring and like, yeah, you’re doing three shows a week. We were doing five or six. Only some places get the big shows, probably hometown shows or shows like this, where you get two in a row.

We were planning on going really long here, but I forgot about the curfews they have for the club nights. Should have booked the club night, too.

How was the reception yesterday? How was it going out on stage?

It was really great. I’ve got these in-ear monitors now, so all the sound [is] coming through here. I can’t really hear what people are saying. There are a lot of people [going] ‘oi, blah, blah, blah’. I'm like, ‘oh, shit’. I’m going to have them put a mic out there tonight so I can hear the crowd and turn that up so I can hear them a little bit. I mean, they were all smiles and a lot of couples cuddling and people singing lyrics and all sorts of different age ranges. I couldn’t ask for more. It was really, really lovely.

Must be cool selling it out — people still want to come to gigs after you’ve been a band for so long.

It’s strange because before the show happened, I was walking around London like any other person. I feel like a very small fish right now. Unrecognisable. To go here like, ‘oh, see, people know me’. It’s pretty special.

I feel like I never even travelled the world because we weren’t roughing it with a backpack. We were going to venues with crowds that were waiting for us with open arms. It’s a really nice way to go around the world.