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Artist
Brown Shoe
12+ albums
indie rockrockindieUSASoCal
about
In 2004, just as fall arrived in Los Angeles, Ryan and Aaron Baggaley packed up their Venice apartment and left town. After years of playing guitar on their own terms, the brothers started in together with an aim to make music that will “change the tone of your day,” as Aaron puts it. They moved back home to Folsom, California, to a house near the lake where they spent their summers as kids, a few miles from the prison made famous by Johnny Cash and a handful of high-profile criminals. “We liked LA fine,” explains Ryan, “but there were too many distractions. We needed to isolate ourselves.” Joining up with drummer Jim Mikesell, whom they met working a construction job, Ryan and Aaron recruited younger brother Bryson to play bass after going through a series of misfits. Bryson, like his brothers, had never taken formal music lessons—“We wanted someone that could grow the way we were growing,” says Ryan. “I started playing with my thumb,” Bryson recalls, grinning. “I learned quick. The blisters went away.” The band’s aesthetic evolved under the premise of creating a sound that is at once confrontational and vulnerable; both warm and discomforting—a sound not burdened by what’s come before them. “I have a massive aversion to minor, bluesy, psychotropic music. I don’t know why,” says Ryan. Brown Shoe’s aesthetic indeed came together quickly. Heading into the studio with Joe Johnston of Pus Caverns (Cake, The Deftones) in the summer of 2005, the band recorded The Wheat Patch, a
