Interview: Brent Bristow And Noah Hungate of EMERALD CITY COUNCIL

Life is about making connections, and when my daughter told me she wanted me to interview her Band Director Brent Bristow at Arkansas State University Beebe because he started a band named EMERALD CITY COUNCIL and released a new album entitled MOTION CARRIES, I was intrigued. Honestly, I thought it was probably some sort of jazzy saxophone serenade since that is his main instrument as a professor, so when I found out it was a progressive rock album with a cast of who’s who, I was excited for this meeting.  

Before I arrived, I listened to MOTION CARRIES so I could have a better understanding of the group, and I was an instant fan. Though progressive rock is not necessarily in my heavy rotational playlist, this album piqued my interest from the beginning. Opening like an emotional Gregorian chant that you would find on a Pure Moods CD (Yes...I said what I said), you notice this album has a lot of character. By the time the first movement hits at a minute and a half, the familiar prog rock lines blast through that captures you through the rest of the song. Grooving through the rest of the album, I noticed they have a penchant for the minor melodies until you reach their love song Mortal Games that has a sexy sax solo around minute three. Ice Thinning is another typical social reform prog rock stance, but when the intro of Platforms of Illusion opens with a recorder and harpsicord dueting, I’m back on board with this album. The rest of the album has a real Supertramp feel with a mix of Foreigner and Kansas.....and that drumming! It is definitely noticeable that this band is made up of amazingly talented musicians.    

So who is Emerald City Council? The band features Jake Livgren (Proto-Kaw, nephew of Kansas’ Kerry Livgren), Noah Hungate (Team Illuminati, son of Toto’s David Hungate), Jeremy Nichols (Erin Coburn), Seth Hankerson, and Brent Bristow, (Star Trek Rat Pack, Professor of Music at Arkansas State University-Beebe). Brandon Goff, Associate Professor of Music Industry at Francis Marion University, has also contributed significant guitar work as a special collaborator to the band. Guest appearances include guitar solos from Paul Bielatowicz (Carl Palmer, Neal Morse), and Mike Thompson (The Sons of Kirk), plus contributions from actors Jeffery Combs (Star Trek, Re-Animator) and Steve Rankin (Star Trek, X-Files). Multi-Grammy/Emmy-winning engineer and producer Jamie Tate, mixed and mastered the material at the Rukkus Room Studio in Nashville. Artist Thomas Ewerhard provided the cover artwork that perfectly captures the spirit of the music. 

Broadway World had a great time talking with creator Brent Bristow and drummer Noah Hungate.  

BWW: When did Emerald City Council form?  

Brent Bristow: Officially, we formed as a band in 2021, I think. Is that right, Noah?  

Noah Hungate: Yeah, something like that. It's amazing that it's been going on so long. But I think it was kind of midway through the recording process like long before we even got the mixing done and you said ‘hey, you know we might actually be able to do something like this. Do you want to just be a band?’   

Bristow: Well, that was Casey McPherson’s idea. He's the lead singer of the group called Flying Colors and has his own band called Alpha Rev. So, he's very well known internationally, and I've been a fan of his for a long time, and when COVID hit, like a lot of musicians, he was kind of going like, ‘OK, well what am I going to do to make money?’ So he did an online seminar on production, songwriting and everything. Since I was stuck at home, I said, ‘OK, well, I'll sign up for it and do it.’ Then a few months later, it was just literally after Noah and I decided to start working together, Casey said he was going to start offering some weekly zoom sessions for people to kind of advise them and help them out with whatever they needed. So, my wife suggested I do it because of my experience. I used to work in a recording studio years ago, but all of my experience had been, you know, getting everybody in the same room. With this project, everyone is in different locations. Noah lives in Nashville, Jeremy, our bass player, is in Ohio, and our singer Jake is in Topeka. We've had Paul Bielatowicz in Boston do a guest thing for us, and Brandon Goff helped us out while he was in London. So, we were trading files all over the place, I'd never done anything like this before, and I was little apprehensive about the process of how to produce a project when I can't get with everyone and tell them what I want. So, Casey really helped me navigate that a little bit. Originally this was just going to be a project that I was putting together more for me than anything, but once he heard what everything was sounding like, he said we needed to form a band. Casey said ‘You guys have some real synergy going and you guys should go beyond just recording together and actually form a real band and start looking to doing some stuff. So, we're working now on trying to get a booking agent and to do some live shows and move forward and try to do some more stuff.  

