Certain voices have the power to cut through the clutter and stand alone, Marc Broussard is one of those voices. Combining elements of blues, soul, and jazz, Broussard creates a genre that draws you in and wraps you up. He recently released a new record called Time is a Thief and took some time to talk about it.
Please press the PLAY icon for the MisplacedStraws Marc Broussard interview –
On who helped him put the record together – It’s actually a really interesting story, man. So, I was sitting on a batch of about 30 songs in March of 2020. I figured that was the perfect time to go ahead and make a record. I had searched for a guy named Jeremy Most prior to that. I had searched for Jeremy for probably two and a half years or so. Jeremy had produced an album for a girl named Emily King that I’ve just loved. It was the only thing I listened to for almost an entire year. But Jeremy is notoriously difficult to get in touch with. After two and a half years of searching for him, I kind of gave up and called an old buddy of mine named Eric Krasno and said, “Hey, look, I’ve got about 30 songs, I’m ready to make a record. I think you should produce it”. I love everything that Eric’s never done. “But before we get into the studio”, I said, “Why don’t you and I try to write some new material just to maybe beat what I have on deck and kind of round off the edges of the album and, and get the juices flowing?” So, within about a week, Eric and I had written an entirely new record.
He would just send me really high-quality demos. I would sit in my home studio and write to him and send them back the vocals that I had tracked. He just kept sending me more songs. So, we had a whole new record in a, in a week. Fast forward to September of last year, 2023, I was supposed to go out and track final vocals. Again, this was a very different process for me. Every record prior went into the studio with a band, and we had a tracking session and an overdub session and knocked out the album that way, but this was a very different process where Eric was responsible for all tracking and he’s a brilliant multi-instrumentalist. So I had plenty of faith that he could get it done,I just never had made a record like this.
So about two weeks prior to September of 2023, I called him up just to make sure that I’m not going out to L. A. to waste my time. I wanted to make sure that we had a real plan. Sure enough, he assured me that he had everything mapped out and we were good to go. Right before we hung up the phone call, he says, “Oh, by the way, J Most is out here. Do you want me to ask him if he wants to work with us?” And I said, “What do you mean out here?” And he says, “Yeah, he’s moving from the East coast to the West coast. And he’s been living in my guest bedroom for four months.” So, this guy that I had tried to search for two and a half years ended up being in the guest bedroom of the guy that I ended up calling to make the record. It was sort of the universe just kind of give me a little wink and a nod saying, “We got you, brother”.
On what took so long between original projects – Well, the pandemic really put the kibosh on making the album any sooner. We dropped a couple of singles off of this album, the stuff that Kraz and I had done together, back in ’22, I want to say. But making an original album, for me, it’s a grueling process. It’s a very, very grueling process. The writing is historically taking a very long time because I don’t want to put stuff out there that, that is not top notch. I don’t fancy myself as an arranger. I do really enjoy writing, but I don’t enjoy arranging at all. So, getting together with other writers that are better arrangers than me is just a long process. It’s a very, very long process, but really the pandemic is the thing that held this thing up more than anything else.
On if the early singles were a test of his different direction – Yeah, I think that’s part of it. But really more than anything, it was just I wanted to get some music out to the fans more than anything else. It’s hard to say. It’s really difficult for me to say whether or not I use music to test the market because in all actuality, I don’t think that making music in response to fan response is a good idea. I think that what has set me up for success has been just being authentic and being authentically me. So, I make music that I enjoy listening to in the hopes that my fans will respond. I will say this though, when we started playing “Fire” live, I’ve never gotten a bigger response from an audience for any new song ever. I think we debuted in Atlanta back in 21 and it was the biggest response that I ever got to debuting a song.
On if he looked to combine all of his influences into this record – As big a fingerprint that I have on this album, I think Kraz’s signature is all over it. Kraz has done quite well with the locals in New Orleans. Especially with the local music scene there, he’s been embraced wholly as homeboy. His signature is all over this project. So, I’ve got to give him a lot of credit when it comes to what we’re talking about here. I’ll say this. I think that this record is probably the most authentically me. It’s interesting because everybody that I’ve talked to says, “It’s very different than everything you’ve done prior, but it’s also very, very you”. I think it’s a perfect description of what’s going on here. Kraz just helped me kind of finally realize a vision for my own music that has kind of been what we’ve been working towards for a long time.
On if all of his previous records combine to create Time is a Thief – I think that’s accurate. I think it’s very, very accurate. I was a snob of a singer for a long time as a fan of music. I’ve sort of rejected singers that didn’t sing really well. Guys like Bob Dylan, even guys like Robert Plant, I didn’t find very attractive to my ears until probably my mid-twenties. Discovering Blake Mills at probably 35 or 36 years old, all of a sudden opened me up to a whole new world and influenced me in ways that I did not anticipate. I started to introduce more things to my music that were broader than just straight up soul and R&B. But I was raised on guys like Brian McKnight and Stevie Wonder. I really held singers to a very, very high standard as a result for a long, long time. So, discovering guys like Robert Plant and, and Blake Mills opened me up and allowed me to kind of spread my wings a little bit in the last decade or so. The loss of my grandmother and the loss of several close friends also inspired a sort of introspective approach to songwriting. So, there have been albums in the past that I’m very, very proud of, and I think do a pretty good job of displaying what it is that I find appealing about my voice. But at the end of the day, I think Time is a Thief is absolutely the most stellar representation of what it is that I do.
