An interview with Jeffrey and Theresa Brooks of Apocalypse Cow

Apocalypse Cow Productions is a team of three composers (with the occasional collaborator) who work collectively towards creating inventive music, whether it is for film, television or artists. The two brothers (Jeffrey and Dan Jeremy Brooks) and Jeffrey’s wife (Theresa Brooks) have been writing songs or involved in music since childhood. They founded Apocalypse Cow in 1999, since then they have created music videos, scored films, produced charting rock albums, mixed film audio and written music for network television, feature films, arcade games, DVD releases, music libraries and more. Apocalypse Cow also houses a full recording studio so musicians can easily be recorded live when needed. (See complete credits at end of interview).

JR: JULIUS ROBINSON, MUSICSUPERVISOR.COM
JB: JEFFREY BROOKS, APOCOLYPSE COW
TB: THERESA BROOKS, APOCOLYPSE COW

JR: Did you know that “Flashbulbs” replaced Madonna’s “Vogue” by Madonna in the film?
JB: That’s fantastic.
JR: So can you tell me about “Flashbulbs?”
TB: It was started from a hook in my head. The idea of flashbulbs, actually the song “Paparazzi” was newish at the time. I just went with the flow and used a lot of Kelly Clarkson-type ideas. We have a singer we’ve worked with who’s 20-ish and in college and so I had her voice in mind as I was writing the song. Her name is Courtney Jurick, but she goes by Courtney Jay.
JB: She’s been on MTV’s “Made” and performed in Chicago.
JR: So did you cut that there in your studio in Chicago?
JB: Yeah, we write and record everything right here.
JR: Tell me about the process; once Theresa had the song then what do you go through to get that sounding so good?
TB: We write out the basics to the song, bounce ideas back and forth
JB: If it’s a song that can have live instruments, we bring in players, or perform our own live instruments. ‘Flashbulbs’ does have live drums so we have a pretty good live room and mic in the control room, so we’re pretty set up to record live drums and bring in players. To me, that’s a big deal, live players, as opposed to try and do everything in the box.
JR: In Chicago, can you find the people you need to get the sound you want on your recordings?
JB: Yeah, we’ve been really lucky. Theresa went to school for music at DePaul University and met tons of players. You know Chicago is pretty happening — it’s not New York but there’s a lot of players out here and people that are willing to come in and play.
TB: Yeah since we have bands coming in to record at our studio all the time, we get al lot of musicians to check out. It’s like, “Alright this is a good player — let’s keep this guy in mind.”
JR: So you are really tapped into the talent there in Chicago area. What do you think are some of the advantages of being from that town? I love Chicago, our Development Team leader Darby Frey and one of our interns is from there. I do want to give props to Chicago, so besides the great musicians there, is there anything else about being there as opposed to LA, New York or Nashville?
JB: Well, I think there’s better vegetarian food in Chicago!
TB: People have a very different mentality here.
JB: They’ll tell you what their thinking for sure, we kind of joke when we talk to folks in LA, you know I can’t always read them I don’t know. You get very polite smiles but it’s like “what did they mean by that?’ And I think in Chicago you pretty much know what people mean when they say it. If they’re interested, great, and if not that’s fine too
JR: Yeah in LA you’ll meet somebody who will say, “Oh great yeah I’ll see you at your show with five people!” And you never hear from them again. So it’s the big yes and then they disappear, it’s like nobody has courtesy to look in your eyes like in New York or Chicago and say, “sorry I’m busy and not interested.” It’s a bullshit level which is quite refined out here.
JB: Yeah exactly
TB: I think there’s a big community here too, I think people know that we’re not the major music center so we need to work together and so there’s more people willing to try and go to gigs and help people help out. So I think in a way that’s a good thing
JB: Yeah obviously it’s blues and resurgent country that’s a big part of Chicago music.
JR: What’s going on with that there? Are there clubs that are featuring Chicago music, or artists out of there that you know about who you recorded?
JB: Well “Bloodshot Records” are out of Chicago, a part of a bigger resurgent country thing, and I think it’s pretty hip. And blues of course is constant in Chicago.
TB: Yeah Buddy Guy did a bunch of shows in January
JB: Buddy Guy, he’s a legend of blues, and always a cornerstone of Chicago
JR: So are you guys Francis Ford-Coppola fans?
JB: I am a Coppola fan. It’s heavily debated how to say his last name isn’t’ it?
JR: is it Cappola or Coppola?
JB: Who knows, it seems like every three years there’s a new pronunciation for his name!
JR: And he’s a vintner now, he’s got the wine company. I’ve had a lot of his wine it’s very good, but I like his movies better
JB: Yeah I’m a Dracula fan.
JR: So obviously that play on words was part of your thinking when you came up with your name for the production company “Apocalypse Cow?”
JB: Yeah, that’s a funny story. My brother and I were in high school and he’s a little younger than me. So I was doing a creative writing paper and the teacher said we could submit it as a video instead and I just got this new video camera, which was a big thrill. We did this really bad video, and it had a little character generator on the camera and so we decided we needed a production company, and one of us decided Apocalypse Cow without really thinking about it. Again we’d seen a lot of Coppola films, so we just punched it in and the name kind of stuck. I of course know that I came up with the name but my brother is under the delusion that he came up with it, so to this day it’s unresolved, who came up with the name