BWW: How will that all work out though with everybody being from different states and places? Have yall been together yet? 

Bristow: Not all five of us. 

Hungate: So, recording wise we tracked everything one piece at a time. Brent put together a basic skeleton of the song with keyboards and a scratch vocal that he would record and maybe some saxophone here in there and would send that to me with a click track. I would drum on top of it, and then we'd send it to Jeremy the bass player, and he would play bass to what I had drummed and so on and so forth. We layered it like that, which had an interesting effect, and it was always a surprise to hear what it was going to sound like after, you know, finding out what the next person’s ideas were, and in terms of playing live, I'm not sure. Brent, how is that going to work out? 

Bristow: Well, I think we know the songs and how to play off each other well enough. There was a big learning curve at the beginning of the process, but by the time that we got to the last couple of songs, that was the point that I really felt like we were functioning as a band. At that point, everybody knew what I wanted. At the beginning there was a lot of sending back files and redoing parts that were not working, but by the end, it was more of a request for touching up a couple of spots and they were good. So, I think that because of that process, we’ve gotten to know each other and learned everybody’s strengths, so I think that when we do get an opportunity to play live, I think it’s going to work great. What do you think? 

Hungate: I was thinking more of the logistics of getting us to the same place. 

Bristow:  Well, that is going to be a challenge, because everyone will have to travel to the location and then have time to rehearse. That is going to be the big thing. It’s not like it’s just five guys from Little Rock getting together. It’s going to have to be a higher level, more prestigious job that's going to hopefully pay enough to make it worth everybody's travel to get together and do it. However, as we've been getting more of a reputation, particularly in Europe and other places in America, I think we're hopefully able to command that. That's the goal, anyway, we hope. We'll see how it all plays out, and that's the reason why we need a good booking agent that can negotiate these things. We do have some leads on that. Jake, our singer, is working on that. Jake is the nephew of Kerry Livgren of Kansas. His uncle wrote Carry on My Wayward Son and Dust in the Wind, and all those things, and Jake’s been singing on his uncle's album since he was like 15. So, after Noah and I started working together and Jeremy came in, I heard a recording of Jake and was blown away by his vocals. I didn't know him, but I messaged out the blue and said, ‘hey, I'm starting this project with Noah Hungate and we're looking for a singer. Would you be interested?’ and fortunately, he was a Toto fan, so when he heard Noah’s name, he was like, ‘OK, I know who that is,’ and when he heard what we were working on, he said, ‘yeah, this is great, I want to be part of it.’ So, that worked out really well for us. So, because of Jake’s connections, he's got a few folks that are on the lookout for us to find a booking agent to hopefully make things happen.  

BWW: So, what is your goal? World Domination? 

Bristow: That is the goal. Funny thing-- we just shipped another big shipment of CD's to Germany last week. If we were doing as well in the US as we were doing in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, we would be well on our way to world domination.  

Hungate: I feel like in the US, prog rock is a very specific genre. It has a very particular fan base, but hat fan base is very enthusiastic in their fandom. I feel that domestically, at least ideally as a newer band, we may need to find an opening slot with an established artist in that sphere. That would be amazing in terms of goals for how to get started out of the gate and build local fandom. It looks like in Europe we may be able to do some shows. 

BWW: You know, a little European vacation would be alright.  

Hungate: I highly recommend it. 

BWW: So let’s talk about the album.  How many songs do you have for this album?  

Bristow: There are nine tracks. It runs right about 60 minutes. One song is 20 minutes long, which is standard for progressive rock. Normally referred to as epic songs, some of them lasts 10 to 20 minutes or whatever. Some of them go even longer than that. However, it's not like, you know, the end of Free Bird where they just do guitar solos for forever. You know, the song part was over eight minutes ago, but they just keep going. Ours is not like that. It's more organized, even though it’s rock style obviously, like a symphony or something like that. It goes through different sections, there are different parts to it, different movements that all sort of come together and work together. So, it's not like we just keep doing the same thing over and over again. 

Hungate: I was going to say that it is very orchestral or classical music in that way. Everything is very arranged and very specific, but in a rock format. 

