Brant Bjork - Three Band Plan
by Martin Popoff

Much is happening at the crackling stoner rock campfire of Brant Bjork, multi-instrumentalist, multi-band desert rocker, multiple personality. On the heels of a new Kyuss greatest hits album (of which he knew nothing about), as well as the recent release of Nick Oliveri's long-shelved Mondo Generator project, Bjork is first hitting back with a new band concept called Che, with a record called Sounds Of Liberation, after which he gets down to his second solo album as Brant Bjork, followed by the new Fu Manchu (whew!).

First a few words on Che: "It's just a pretty straight-forward rock sound," offers Bjork, who splits his hometime between Palm Desert and L.A., "a traditional Marshall, Fender bass, drums, in-your-face kind of thing. I guess in contrast to Fu Manchu, Scott and Bob really like the overblown, fuzzy sound, '70s and '60s-style bloopy notes. Che is just more 'me', my songs, a little bit more freestyle, from the hip, definitely more organic, a little bit more heart-felt I think."

"It's just me and my friends Dave and Alfredo who I've known for many years," explains Bjork on the band's origins. "I've known Alfredo since I was 13 and we've waited until now to get together and see what happens. And the results were a lot of fun and we really like the record. Alfredo called me, we were all living in the desert at the time. I was living with Dave. Alfredo had just got off the road with Queens Of The Stone Age and he gave me a call and said 'look man, I just left the band' and I said, 'oh wow, OK' and we chatted about that. I've lived with Dave for the last year and a half and Dave is just an insane bass player. I've loved his bass playing for years and we've been best friends, but ironically enough, we never played together, or at least in a long time and I said, 'we've got this house, would you be interested in coming over to jam?' So he came over and we just started jamming. And within about a month we were sitting on a handful of songs."

Brant Bjork - Three Band Plan Page 2