JR: That’s hilarious, and what’s your brother’s name again?
JB: Dan Jeremy
JR: So there’s the debate as to who is the creator of this amazing pun. Use a pun, go to prison! In fact, actually you might laugh at this, we’ve been debating the past couple of months about how to roll out the marketing on a whole new level of service and websites and other things we’re offering. We’re creating a platform for us to build other websites that service other segments of the music business, and it’s an open API for anyone who wants to use it. Right now, after this MIDEM show we picked up another 200,000 tracks so we’re going to be up over 300,000 and I believe that puts us at the number 1 independent catalogue in the U.S. So we’re just talking about how we’re going to do all this stuff. I’m a songwriter and screenwriter and Barry, our founder is a producer working with Steve Tyrell for many years in Hollywood and we all come from a music background and are continuing the pursuit of our dreams and not giving them up. The pun when I was thinking about with Apocalypse Cow, I said this is going to be my headline ‘Triumph of the “Heard” — Apocalypse Cow places ‘Flashbulbs’ in Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, Talk about a Zoo”. He loved the idea of “the heard” so we’re going to “join the heard” and make it a catch phrase along with “we get music.” Our deep brand name will be WEGET — that’s our brand behind MusicSupervisor.com. We’re going to have IndieSafari.com, which will be a indie band fan exploration site and a whole bunch of cool ideas we’re working on now to really make all of this work not only for licensing but for actually being a real spectacular part of hopefully the music business for whatever’s left of it. So what do you think?
JB: That’s fantastic; I think it’s hysterical
JR: Yeah well it’s guys like you that make it all happen. So let’s get back a little ways into history here, how did this all start? How did you begin Apocalypse Cow or even before it was called that? How did you get to this place?
JB: Well my brother, who unfortunately is still stranded in the snow, I don’t know if you heard Chicago got hit.
JR: Oh yeah our guy in Chicago sent me pictures of the streets it’s unbelievable
JB: Yeah so my brother isn’t here today unfortunately, but he started pretty much when we could reach the piano and so my dad PAs like church and school PAs just as a hobby I guess. My mom played some guitar so I was around music but wasn’t really a musician and then I guess it made sense for me to start putting microphones in front of my brother and just started engineering that way. We got really into Plunderphonics music, so like John Oswald might be good examples of those people. You know we’re all familiar with mash-ups and sampling now, but that’s kind of like if you took a car and another car and stacked them on top of each other. The way I think of sampling is like you take a spark plug from one car and a lug nut from another, really micro parts and then piece together a bunch of stuff. It’s probably the slowest way to make music but if you know where all the samples came from you can contextualize some cool meaning and built up a whole song. Our thing is that we wrote songs with lyrics, which is not necessarily the case, and it felt like pop songs when they were done which is definitely not the case for most of the other Plunderphonics people. But like I said it’s like the slowest way we could possibly make music so I said screw it, I’m going to buy a guitar like everyone else and just learn it. Around the same time I met Theresa and she was studying performance and music business at DePaul University, and also learning guitar and we were going to learn guitar together but instead we got married. So I guess that’s kind of how the whole thing started, my roommate in college was a audio engineer, but we were doing computer science stuff so it was unrelated and I was already recording my brother’s stuff and his songs kept getting more elaborate and needed more and more gear and needed advice from my roommate and at some point he was like “you pretty much have a recording studio why don’t you start taking bands in and do that too”. So I started recording bands and that was like 12 or 13 years ago, and I simultaneously was writing because you know that’s where the passion is. When Theresa finished school she became…
TB: …three of us full time here
JB: Yeah so we’re pretty much, between the three of us somebody is writing all the time, and or two of us are and someone is recording most of the time. It’s a pretty busy place
JR: That’s great and you’re located in downtown? What area of Chicago are you located in?
JB: We’re 30 miles west of Chicago Proper. So we’re at the end of the train if you will, the last stop
JR: Well that sounds like LA basically 30 miles from anything here. I’m 30 miles from my wife and you know she’s in the next room! Anyway, as you can tell I’m a comedy writer as well so I’m trying out some new material on you.
TB: We can take surveys at the end if you want!
