“Honestly dude, playing four hours a night at sports bars in nowhere Georgia…” laments Brian ‘Husky’ Burnette, as he reflects on the two decades he’s spent as a touring blues musician.
His wife and bassist, Caroline, jumps in to finish the thought for him, “…it can be rough.”
After six years of maintaining a marriage and two bands together, they frequently finish each other's sentences. So frequently in fact, that it becomes futile to try and attribute each individual thought as they volley a sentence back and forth like a leisurely game of badminton. It's sometimes easier to attribute these circuitous quotes to “Brioline.”
“In those sports bars, you’re nothing more than a jukebox,” Brioline continues. “You’re just background music while people watch football—and yell over you anytime somebody scores—and it really takes the art out the artist. It makes you wonder why you’re even doing it…yeah, just turn the radio on and save yourself four hundred bucks.”
That said, they do still feel they have plenty to be grateful for. “At least we never had to play Mustang Sally, or Wagon Wheel, or Freebird.”
Brian had already been touring for six years as Husky Burnette before he and Caroline crossed paths on the set of a music video shoot and never separated. In the early days, he’d hop on a Greyhound with his guitar and form a pick-up band in whatever city he visited. Despite his blues roots, he preferred to enlist the help of metal or hard rock drummers so as not to veer towards a loathsome musical subgenre he nicknamed “Turtleneck Blues.”
At first this lifestyle was creatively invigorating, but the grind of constant touring eventually took its toll. They both began to resent the creative compromises necessary to turn their passion into a profitable business.
“We felt like we were spinning our wheels, like we were going nowhere, and then you go through a couple of crappy things on tour and it’s like…why am I doing this?” Brionline says.
Ironically, the cure for their problem of becoming jaded musicians was to play more music. Only this time, they had very different creative ambitions. They set aside all blues traditions and fully embraced their love of metal. And instead of worrying about touring to turn a profit, they put their energies behind building a truly collaborative band and creating an album together.
“We didn’t want to do it to pay the rent, we only wanted to do it for fun. No bowling alley gigs,” laughed Brioline. “Yeah, we’d rather go to somebody’s grandma’s basement and play Metallica songs all night and just get back to the core of why we ever started playing music”
From this noble ambition, The Slow Attack was born. In 2018 Brian and Caroline moved to California to write and record and fall in love with music again. And within a couple of years, they’d produced an album they were proud of and were excited to share it with the world.
And then a little thing called Covid-19 happened.
Like so many other musicians, they were forced to sit on a finished album for over a year. Concerts were absolutely out of the question, and like Husky Burnette, the Slow Attack was now officially on hiatus. Once again Brian and Caroline found themselves asking why they were even doing this in the first place.
After a long period of collecting gear and jamming at home, both Brian and Caroline rediscovered the joy of sharing music live. And while they have no desire to return to those long nights at the sports bars of Nowhere Georgia, they no longer feel the need to unburden themselves of the blues rock band whose reputation they spent nearly two decades building.
It also helps that they’ve crossed paths with a new drummer who already feels like a part of the Husky family and not just a fill-in for the next leg of the tour. After playing various bands in Los Angeles and Detroit, drummer Scott Keil has settled into his new home in Chattanooga.
“He just gets it. We didn’t have to go over parts at rehearsal,” recalls Brioline. “He recognizes what the song needs in the moment and can actually pull it off. He’s in the pocket, but also does cool stuff, and he’s a really nice guy. It’s so hard to find someone who’s both a really nice guy and also a really good drummer.”
So after a handful of post pandemic shows, this latest incarnation of Husky Burnette will debut itself to the world every Thursday in August at the Cherry Street Tavern, a venue Brioline calls home. “Chattanooga needed that place. Not to put down any other great venues, but they’re all old-schoolers and touring musicians who know how to do it right. They feed you, give you drinks, make sure you get town the road, they get you paid and promote you. It's our favorite place to just hang out and get a burger and to see a show.”