The Brothers Comatose

The Brothers Comatose‘s singer-songwriter Ben Morrison share some insight into their latest polarizing single “The IPA Song,” “We generally use our music to unify people, but there comes a time for every band when you have to make a statement. This is our most controversial song and we realize that some of our audience will hate us for it, but it’s time we finally say something: we can’t drink IPAs anymore!”

“Phew, that felt good to get off my chest.”

“In all seriousness though, we overdid it quite a bit, back when we were sponsored by a great beer company and they delivered multiple cases of IPA to every tour stop of ours. It was great for a while, but it got to the point where we had cases and cases of warm IPA in our van and that’s all we drank. Too much warm IPA will change a person, and now we can only drink light beer. We’re more of a quantity over quality band these days, at least when it comes to beer.”

“This song came about because there are lots of craft beer lovers in our musical world and we would find ourselves drinking lots of high alcohol percentage beers when we’re playing shows, and we just can’t do it anymore. We want to enjoy a few beers while we’re playing without getting too drunk, and light beer saves us from that. Pabst Blue Ribbon, if you’re reading this, we’re still looking for sponsorships!”

The Brothers Comatose’s new single “The IPA Song” is available now

Whether traveling to gigs on horseback or by tour bus, Americana mavens The Brothers Comatose forge their own path with raucous West Coast renderings of traditional bluegrass, country and rock-n-roll music. The five-piece string band is anything but a traditional acoustic outfit with their fierce musicianship and rowdy, rock concert-like shows.

The Brothers Comatose is comprised of brothers Ben Morrison (guitar, vocals) and Alex Morrison (banjo, vocals), Steve Height (bass), Philip Brezina (violin), and Greg Fleischut (mandolin, vocals). When they’re not headlining The Fillmore for a sold-out show or appearing at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, the band is out on the road performing across America, Canada, Australia, and hosting their very own music festival, Comatopia, in the Sierra foothills.

The San Francisco quintet are heading out for a massive U.S. tour in further support of their most recent album Ear Snacks – a heartwarming collection of collaborations from their Ear Snacks YouTube series.

Michaela Anne had no way of knowing what lay ahead when she began writing her gorgeous and aching new album, Oh To Be That Free—sobriety, pregnancy, a global pandemic, and the hemorrhagic stroke that would nearly kill her mother were all just around the corner—but listening back in the warm glow of hindsight, it’s almost as if she was writing a survival guide for her future self. The songs are profoundly vulnerable here, hinting at everything from Brandi Carlile to Kacey Musgraves as they reckon with the flaws and faults that keep us up at night, and Michaela’s delivery is tender and empathetic, insisting that we’re worthy of love not in spite of our shortcomings, but because of them. And so the freedom Michaela sings of isn’t the wild freedom of youth or rebellion, but rather the spiritual freedom that comes from learning to accept what is rather than what ought to be, from learning to appreciate what you have rather than what you want, from learning to look in the mirror and love the person staring back.

Oh To Be That Free follows Michaela’s 2019 Yep Roc debut, Desert Dove, which helped land her festival invitations everywhere from Bonnaroo to XPoNential alongside praise from Billboard, USA Today, The Associated Press, Paste, and more. The World Café raved that “Michaela Anne’s voice shines like a beacon,” while NPR hailed her “stunning vocals,” and Rolling Stone named the album one of the year’s best country and Americana releases.