Brandon Perry
An interview with chef, author, and musician Brandon Perry
by Tina Hall
October 2010
Brandon Perry
French Canadian, Brandon Perry is best known for his work as a Chef in the culinary arts. Not one to be limited to just one profession, he is also an author (his latest book is due out soon featuring Eerie Von from Danzig, Calabrese, and Tom Sullivan from Evil Dead series fame), and is the world’s first chef to also be part of not one but four bands.
Perry is a solo artist. Jazzvanguard, is a jazz band with Perry, a technical metal drummer, playing you guessed it, Jazz. The Resurrected is a technical death metal band (playing bass,drums, and keyboards, while his vocalist lays down the lyrics), and he can also be found in the gore metal band Desgustipation. There is also his newly formed black metal band Screams of the Dead.
Since it isn’t every day you find a celebrity chef that, he himself puts it, “can still get down and dirty with my death metal”, I had to take a moment to pick his brain so to speak.
Maximum Ink: Do you find it challenging to have three, possibly four bands going at the same time as your career as a chef?
Brandon Perry: No, not really, we aren’t a super big touring band where that’s how we make our living and have no other careers, I mean I think we all see that if lost our real jobs we would be all fucked up and shit, and starve to death, metal bands that make money are corporate metal bands they are sellouts and that’s that, we don’t sell out, never will, and never have to.
MI: Do you people tend to be surprised to learn you are also a musician?
BP: Yes, they usually cannot believe it because people for the most part are narrow minded.
MI: I read once you decided to do this music thing because others in your area told you you couldn’t. Is that true? Are you enjoying having the chance to prove them wrong?
BP: Yes a lot of hicks where I came from in high school had this idea that they were better with music then everyone else and now me and the rest of the people they picked on are making some money from it and or endorsed to the hills and well known, it’s a spit in the face to them, in which we love it!
MI: Coming from Nova Scotia in a place pretty much the middle of nowhere as you have said and being sheltered as child and not allowed to do much do you find that has been helpful in the long run in regards to all your past and current endeavors?
BP: Well going to college really was the kicker, I hustled my way threw and now can do a lot of things because I needed money to survive and pay school, so it was excel or die you know, I mean…I had a good idea of it already, like the music and entertainment I do, but I had to hone it all to be well known for it all.
MI: Who were some your earliest musical influences?
BP: Jazz and metal bands, Tribal Tech, Al de Meolia, Braindrill, Cannibal corpse, King Crimson, etc.
MI: Why does music appeal to you so much do you think?
BP: Like cooking was…it’s all about altering your perspective while in a shitty situation, as well as just making you happy and content with what ever life you seem to be living.
MI: Do you find that people think it odd you are chef who plays both jazz and death metal? You seem to prefer death metal, why is that?
BP: Everyone doesn’t know what to say, I don’t wear a coat on stage or anything or on the covers of the cds , just makes the metal more middle class I guess. Death metal is like working in a kitchen…it’s fast and warm, I worked for many years as a cook, its like a fucking moshpit in hell.
MI: How would you describe the sound of Jazzvanguard?
BP: The sound is like ever jazz band ever having sex on acid.
MI: Do you find it particularly hard to run so many bands, mainly, by yourself? Would you consider yourself a one man band of sorts?
BP: I play in like two of the bands on my own, no live shows yet but it helps me craft my own version of music I wish other bands could play so I always try and make it work as much as I can. Jazzvanguard would be HARD to play live, and wouldn’t even try risking it.
MI: Since you do most of the instruments yourself, have you ever given thought to how to perform you work live? Is that challenging to do?
BP: My jazz and metal is really something made to listen to in your own home and people should, on a rainy day and or night alone when they are emotional.
MI: What is one of your live shows like?
BP: We usually are working and don’t play to many Ive only played one or two with my Jazz band as well as my metal bands, we are all business men who make these bands, they are truly all fun.
MI: What projects are you currently working on musically?
BP: I am working with some Asia type music with ironically a girl from Japan, as well as just getting heavily into techno, which you can hear now in my Experimental jazz band.
MI: Where do you hope to see your career as a musician go?
BP: Nowhere. I hope what I do is well known, I can help other become competent musicians and help others express themselves as I do this for myself, as well as break the boundaries of both music as well as culinary arts and scientist stereotypes, and allow people to see how people really are, all on the level, all equal, cause the point of the music career is to break down barriers my means of modern man, ironically again, the same there made by.