The Brooks Nielsen Interview: When You’re Living In A Dream

Plenty of words could describe the one-on-one interview I had with The Growlers frontman and alternative musician Brooks Nielsen, but the only one best chosen for this situation would be “starstruck.” After parting ways from the band in 2020, the tropical cowboy from La La Land ditched all publicity and hunkered down to focus on what truly matters. “I wasn’t ready to get interviewed, but we’re past that now,” says Nielsen. “I think it’s time to get back out there.” Now, with his tour on the way to promote his new solo album A Ride I’m Waiting For, it was about time to shed some light on what’s been happening. So Nielsen reached out to me personally (after a few months of email exchanges) to give SLUG Magazine and his fans the inside scoop on his music, family and future projects. Yeah, we’re pretty much best friends now. 

Throughout his life, Nielsen had a calling with music. His earliest inspirations would come from surf and skateboarding films, harkening back to Southern California roots. In the search for his own sound, he would jump from friend group to friend group. “To the stoners, the punks, the greasers … I didn’t want to claim one scene,” says Nielsen. In his early 20s, Nielsen would form the band The Growlers, concocting a psychedelic blend of garage blues and whitewashed surf rock. “A few years after high school, I started [The Growlers]. I’m surprised that this barely-controlled chaos lasted this long,” he says. For the next decade, the band would release five studio albums, including Chinese Fountain, whose 10 year anniversary this year will follow a live release. 

The jam sessions and parties drew out their wreckloose lifestyle as a balancing act. “We started a band to party not to work, we became road dogs and began touring,” says Nielsen, reflecting on old times. Things would take a drastic turn in 2020, however, when the band was forced off the road mid-tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic and band issues that Nielsen referred to as personal “mini hells.” Due to these issues, Nielsen stepped away from the group entirely, but his drive to create never stopped. “When this world shuts down, I think to myself ‘woo, I’m a spoiled brat. I miss being on the road,’” says Nielsen.

Barely surviving the lockdown both emotionally and financially, Nielsen would cut himself away from the world inside his Southern California casa and merely focus on the bare essentials of his life: his family and his sanity. “I took no political stance on [the pandemic] and just nurtured our little tribe,” Nielsen says of his family consisting of his wife Melisa Tellez Nielsen and his three children Miko, Valentino and Rio. This time of solitude was a time of reflection, even going back to the music of yesteryears. Musical influences stem from the emotional swan songs of the ‘50s country artists like Roy Rogers and Hank Williams and would then merge with the islander “gangerts singing love song” sounds of early reggae like Lee “Scratch” Perry. This would also be the time where Nielsen would nitpick through old pre-recorded demos that hadn’t seen the light of day since Chinese Fountain, which some tracks, like “Tropical Cowboy” and “Chew My Heart Out” would then see a second life in his new album. “I was so disorganized,” says Nielsen. I was listening to voice memos, script notes, old cassette tapes from the last 15 years of my life … I thought to myself, ‘Why not?’”

Now with equipment and luggage packed for a two month tour, Nielsen waits in anticipation; ready to get back out there with new releases of solo work as well as some Growlers fan favorites. “Fans could age out, there’s new fans, old fans, fans bringing their kids. It’s different everywhere, but I’m just stoked [performing] for them.” Good luck out there, Brooks—this applause is for you! If you love the almost vintage stylings of old country or beach rock, catch Brooks Nielsen live on his Chinese Fountain Tour at Soundwell on Friday, September 20.

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