On starting his S.O.S. series of benefit records – I don’t even really know how to describe the pull to do that. It took a lot of teeth pulling with my managers because at the time I didn’t have the kind of money to give away and my managers assured me that I didn’t have that kind of money. But I was positive that it was going to be the right move. For some reason, I don’t know if it’s metaphysical or what have you, but I was just convinced that we needed to do it, and luckily, I was right. Now my managers, they go along with every harebrained scheme of mine that I have. It’s been so much more rewarding than I initially thought. Not only have we been able to raise tens of thousands of dollars on every one of these projects for the various causes that we’ve supported, but it’s also allowed me to record some of my favorite music in my life that I never thought I would get to record. It’s allowed me to make connections with living legends. It’s allowed me a little bit more space in between original albums so that I can actually focus on the writing and make sure that we put in the best product out there, but it’s also given my fans a sense of what music inspired me growing up, which was always really the original intention.
S.O.S. One as actually a response to my sophomore effort being shelved by Island Def Jam after we released Carencro, we made another album. LA Reed was the new CEO, and he didn’t want to put the record out for whatever reason. I don’t even know what his reason was, but he decided to shelf the album. It had been three years since Carencro was out. Promoters were no longer willing to book us. So, we decided to make a new album. Instead of going back into the writer’s room, we decided to make a covers album. So, the first project was really a charity project for us to get back out on the road and have something to promote. Luckily, Vanguard Records stepped up to the table and put that album out. It was a beautiful success story. It allowed us to get back out on the road. It allowed us to get overseas for the first time because it got picked up in, in Holland. Once I went independent, my first project, I think was a Christmas album. After we went indie from my second deal with Vanguard. So, I went from Island Def Jam to Vanguard, to Atlantic, to back to Vanguard, and by the end of the first album cycle at that second round of Vanguard, my managers were convinced that we could go independent. We made a Christmas album and then I made the case for this charity project. They were adamant that we really didn’t have the funds to do it. That I needed the money. I said, I don’t need the money. We’re good. Let’s give this money away. It was maybe the best career move of my career.
On his live show and touring band – So, I had the same guys as my band for a very, very long time. Some of my closest friends the pandemic kind of changed that. It sort of reordered things. My drummer of 18 years got off the road officially and took a job at home. My guitar player. Joe Stark at the time, his wife was in the final stages of a battle with breast cancer. So he had gotten off the road about a year prior to March of 2020. My bass player ended up taking a gig with Trombone Shorty. So, once we started up again, I was in need of building an entirely new band. That was a very difficult process. My drummer, especially he had some really massive shoes to fill. Ultimately, I knew that I wanted guys that were based in Louisiana. I think. For economic reasons, but also for vibe reasons, there’s a groove. There’s a pocket that exists in South Louisiana that kind of doesn’t exist elsewhere. So, I ended up going through about, I went through at least two or three bass players, and I think six drummers in about a year and a half.
Ultimately, thankfully I found the right group of guys. So, Bobby Schneck, Jr is on guitar. Bobby’s a guy that I found through my engineer several years ago and has been on the radar since. He’s a brilliant musician and a doll of a dude. He kind of got his start in the music business as a tour manager. He was actually tour managing the Royal Southern Brotherhood when he was 19 years old, but he’s a brilliant player. Maybe the best guitar player I’ve ever had. He recommended Devin Kerrigan on bass. Devin is a New Orleans native and is phenomenal player. The guy is a student of the instrument and really, I think before anybody else in the band had my entire catalog memorized and was ready to go. So I can call any audible that I want to with Devin. Jason Parfait is on keys and sax. Jason started out with me, he called me up, we had a show at home in Lafayette, Louisiana, and said, “Hey man, I I’ll come and play for free”. I said, “All right, no problem”, and he shows up and just played his ass off. So, he had always kind of been in and out of the band whenever we needed a horn section. He was our guy to put the section together. He called me about two years ago and said, “I play keys too”. I said, “That’s it”. Cause I’d been traveling as a four piece for years. I’ve wanted to add keys. Once Jason said he’d play keys I remember that he played well. So, we threw him on the tour. He’s playing keys and sax and singing backgrounds. It’s kind of a mad scientist routine over stage right. Ten finally we landed on Terry Scott, Jr. On drums. After five previous guys that all did very, very well. They just weren’t exactly the right fit. Terry is a phenomenal drummer and plus e’s a better singer than I am. He grew up as the son of the choir director at his father’s church, so he grew up in a church. Again, just a brilliant player. I think this is the team that I’m going to rock out with for the foreseeable future.
On upcoming projects – The Joe Bonamassa project that we released last year has done so well that we decided to go back into the studio next January and record an original album. I’ve got 10 songs written for that project. We’ll do a little bit more writing before we get there, but we’re going back in for an original blues project in January, and we’re going to put out another S.O.S. next year. So hopefully, between Time is a Thief and these other two projects, we’ll get three albums out in the span of about 16 months. That’s the goal, is to put out as much music as possible.
