Oakland singer, songwriter and bandleader Brad Brooks was at the dentist, having his teeth cleaned, when a dental assistant noticed a bulge on the side of his neck. Further investigation established that the lump was cancer. He had surgery and radiation treatments, but it took a toll on his voice and his psyche.
“I was told that there’s a 90% cure rate with this kind of cancer,” Brooks noted, “but you also go through hell for a year. After the surgery and radiation, I lost 40 pounds. I kept singing for about a month and a half, but after day 12 of getting radiation, I stopped for a couple of months. I could hardly swallow or talk.
“As I was recovering from cancer and processing it, I wrote a couple of songs about my journey: ‘Burn It Off’ and ‘Scared I Was,’” said Brooks. “They appear on the album I released a few years back, God Save the City. It took me a little over a year to get back on track. My ‘new’ voice helps when I’m belting out the rock and blues tunes, but for the more delicate songs, it took a toll.”
After he’d finished writing the songs for God Save the City, Brooks went into the studio with his band and recorded them. “The band played live, all in the same room, with maybe three takes, max,” he said. “We had a blast making it. Adam Rossi, our keyboard player, produced it and got the best out of me vocally. At the beginning, my voice was still a bit compromised from my cancer. As we got farther along, my voice got stronger, so he was really great with me, as well as having a great touch with everyone else in the band.”
The music on the album covers a wide swath of styles. There’s rock, funky R&B, ballads, pop tunes and soul. “Musically, I’ve always had a pretty broad palette, but I knew I wanted this one to be my soul record,” he admitted. “I’ve always been a soulful rock singer, but I felt like I’d only occasionally touched on that part of my style. I needed to go further into it.”
With the help of the band—guitarists Erik Schramm and Pie Fiorentino, drummer Andrew Griffin, bass player Joey DiBono, percussionist and backing vocalist Vicki Randle and backing singer Loralee Christensen—Brooks captured the energy of a live performance. “I wanted it to be as raw and real as possible. It’s also a very political record, and I stand firmly behind it,” he noted.
The album kicks off with the title track, a rocker driven by the rhythm section of Griffin and DiBono and a vocal from Brooks, that often slides up into the falsetto range. “It’s an anti-gentrification anthem about what I was witnessing in Oakland, and the Bay Area,” Brooks said. “Unfortunately, with what’s going on today—racism, Covid, Trumpism and other things—it feels like we’re headed down that dark road again.”
A slow, R&B bassline introduces “Why Do You Hurt,” a song that expresses the bewilderment people experience when they pick a fight with a loved one. Randal and Christensen supply wordless, gospel-tinted harmonies that add emotional depth to Brooks’ lead vocal.
Since he releases his music on his own, Brooks promotes his albums by himself. To that end, he played a show with Rossi at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley. It was a book release party for Grace, a graphic novel about Jeff Buckley, by Tiffanie DeBartolo. “I met Wayne Kramer, guitar player for the MC5,” he said. “When I told him about my cancer, he reached up to his neck and showed me his cancer scar. We bonded, stayed in touch and started writing songs together.”
Kramer made demos of the songs he was writing with Brooks. He showed them to some of his music business connections, including producer Bob Ezrin (Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Phish). Ezrin said he’d like to make an MC5 record. “Wayne called me up,” Brooks said. “He told me about the record and asked me to sing lead on the songs we’d written.”
They went into the studio with Don Was (Elton John, Garth Brooks, Bob Dylan) on bass, drummer Abe Laboriel (Paul McCartney), Kramer on guitar and Brooks on lead vocals. “We cut 15 songs in four days,” he said. “We were all in the studio together, playing live.”
After the basics were down, some of Kramer’s friends came in to add parts, including Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Slash (Guns N’ Roses), William Duvall (Alice in Chains) and Dennis Thompson, the original MC5 drummer.
The result is Heavy Lifting, 13 hard rocking, politically driven tunes, full of the funk, punk and metal guitar pyrotechnics that made the MC5 so influential on the bands that followed in their wake.
While they were waiting for the album to be released, they did a short, sold-out eight city tour. Kramer died of pancreatic cancer in February of 2024, nine months before the album came out. “It was a gut punch,” Brooks said. “He was fearless, and we need his energy and wisdom now, more than ever.” Brooks channeled his grief into promoting the Heavy Lifting record and the music he made with Kramer.
For an upcoming gig at the Ivy Room in Albany, Brooks will be backed by most of the musicians he worked with on God Save the City. “I’m excited to play with them again,” he said. “I was in the middle of making the MC5 record and then touring with Wayne since we last played out, so it’s been awhile since we got together.”
Brooks said he’s currently working on a new collection. “I’ve been writing with a friend of mine, Tom Ayres. We’ve finished a record’s worth of material that I’m extremely excited about,” he noted. “Tom’s one of the most interesting guitar players I know. We don’t know what we’re going to call it yet, but I can’t wait to get those songs out and play them live.”
Brad Brooks and his band will be playing the Ivy Room on Nov. 21 at 8pm, with Anna Hillburg and Bye Bye Blackbirds supporting. Listen to ‘God Save the City’ at bradbrooks.bandcamp.com. ‘Heavy Lifting,’ his album with the MC5, can be heard on Spotify and other digital platforms.
