History

The Brobecks themselves wrote a very extensive history on the making of this album that I couldn’t do a better job writing if I tried, so the remainder of this section will be purely from their website.

“On this album, The Brobecks took a very different approach than that of The 4th Of JuLive. They decided that their album should be more than just a live recording. It should be an entirely different experience than their live show. They added what instruments and changes they felt would intensify the atmosphere of each song. Because Shoshin Productions allowed The Brobecks to record themselves, they were able to fine tune each song into exactly what they felt it should be.”

“After the departure of Scott Jones, Dallon and Mike moved to the foreground and became the lead singers. Piano extraordinaire Bryan Szymanski was asked to join the band. He accepted. The Brobecks still needed another guitarist. A small add was posted all over the Weber State University campus, and Casey Durrans answered. The Brobecks new line-up was complete. They rehearsed some of the songs from their unreleased work, The 4th Of JuLive, and a few new songs.

They started playing shows around town. In September of 2003, only a few weeks after Casey and Bryan joined the band, The Brobecks began to work on their first full length album. They knew the only way they could have complete control was to record it themselves. It was almost like an experiment. The Brobecks toyed with different ideas and recording methods until they were happy. After finishing 3 songs, The Brobecks decided to give their fans a taste of what was to come. So they sold an EP entitled Understanding The Brobecks: Step 1 at their shows. People seemed to enjoy it, and The Brobecks began getting a bit of attention from local magazines and papers.

Matt thought it might be interesting to document the recording process. So, for the next two months he brought a camera with him everywhere The Brobecks went. After 3 months of filming he completed the 30 minute documentary Documenting The Brobecks. It followed The Brobecks through their recording process, promotion and performance.

By mid November, The Brobecks had completed all the recording for the album. Unfortunately, Shoshin Productions had already set a date for their CD Release. The Brobecks had only a week or two to mix the album. Then it was handed off to Shoshin Productions. A week before the CD Release, The Brobecks were given copies of their finished product. They were frustrated to find that the CD were not printed with professional quality. The CD itself was just a CD-R with a sticker on top. The printing on the artwork was sloppy.

The first printing of Understanding The Brobecks sold out in a month. They requested to get more copies from Shoshin, but unfortunately, their calls were never returned. The Brobecks had realized that they needed to break away from their label. A month later, Shoshin Productions went under. The Brobecks went on to sell over 500 cd-r copies of Understanding The Brobecks, which received rave reviews and was voted one of the top 3 albums of 2003 by City Weekly’s SLAMMy awards.

The album shows The Brobecks’ wide variety of styles. From the straight forward rock of Good Girls, Didn’t Mean To, and Downtown, to the more slow layered songs like I’d Be A Punk, Cowboy Song, Why I Don’t Smile. The album also featured songs like Sloppy Seconds, Monday Morning, Creep You Out, which would help define a bit of the keyboard oriented wackiness of The Brobecks live show and the direction of their upcoming album”

Trivia

The song ‘Lucinda’ was only present on the original 100 CDs produced of this album, back-art for the CD that lacks Lucinda on the track list seems to imply that as early as The Brobecks requesting more CDs from Shoshin the track was removed. No reason why was ever mentioned. The albums hidden track was also only present on the original CDs.

This album received a rerelease of sorts when on August 13th 2004 the band announced that all future copies of the album would feature updated versions of ‘Hey You’ and ‘Good Girls’ with new mixing and vocal tracks.

Music videos were created for the songs ‘Didn’t Mean To’, ‘John Barnes’ and ‘Sloppy Seconds’ as part of Matts Documenting The Brobecks project. Sadly neither the music videos or the documentary are still surviving today. Dallon said on the old message boards that they had been destroyed, to which Matt replied that the Sloppy Seconds MV was the only one still online…in 2006.

The track ‘Ryan Botcher’ was planned to be on this album but it wasn’t finished in time, the finished recording was later included on the first Let’s Become Actors album ‘Research Your Friends’