Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have been on the road since 1998, spreading a sound as dark as burnt rubber across six continents. So how does an organism like BRMC keep moving for 20 years without slowing down? Drummer Leah Shapiro puts it down to persistence, curiosity and reinvention.
“It’s important to explore your craft, whatever instrument you play,” Shapiro says. “If you become stagnant in your craft, eventually your contribution to music is going to become stagnate as well. You’ve got to explore.”
Shapiro, who prefers time on the road to time in the studio, doesn’t see a contradiction between being a rebel and being a hard worker.
“We can be workaholics, but, when we’re not, we can be extremely lazy as well,” she says. “In order to avoid that, we just try to stay workaholics. Also, I really love being on tour. That’s really my favourite part of being in a band.”
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club will be visiting Australia for the first time since 2013, crisscrossing the continent before playing their finale in Melbourne. Having gigged everywhere from Moscow to Milwaukee, Shapiro says Australia’s boisterous crowds and sprawling, sunny festivals make it a choice location to play.
“There’s a really cool music scene in Australia,” she says. “Unfortunately, it’s not super easy to get there and to bring all your gear. And we haven’t had a proper time during or after a tour to rent some motorcycles and go exploring. That would be really cool to do one day.”
She also maintains a connection to Oz in the form of her friend and occasional collaborator Aimee Nash of The Black Ryder, who relocated from Sydney to LA in 2010.
Shapiro’s road to cult stardom has rarely been straightforward or easily navigated. The incident that convinced her to leave an office job in New York City for life behind a drum kit has become part of BRMC lore.
“I came out of the subway station and was walking over to my office across Times Square, which is a nightmare,” Shapiro explains. “Then, this dead bird just fell out of the sky and landed right in front of me. Shortly thereafter, I quit my job and decided to never ever have a regular job again. And I swear to god that really did happen.”
Shapiro joined noise-rockers Dead Combo and drummed with The Raveonettes, where she played opening sets for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and saw the effect their coarsely resonant sound had on audiences. After drummer Nick Jago left Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in 2008, under somewhat ambiguous circumstances, Shapiro was invited to don the BRMC trademark black leather jacket. Her fingerprints can be seen on the band’s 2010 landmark album Beat the Devil’s Tattoo, particularly in its drum-driven title track.
“We spent so much time in the rehearsal studio working out parts, and the feel and tone of everything,” she says. “The way that we write is based off playing live together. I try to get into some sort of telepathy mode where I know what they’re going to do before they do it.”
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s upcoming Australian tour will incorporate material from earlier in their catalogue as well as January’s Wrong Creatures. Some BRMC tracks take years to get right, Shapiro explains. ‘Spook’ and ‘All Rise’, which appear on Wrong Creatures, were originally begun during the writing of 2013’s Specter at the Feast.
“We do things our own way,” she says. “Sometimes, during the writing sessions for a certain album, some songs are just not meant to be finished for the record you’re working on. It’s meant to be for something later on down the road. It comes together in the end.”
The band also takes a meticulous approach to pacing their setlists, and is still assembling the setlist for their Melbourne performance.
“We’re building a setlist that has a good dynamic and a good flow to it,” Shapiro says. “We’re still experimenting.”
Experimentation and working closely with one another, Shapiro says, are what’s kept the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club from spinning its wheels like so many other alt-rock acts of the late ‘90s.
“I think a lot comes down to being aware of how important your relationships to your bandmates are and nurturing that,” she says. “Respecting that is incredibly important.”
