From swamp to shining swamp, Bruisey Peets (Ben Usie) has steadily evolved with his unique brand of queer swamp pop. Equal parts earnest songwriting and performance art, Bruisey Peets shows are charmingly confrontational and subversively playful. Originally from Lafayette LA, Usie lived in DC for the better part of a decade playing in bands such as Pree and Br’er while also directing music videos for bands such as Br’er, Paperhaus, Pree, and Deleted Scenes. Usie released his first Bruisey Peets records as he exited the Beehive and the greater DC DIY house show scene that he had helped reactivate throughout the 2010’s. Performing solo with a stage full of sequencers and synths, Bruisey seduced intimate crowds with tape-hiss hits like Asshole of Capitalism (2017 Blight. Records) and Ur Not Free (2018 Blight. Records).
Once Bruisey had settled in New Orleans, the elaborate electronic set-up became too much to lug around to neighborhood bars for shows. He began writing and performing solo shows on guitar thanks to the influence of friends Julie Odell and other local songwriters who seemed to embody that wise-from-struggle Mississippi River poet ramble that feels contagious in New Orleans. The solo shows evolved into four-piece rockers once Ethan Brasseaux, Ian Wood, and Adam Keil joined the group, culminating in the release of To Make At Last Love Last (2021 Y’allstar Records), which Usie and Keil produced over a 2 year span.
Towards the end of 2019, as the guitar band grew tired of playing bars at 2am, Usie started playing solo shows with his new batch of piano songs. This is when Lost Bayou Ramblers bassist Bryan Webre offered to collaborate on upright bass. After a few duo shows, it was clear that Webre would anchor these piano songs and the band that would form around them. By December 2019, Bruisey had lost two family members and a dear old friend. He felt an imminent fear of death and knew that he needed to act fast. He called upon his brother Ethan Brasseaux and his Br’er bandmate Erik Sleight, whom he flew down from DC. The band would learn the songs live in Mark Bingham’s Nina Highway Studio in Henderson, LA over three days in January 2020. Three days of overdubs in February included pedal steel by Jonny Campos and fiddle by Louis Michot, both of Lost Bayou Ramblers. As fate would have it, Usie and Mark Bingham finished mixing on March 13, 2020, as Lost Bayou Ramblers were flying home from their cancelled Poguetry in Motion tour with members of The Pogues.
Below, Usie gives Adobe & Teardrops an exclusive track-by-track of the results of the collaboration: Poached Eggs. Funny and heartbreaking, Poached Eggs navigates betrayal and grief with a biting humor. Poached Eggs will be available to the broader public on Friday, November 19, 2021.
‘Zabadee’ kinda became a thesis statement of truth-seeking clownery. What good is absurdism in an absurd AF world? The title and chorus are a nod to the comedic legacy of early Adam Sandler movies, but the subject matter of the song is quite serious. Now, it reminds me how the pandemic only revealed what was already totally fucked about our global society.
‘Chicken’ is a good ol’ time! It feels the most like the swamp pop bar-on-the-bayou vibe that I was kinda going for with the band. The song itself is about boundaries and managing the projections of others. I wrote the song in response to a friend drunkenly warning my new love interest that I was just a chicken to chase around the yard. Ya know, you take someone to Cajun Courir de Mardi Gras ~one time~ and they wanna start formulating weak analogies about you… I think I got the last bok-bok-bigcock in tho.
‘Onions’ explores that emotional duality when fantasy meets reality. Crushes can be mutual, and yet there can still be realworld factors that limit the actuality of a shared love. Savoring those boundaries is a trip in itself. I think we captured that feeling, and Lauren Hémard’s vocals really tie it all together. I love every millisecond of this song. In the studio, I told the band to imagine that they were on the most beautiful romantic date walking thru Paris, France but had just stepped in dogshit.
‘Poached Eggs’ was written as a poem after a kitchen shift with my brother, Ethan Brasseaux. I was trying to remind him how special he is as we sweat over making gluten-free bread and buckets of kimchi, and maybe I was really speaking to myself. There’s a sad clown sincerity that rings triumphant over the absurdity of this consumerist world.
‘Roland’ is a prayer of oral family history. I wrote the songs with two of my sisters after they sang so well at our grandfather’s funeral. We didn’t always agree with our grandfather during the last decade of his life, but his passing made us honor his whole life and the treasures that he shared with us along the way. The song is dedicated to his wife, Rose Marie and to the memory of Roland and their youngest son, Lil’ Ro.
‘Bull Testicles’ came to me in a flash as I cooked the internal organs of a Whole Foods organic chicken. This is the true story of my grandfather Roland trying to make me more masculine as a pre-teen. So much of this cryptic bayou mystic wisdom is baked into the crude racist patriarchal paradigm that still overcasts much of rural America. We owe it to our ancestors to sift through it all and never let go of the nuggets of knowing. We must also remember that we are on stolen land.
‘Interlude’ holds space to digest and decompress. It also is a reminder that life, although monotonous at times, is incredibly short and fleeting. It is dedicated to the memory of my good friend Margaret.
‘Business with Friends’ is that cla$$ic heart-wrenching saga. When ends meet, someone’s gettin’ fucked. But where’s the consent? The fight continues for worker’s rights. And SEX WORK IS WORK.
‘Apple Core’ originated from the dread of being in debt mixed with the feeling of doom-scrolling twitter in bed. The mantra, “I guess I’ll take this lyin’ down” picks at the absurdity of our hive minds being so tapped into the atrocities around the globe while feeling isolated and helpless in our own little bubbles. The band pulses with hypnotic energy as I do my best to confront cis white patriarchy in spite of my passing privilege. While mixing the record with Mark Bingham, I found his copy of Allen Ginsberg’s amazing record ‘The Lion For Real’, which Mark had played on, along with Marc Ribot and Bill Frisell. As I digested ‘The Lion For Real’, I realized the double meaning in my mantra. By the end of the song, I must be singing ‘I guess I’ll take this lion down”.
‘Chrysalized’ was the first song written in this batch of piano songs, and it sprung from a distorted transformation of the self. It’s raw. It’s real. Inspired by a caterpillar that got sick and couldn’t chrysalis right, who never flew as a graceful butterfly. But death is just another transformation.
‘Matthieu’ is another family memorial, sung with my sisters. Our cousin Matthieu passed away just a month after we partied with him at our grandfather’s funeral. Matthieu was my age and we had always bonded over shared cultural touchstones, like the Ninja turtles. These deaths in late 2019 led to my fear of death and my driving intuition to complete this record by March 2020, not yet knowing how the pandemic would hit.
‘Poached Reprise’ was literally poached from the end of the song ‘Poached Eggs’. Louis Michot’s expressive fiddle overdubs were too powerful to not stand alone as our landing gear drug in this trip of a record. I’m so grateful to all the players on this record, and I could not have made this without them. The band was Bryan Webre on upright bass, Ethan Brasseaux on drums, Erik Sleight on synths, Jonny Campos on pedal steel, Louis Michot on fiddle, and I played grand piano at Mark Bingham’s Nina Highway studio in Henderson, LA. 3 days basic tracking, 3 days overdubs, 3 days mixing. Amen.
Poached Eggs will be available on all platforms on Friday, November 19