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Brad Frye had one hell of a 15-year trip through New Mexico’s rock ‘n’ roll scene. If you frequent hard rock or groove-based metal shows and haven’t heard him play guitar and sing in Red Mesa, you’ve been in a major daze for the last decade. As founder, owner and operator of Desert Records, he’s stamped huge footprints onto the sunbaked scrolls of the state’s musical archive with an army of over 25 desert, stoner, doom and metal bands on his label. As a live performer, he’s sandblasted practically every single member of our tight-knit heavy music community with eardrum-cauterizing riffs and entrancing vocal performances. Like a long-bearded rocky mountain cryptid, it seems it’s time for Frye to blend into the wilderness for a while and head Northwest toward new rainsoaked terrain and much darker skies. You heard it right — Brad Frye is leaving Albuquerque, but not before a Red Mesa blowout at the Launchpad (618 Central SE) this Saturday with Blue Heron, Violet Rising and The Talking Hours.
“I wanted to jam with my friends and bands that I really love that are adjacent to Red Mesa in terms of style, sound and ethos,” Frye says. “[New Mexico] left its mark on me, there’s no doubt we’re gonna rip it Saturday night. I can’t wait to perform songs through the years of Red Mesa and jam with the buddies.”
Frye grew up in Maine and lived in the Seattle area for 10 years, so he’s no stranger to the Pacific Northwest, but he says he’s going to miss New Mexico’s weather and the mountainous region that influenced his art.
“It’s nice up there and green, there’s a good music scene, but the weather is just cold and rainy and cloudy.” he says. “It’ll be an adjustment, but it’s a family move. Me and my wife are doing cool stuff and we’re simplifying our life. We’re gonna have a wood-burning stove in the yurt.”
Frye says he’s never going to stop making music and teases an upcoming, self-recorded solo album inspired by his favorite outdoor places in New Mexico. Although there’s no official title, he’s tentatively calling the project “Reverberations From the Southwest” — or something like that. He says the entire record was played and recorded outside with battery powered gear and generators.
“I’ve been getting weird looks from people on hiking trails because I’ve just been setting up in the desert,” Frye says. “I’ve been recording up in the Sandias, in the bosque, up in Tijeras, anywhere I can where I don’t have to hear cars, you know what I mean? I’ve been recording birds and the river and playing really trippy fucking spaghetti Western guitar stuff and harmonica, too. That’s gonna be a real trip of a record. It’ll be my ode to my experiences here.”
Frye co-founded Red Mesa in 2013, and the band’s current lineup features drummer Roman Barham (Powertoke, Echoes of the Fallen, Scroll, the list goes on and on) and bassist/vocalist Alex Cantwell (Roadside Memorial). His latest endeavor, a “drone metal’ project with flamenco guitarist Ronaldo Baca called Droni Eye Omi, shows he’s more than just a rocker, he’s an all-around sculptor of meditative soundscapes. With Red Mesa, Fry has shared the bill with too many influential bands to count, but some memorable shows include performances at Taos’ Monolith on the Mesa, Maryland Deathfest and opening for legends in the doom/stoner metal genre such as The Obsessed, Earthless, Pallbearer and Pentagram. Frye assures us Red Mesa will continue; the band isn’t breaking up, they’re just spreading out a bit more.
“It’ll be a long-distance thing that we’ll figure out, which would most likely look like flying down once a year to New Mexico to play a show and having those guys fly up to do a show,” he says. “We have to be in the same room to write music, so we will have to figure that out for any future albums. I still want to try to tour once a year with the band. and we really want to go to Europe, so it’ll just require more planning ahead for those opportunities.”
Frye says it’s the end of this era for sure, but not the end of his love affair with Burque. He gets emotional thinking about the “great run” he’s had here and says the friendships he’s formed and the creative experiences he’s shared with the local rock ‘n’ roll community will remain in his heart forever. He says not to worry, this isn’t a permanent goodbye.
“I just want to thank everybody who has come out to shows and supported the music and the record label,” he says. “All the bands that I’ve released on Desert Records through the years and all the different people who have been real open to somebody who’s not from New Mexico. People have been very accepting and warm and gave me a lot of confidence to see my vision through, and I’ll never forget that.”
Red Mesa with Blue Heron, Violet Rising, The Talking Hours
May 24, 8 p.m.
Launchpad
618 Central Ave SE
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