Brothers Comatose

THE BROTHERS COMATOSE

The Brothers Comatose didn’t set out to coin a new genre. To be honest, it was a bit of an accident.

“My brother and I have a lot of respect for bluegrass,” explains guitarist/singer Ben Morrison, “but it was never in our blood. We were raised on California rock and folk and country music, so when we got our hands on some traditional acoustic instruments growing up, that’s just the energy and the attitude we naturally channeled. A fan started calling our sound Golden Grass, and the phrase just felt right.” 

So right, in fact, that the band named their intoxicating new album after the moniker. Recorded in the Bay Area with co-producers Greg Holden and Tim Bluhm, Golden Grass cements The Brothers Comatose as the standard bearers of a thriving, innovative West Coast roots movement, one that fuses old school string band instrumentation with singer/songwriter craftsmanship and rock and roll exuberance, all with a deeply rooted sense of place. The songs here are as diverse and enthralling as the Golden State landscape itself—at times carefree and breezy, at times wild and rugged—and the performances are lush and organic to match, propelled by rich vocal harmonies and driving fiddle (Phil Brezina), banjo (Alex Morrison), mandolin (Addie Levy), and upright bass (Steve Height). And while the collection marks the group’s first release with Levy in the lineup, the result is quintessential Brothers Comatose, a warm, joyful reflection on identity and the ties that bind from a band that knows exactly who they are (and exactly where they come from).

“The Golden Grass sound is a little more laidback than high and lonesome,” Morrison explains. “It’s more relaxed than it is refined. It’s got all sorts of natural imagery, from the desert to the ocean to the redwood forests, but at its heart, it’s a campfire jam on the beach where anyone can strum a few chords and join in. The more the merrier.”

That spirit of inclusion has been central to the band from the start. Founded by Morrison and his brother, Alex, in 2008, the San Francisco-based quintet first emerged to widespread acclaim with their 2010 debut, Songs From The Stoop, which helped earn dates with the likes of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Greensky Bluegrass, and Trampled By Turtles. In the decade-and-a-half that followed, The Brothers Comatose would go on to release five more full-length LPs (along with a slew of singles and adventurous cover EPs), rack up nearly 50 million streams, land festival slots at Outside Lands, High Sierra, and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, tour with Lake Street Dive, The Devil Makes Three, and Yonder Mountain String Band, and build up a devoted following thanks to their raucous live shows and relentless schedule.

Life on the road came with a cost, though, and in 2024, longtime mandolinist Greg Fleischut decided to part ways with the group, which had already begun recording Golden Grass during what little free time they could muster.

“We’d always thought it would be cool to have a female voice to hit those high harmonies,” recalls Morrison, who invited Levy to join the band following Fleischut’s departure. “Addie’s such an incredible mandolin and fiddle player, but she’s also a great singer and songwriter in her own right, and at just 23, she brings a really exciting energy to what we do.”

With Levy onboard, the band returned to the studio during breaks from tour to cut the second half of Golden Grass, embracing the new blood and sonic growth while at the same time doubling down on their distinctive genre-bending sound and character.

“This album came together over a long period of time, and it bridges the lineup change,” says Morrison, “so the songs really represent an amalgamation of different periods in our lives. Alex and Addie and Phil all wrote tunes for it, as well, so there’s a lot of variety, but there’s a throughline of live performance that ties the whole thing together.”

That live energy is plain to hear on Golden Grass, which opens with the infectious title track. “Way out west we do it differently / Untraditionally,” Morrison sings in airtight harmony with his bandmates. “We’ll just burn one down / Can you feel it? / Just relax / It’s Golden Grass.” Like much of the album, the tune is a celebration of home and family, one delivered with both earnest sincerity and sly humor (listen closely and you’ll catch shout outs to a host of other California artists, from Jerry Garcia’s bluegrass outfit, Old & In The Way, up through contemporaries like Molly Tuttle and AJ Lee & Blue Summit). The loping “Hills of San Francisco” turns the city’s slanted streets into a metaphor for life’s ups and downs, while the playful “IPA Song” finds humor in the band’s love/hate relationship with their state’s most recognizable beer, and the poignant “Home Again” (featuring Lindsay Lou on vocals) reckons with loss and resilience in the face of the devastating wildfires that have become all-too-regular across the West in recent years.

“We had really good friends lose their house up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and we’ve been heartbroken watching it happen to so many others all over California,” Morrison explains. “Rather than let it just be a sad song, though, we wanted to capture the beauty that comes with seeing people rebuild and rise from the ashes. We wanted to celebrate the hope that keeps people going through hard times.”

Even when they set their sights beyond California, the band still insists on holding on to that irrepressible sense of hope. The bittersweet “Huckleberry Wine” (written by Alex) revels in the memory of youth and warm summer nights; the exultant “Blue Mountain” (written by Levy) shares a little taste of Appalachia as it embraces the comfort of returning to your roots; and the tender “My Friend” (written by Brezina) celebrates the kind of bonds that transcend time and distance.

“Music has always been rooted in friendship and community for us,” Morrison reflects. “Growing up, our parents used to host parties where all these local musicians would sit around the living room singing and playing together. Somebody left their banjo behind one night, and that’s how Alex and I got started. The rest is history.” 

Call it an accident. Call it fate. These days, The Brothers Comatose just call it Golden Grass.