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Brave Saint Saturn are known mainly as 'that Five Iron Frenzy side project', but they're so much more. No need for further introduction, in our opinion. We caught up with guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Dennis Culp a few months back to talk about their two albums to date, So Far From Home and last year's sophomore effort, The Light of Things Hoped For.
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sd: Tell me what happened between the first record and the second one that makes the latter so much more...negative, I guess. It's a lot darker.
Dennis: Well, I can only speak personally, but I know that in our lives, it's been a time of transition. In my case, I moved to a new city, Los Angeles -
sd: Made the move to Cali, huh?
Dennis: At the time -
sd: We lost another one!
Dennis: At the time I wrote 'Heart Still Beats' I was living in a very low-income area in Long Beach, CA, and that's just an observation of what I saw take place in the alley beside my apartment. It's not meant to be...I guess I didn't intend it to be dark, but it's what I observed. These albums are kinda concept albums, and kinda just collections of songs.
sd: You've been tagged with this 'astro-rock' thing, because of the artwork more than anything, I think.
Dennis: I think it's funny, but that doesn't really say anything, you know. There is a thematic concept in that we use space travel as part of the story.
sd: What are you trying to represent?
Dennis: Oh, it's very much allegorical in that the story in The Light of Things Hoped For is the story of a crew on a USS Gloria that's on a mission, and they're on their way home, and while on their way home, the USS Gloria actually starts emitting gases into the atmosphere, and it propels them behind one of Saturn's moons, and they end up getting stuck in the dark side, and they don't see the sun for a very long period of time. This album's about being in darkness and the cold and really just sensing distance from Christ. The point is that the end of the album, it comes around.
sd: Is the allegory personal, as in you and the others being represented by the fictional characters?
Dennis: Yeah. And I'm not saying we felt a distance from Christ, we just went through hard times, I mean, with Reese and the pre-marital stuff and my moving, and I was also getting ready to be married...it's just a challenge for anybody who's going through a time of trial. Looking back, it's been a great thing, because it's built character in all of us, and our faith is as strong as ever.
sd: With the impending breakup of Five Iron Frenzy, is Brave Saint gonna become your sole project, or are there other things going?
Dennis: I don't think it'll be the main focus of any of us; it's gonna continue being a side project. It'll probably get more love. *laughter* Getting back to the perceived 'negativity' of the new album, I'd like to comment on the song 'Recall'; that's not a negative song at all. It's based on Psalm 63, and basically just remembering how wonderful the Lord is, so that song to me is very encouraging.
sd: What about 'Oh Canada?' *laughter*
Dennis: Well, we used to play in Detroit a lot, which is right across the bridge, and a lot of people would come from Canada to the shows, and we just found out we were totally ignorant of a lot of things Canadian, and the Canadians were making fun of us, so we decided to make fun of ourselves.
sd: The sad part is that a lot of my American friends' knowledge of Canada comes from the song you wrote completely off the top of your heads.
Dennis: So kind of in a backhanded way we've actually served further the cause of Canadian empathy. *laughter*
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