Bristow: Absolutely. And what's really interesting was when I first wrote it, I told the students, that I just finished writing this 20-minute song, and their response was, ‘why? Why would you do that?’ And I said that's how long I needed to say what I need to say. So, they were just like ‘ohh that just sounds so long; I can't imagine doing it,’ but they said they wanted to hear it, and I said 'you are seriously gonna sit and listen to this all the way through?’ And they said ‘yeah, we want to hear it.’ When it was done, they said ‘that was awesome. That did not sound like 20 minutes long. It makes sense. We get it.’ So that was a very gratifying moment for me that they did do that. And interestingly, we've had reviews from many places. We’ve had several from the US, two or three from the UK, two from France, and three from Germany. One of them got republished in Poland, so I don’t know if we can count that one or not, because it's just a republishing of the of the others. But every review that we've had so far has praised that one as being the centerpiece of the album. I think that's the high point that they all agree on that they love. So, I guess we did something right on that, but again, that was the last one we did. 

BWW: So why progressive Rock? Who are your influences? What brought you to this point?  

Hungate: Growing up, I was very into Genesis, so that's Phil Collins drumming there... Very into Rush with Neil Peart, and Yes with Bill Bruford. I love the King Crimson. More recently, I love Flying Colors, who we mentioned earlier, and Spock’s Beard with Neal Morse. He's not on the record, but he's played a large role as an advisor in shepherding the album along. But prog wise, I love playing this stuff. I never get to do that kind of stuff in a professional setting, so this is a great opportunity for me. 

Bristow: I listened to Kansas a lot, Rush a lot, and got into a lot of others. Then, of course, later on with Neal Morse. Neal started the band Spock’s Beard back in the 90s, and then went on to do other things. I am a huge fan of his writing and have been for a long time and had the opportunity to spend a week in his studio a little over a year ago. While there, I had the opportunity to play some of some of the material for him. And, you know I was a little nervous about  going to one of my favorite all time songwriters and say, ‘hey, listen to the song I wrote and produced,’ and thankfully and he thought it was really good, so much so that he and I have kept in contact, and he gave us a huge endorsement when the album came out, which was great. I mean, for people who aren't familiar with today's progressive rock, getting an endorsement from Neal Morse is similar to a new up and coming pop singer getting an endorsement from Taylor Swift. So, that was kind of very overwhelming, you know that Neal was willing to help us and willing to stake his reputation behind what we were doing.  

BWW: That is amazing! 

Bristow: Yeah, but as far the question that you asked, for me, I've just sort of reached a point in my life. I love progressive rock, but I love other kinds of music as well. I do a lot of classical saxophone playing and everything as a professor here at ASU Beebe. That's one of the things that I had to do to get tenure, promotion and all that stuff. So, I do a lot of that. I play in a Saxaphone Quartet with three other professors of music here in Arkansas, and I have done all of that stuff, but I also write a lot of songs, and prog rock is the kind of style I’m drawn to when I'm writing. This is sort of just what comes naturally to me, probably because I do listen to it so much. I think that I've just reached a point where, you know, as a professional musician and a professor of music, I have played tons of music. I mean, I've played in a country band, many cover rock bands, dance gigs, and things like that. I've played in a polka band. I've done everything. You know, there's very little that I could say that I haven't been a part of, you know, musically. I’ve even played sax on a couple of rap songs back in the day. So I've done a little bit of everything, but also as a professor and academic person, I've also studied it all. I've had to analyze Beethoven's sonatas and motets from the 1400s and 1500s. So, I’ve reached a point where, for me, after I’ve heard a song two or three times, I kind of feel like I've already got everything out of it that I’m going to get. So, what I like about progressive rock is that there is so much complexity to it. There are so many layers to the music that it keeps you coming back again and again and again. But, at the same time, one of the things that we have tried to do with this album is that I think that there's enough of those progressive rock elements that people who are really into this music are really digging in what we're doing. But at the same time, we still have enough straightforward stuff that someone who's not really into this but is a fan of good rock music is going to listen to what we're doing and still be able to get a lot out of it. So, yeah, knowing this has been a very gratifying thing for me. Playing it for someone who's not necessarily progressive rock fan who goes, ‘wow, this is really good’ is really great. In our album, there are enough elements that are accessible that any person that likes music is going to be able to listen to this and get something out of it. But, if you are someone like us who's looking for those little extra layers of complex things, I think there's enough there to keep those people satisfied too. 

For more information on this amazing group of musicians, visit all of their socials at: 

Emerald City Council Online  

Website: https://emeraldcitycouncil.com  

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100083160671049  

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@brentbristow2200/featured  

Bandcamp: https://emeraldcitycouncil.bandcamp.com/  

Melodic Revolution Records Online https://li.sten.to/mrrmusiccom 

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