Photo Courtesy of Rat Jacket
It is now September. We are six months into the nightmare that is Isolation in 2020 and, if you’ve been following the rules, you have had some spare time to yourself. If you’re like me you’ve managed to fill most of it listening to music, playing Animal Crossing and watching the inevitable societal collapse. For many creative types, while it can certainly be hard to focus during times like these, it has also been a time for personal growth and musical production.
This is no different for one Brian Bernhard. A Boston transplant now living in Providence, Bernhard began working on a new solo grunge/stoner rock project named Rat Jacket earlier this year. Namely inspired by a viral video of several rats hitching a ride on a very gracious canine, the project was really born out of a period of self realization. Coming to terms with mental health, where we all fall within society and the “responsibility of being this white dude to essentially burn the house down from the inside,” explains Bernhard.
The new release entitled The Milkwood Project is a collection of songs that deal with these very themes and ideas. “It’s laced with quite a bit of tongue-and-cheek cynicism with a ray of hope. As much as you can find.” Bernhard continues on, “People think the world is ending… they think with equality that you have to lose something for someone else to gain. But losing something is not that f***ing bad… Yeah it may feel like your world exploded for a second, but you’re still going to be there after and it’s necessary. To make it seem like the end of the world is pretty pathetic because we’re just talking about equality.”
The choice to roll out songs once-a-month was a no-brainer for Bernhard who had the idea to capitalize on “Bandcamp Fridays”. The monthly pseudo-holiday is an opportunity for artists to collect full proceeds from purchases through the website (normally Bandcamp would take their share.) Rather than pocket this money however, Bernhard will be donating full proceeds from all Rat Jacket merch and music to different organizations throughout the process; proceeds from July and August were sent to For The Gworls, an organization which raises money for Black Trans Individuals’ rent and medical expenses. “If this is something that I feel the need to put out in the world then it’s also something that should go to rebuilding what has come from burning this house down,” explains Bernhard.
Photo Courtesy of Rat Jacket
In addition to donations and downloads of The Milkwood Project through the Rat Jacket bandcamp page, Bernhard is planning to sell cassette copies of his EP The Salt Box which dropped back in May. A boozy, seductive collection of five tracks telling a story of a young man in an angry world. “Salt Box was more of the Americana and Roots rock that I grew up on, but as the world got darker I listened to darker and darker music heading into Milkwood,” recalls Bernhard.
With plans for more releases, visuals, merch drops and hopes to eventually get a band together, Bernhard still manages to find time to check out the local flavor. In between homemade key lime pies and variations of homemade pastas, Bernhard has been queueing up new projects from Cliff Notez & Dephrase, Jimmy Kafka & Rilla Force and Brooklyn based Climates. You can check out The Salt Box by Rat Jacket here on Spotify and listen to/donate for The Milkwood Project on his bandcamp.