Electric currents of creativity flow rapidly through the mind of Dan Briggs – if at any point the bassist for North Carolina’s Between The Buried And Me were to stop working, he might find himself in a catatonic state, lost and bewildered by anything that isn’t music.
“If I sat in my chair when I was home and wasn’t touring, not working on Between The Buried material, I’d probably go psycho,” he says. “The band probably wouldn’t grow and advance as much as it does so I’m grateful to have so many things to occupy my mind.”
Between The Buried and me are about to close the chapter on their ninth album Coma Ecliptic with the release of a very special live DVD. Performing the album in its entirety, the DVD is a giant creative monster in itself but Briggs – never one to sit still – draws focus to the other areas that pull on his attention.
His second band Nova Collective has just released their album The Further Side and Briggs finds that fresh bodies and minds quench the thirst he has to keep the music flowing. “Part of it is who I’m collaborating with,” Briggs says. “Two talented musicians from the UK and our drummer Matt Lynch – he’s played with me on recordings with other groups, he’s my rock, he goes with me everywhere.
“It’s fun when you line up with new people because we have a shared love for a certain kind of music. The focus of this music is more of a fusion sound. I was curious to dig deep and pull from different kinds of music and give each song its own feel. It drastically took off from there. It’s exciting to see what you can come up with with a different set of dudes.
“I feel like if you’re a creative person and this person comes and says, ‘Hey, here’s this verse I wrote,’ that’s just going to spark something in you – you can’t hear something good and not get excited and want to dive in to it – that’s pretty much the story of my life at this point.”
The most important part to all this crazy innovative movement is that of course, Briggs is happy doing it. “Absolutely,” he says firmly, “I love it – what’s hard is turning things into reality. Each piece I work on, no matter what group it is, is the most important thing to me at that time in my life. We’ve been trying really hard to get Nova a live space – we’ve had a couple of opportunities that haven’t quite worked out but it’s harder bringing people into America than it is to export them. Our debut will probably be outside of America – it’s just that kind of taxing thing that you don’t plan for.”
Amazingly, Briggs is involved in a third band, and even though he says they’re all of equal footing, one clearly takes up more of his life than the others. When Between The Buried And Me released Coma two years ago, the band received some incredibly positive feedback from both the media and their peers. With the Coma Ecliptic Live! DVD project, Briggs and co. wanted to firmly seal the saga with a massive display, and topping this chapter Briggs said, isn’t a point of concern for the band. “Because of the nature of the music that we play, it’s always evolving, it’s always changing.
“I think we feel like we’re improving on it because we’re going year to year, album to album. As composers, writers, arrangers, it’s real easy for us to jump back in to our chairs and start working. You start sharing a couple of ideas and it takes from that.
“We’re now in our 30s and we’ve done a fucking tonne of records – this is going to be our ninth record or something, it’s crazy. But when I think about it , I was 20 when I wrote Alaska so I’d hope that what I write when I’m 32 is significantly better. It’s just that idea we have where we feel like we’re constantly evolving, growing and changing.”