5 Questions With Crobot’s Brandon Yeagley: Motorboat 2015, New Music, Craft Beer + More

Before Crobot's New York show on their "Drunk As S--t Tour" with Wilson, we had the opportunity to chat with vibrant frontman Brandon Yeagley. He shared his excitement for Crobot to be a part of Motorhead’s Motorboat Cruise this year as well as future touring plans. Yeagley also talked about other ventures such as Crobot’s new craft beer and his plans to create a graphic novel. The band also has already performed some new material on the road and is currently working on their new studio album. Check out our interview with Brandon Yeagley of Crobot below:

You’re no stranger to concert cruises, and Crobot will be on this year’s Motorboat Cruise. What are you looking forward to most about this experience?

The lineup is incredible. I’m really excited about Motorhead, they’re legends and it’s the loudest show you’ll probably ever hear. I’m ready -- my ears are ready for that! CoC and the return of Pepper [Keenan], just wow! Deliverance is one of my all-time favorite albums. I remember when I was a kid and my mom would drive around and if we didn’t have anything to listen to, Deliverance was the go-to album. I grew up listening to CoC so to be able to see them and come full circle is going to be cool.

What band would you want to be a part of that are playing on Motorboat 2015?

That’s a really hard question, I’m going to go ahead and say Crobot. [Laughs] I’m going to say CoC, no one can fill Pepper’s shoes and I wouldn’t even try to. The riffage that comes out of those amps and the thunderous grooves is definitely a foundation of what we do.

Crobot and Wilson are on the Drunk as S--t tour. What is you alcoholic beverage of choice?

I’m a little girly, I like gin and tonics or I should say I’m an old man since I like gin and tonics. I have to shamelessly self-promote here and I’ll segway into it, I’m not much of a beer drinker but we have a beer coming out. It’s a double brown ale and it’s really good. Double Barley Brewery is going to be brewing it for us and the beer I have had at that place is just incredible.  Like I said, I’m not much a beer drinker but I’ll try craft beers. But I don’t drink it other than to get drunk. [Laughs] We’re very close to releasing it it’s called “Something Supernatur-ale.” [Laughs] We like our puns. It’s 11.2 percent alcohol and it’s very smooth, too. I’m not a guy who usually likes beer for the taste I drink it to get drunk and this is my kind of beer because I get both.

What does the rest of 2015 hold in store for you and Crobot?

You know what I’ve been working on something for what seems like years now, I’m really trying to put together a graphic novel. It’s been months and months in the works and I’m still trying to find time to dig into it and hash the story out. Between [Chris] Bishop being the amazing artist that he is and a buddy we know from back home who is a comic book artist and we’re going to put all of our brains together. I’m writing some script right now for the first issue and we’re going to try to get a teaser out there maybe in the next half a year. We’re constantly on the road so it’s hard to find time to sit down and put some time into heavy writing. I’m excited about it and it’s definitely something we’re going to push to keep going and I’m certainly going to do my best to try to hastily put together a script.

I think it was Dio and the way Clutch’s Neil Fallon tells a story is something that I want to put into what I’m doing and the writing. The graphic novel is going to be a deeper scraping of the stories that are on the album. You’ll get some back story on the characters like “The Necromancer” and “Queen of the Light” they’ll be showing up, it’ll be a little more for those beardos out there looking for more stories. [Laughs]

After we finish out this tour with Wilson and Mothership, we’re hooking up with Motorhead and we’re going on a full U.S. tour with them and half of the bill will be with Saxon and the other half will be with Anthrax so that’s exciting. We’re definitely pre-gaming for Motorboat. [Laughs] So up until Motorboat that’s what we’re doing and then we’ll have a few shows that lead us back to home and then we have a few weeks off to finish writing the new record. After that we’re hitting the UK and Europe with Scorpion Child and Buffalo Summer and that should take us to Christmas and hopefully we’ll be in the studio recording our new album. It’s going to be a busy rest of the year for us.

Have you been working on stuff for the new album yet. If so, how’s that been going?

We’re always working whether it’s Bishop stockpiling riffs and sending out ideas or just thinking about songs that may influence something.  We’ll here a groove change in this old funkadelic song and we have an ever growing playlist on Spotify. I think the new stuff is definitely an evolution of the Crobot sound. There are dark songs but funkier songs at the same time and we’re playing some new songs on this tour so we like to test the waters out and play some new songs for the fans.

Our thanks to Crobot’s Brandon Yeagley for taking the time to speak with us. Order Crobot’s album Something Supernatural via iTunes here. For more information on the 2015 Motorboat Cruise, go here!

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