JR: Seriously, though, it’s tough out there, but we’re really determined to find some new incoming streams and we’re out into the retail store music space now. We have 700 stores so far and have generated 20 million spins like every 2 or 3 months. It’s really amazing, if you have the Pro Account, if you ever want to look at that, you get a 1 month free trial and then if you want to continue its 9.95 a month and that gives you really detailed reports on what’s going on in that division. Also, you can see the licensing lounge where you can hear in real time what we’re pitching and you click on the title of the songs and the player opens up to see what the music supervisor sees. And also your twitter feed comes down if someone wants to contact you they can, and so we’re building the beginning of a community for our members so it’s something you might want to check into. Lyrics etc. We want to get you heard and pump up our artists and get them out there as part of the reinvention of the music business
JB: Yeah because something’s going to have to happen, clearly, there needs to be a reinvention. We all feel it, even the studio, like I’ve definitely felt it here, people don’t sell CDs or make them, and if they are it’s inexpensive, they just do it on their Mac in their bedroom, and that’s good enough to sell at the show. It’s a whole different aesthetic from what we had before
JR: I think there’s still an appreciation for filet mignon, well you’re a vegetarian so pure delicious food as apposed to fast food. You can hear the difference and I tell people, there’s a possibility your music can be played at full tempo through Lucas Sound speakers at full volume all over the world, or soft in the background in the TV show and it doesn’t make a difference how it was recorded. Whatever that range of possible outcomes though it seems to me that you would want to make your things sound as great as you can. There are still people out there that want stuff that is recorded with vintage gear, with tube mics and live drummers and that great stuff
JB: I hope so, because God knows we’ve invested in that stuff. I hope the studio and people want to license stuff that sounds like that. Not to say there’s no place for the other, but it’s a different thing.
JR: Yeah, to me it’s fast food as opposed to something that’s a little better prepared and meticulous to make a finer product ultimately. I think that over the long run, quality always wins out and I think your investment in that gear is good, I know people in the studio business that have seen a huge hit to their bookings and stuff they’re not really doing the same kind of business that they used to, people don’t really care and are willing to go to somebody’s bedroom and use Pro Tools. But maybe we can draw more attention to guys like you that are really trying to do something. One of the comments I have to tell you from the exec of Disney is “this track sounds great.” It was up to par with Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ that’s one of the reasons it got selected. When this came along the producers were like “yeah that’s good” I don’t know if it could have been accomplished in just a little room.
JB/TB : Yeah really, very true. That’s nice to hear
JR: Yeah this is the irony of the whole thing, someone is going to listen to it that has the ability to choose you to be in a movie, and they will be comparing you to the best records ever made, so why wouldn’t you want to make the best record you could possibly make? Yeah, so anyway is there anything else you’d like to say to add to this interview?
TB: You should add that we also worked with other people in the Chicago area and one of the co writers on the song for the lyrics is a friend of ours in St. Paul, Minnesota, Mike Beckman
JB: And another thing we do is a lot of collaboration with ample people we’ve met through the years and for instance, Mike is a machine for writing lyrics and a heck of a guitarist. I can be like “oh Mike I need gypsy guitar” and he’s one of our go-to guys.
JR: Great, anything else about yourself, your studio, life?
JB: You just missed our annual Groundhogs day mailing. We’re serious!
JR: On our homepage for MusicSupervisor.com, we put our baby pictures up, we’ve got tongue in cheek bios, we’re just writers and musicians, we’re not egotistical. It’s part of our culture, so I really liked your attitude and the whole humor in Apocalypse Cow really appeals to me. When I knew this placement was definite I knew I wanted to do a feature on you.
JB: You were talking about photos and for the longest time we just had shots of our feet on our site. Who cares what I look like? The baby pictures really made me laugh when I saw that.
JR: Yeah if we put our real heads up there it would not be pretty. But seriously, it’s been a lot of fun talking to you and hopefully we’ll get together if you’re ever in LA or I’m in Chicago or somewhere in between we’ll try to hook up
JB: That’d be fantastic!
.
Films include: Beverly Hill Chihuahua 2, According to Dom, The Fixer, Dead of Night, Proceed and Be Bold, Scorpion Bowl, Diabolical Tales III, A Role of Their Own
Two Brothers, One Beer and the American Dream

Clients include, Naperville Television 17 – Scored several documentaries, Film Pharm – scored a couple documentaries, Ford Motor Company and Ogilvy & Mather, Robotic Amusements – Arcade Game, Joue Joue – “Tots Rock” exercise video, Sunbeam/First Alert, Mountain Dew, Tub Ring – produced the charting album “Zoo Hypothesis”

Places Cow music has been played: Stations ABC, CBS, MTV, MTV2, Style Network/E! Entertainment, The History Channel, PBS TLC, National Geographic Explorer, Planet Green, The Travel Channel, Science Channel, Women’s Entertainment, Sirius Radio, XM Radio, CMT (Country Music Television), Super Stations across the USA, NCTV17

Television Shows include Let’s Make a Deal, Science of the Movies, Little People, Toddlers and Tiaras, Renovation Nation, Man Made, Samantha Who, Cities of the Underground, Ace of Cakes, Rock the Cradle, American Idol: Rewind, Dr. 90210
Clean House Comes Clean, Property Ladder, My First Home, Running of the Brides
Can you Duet, Beach Patrol: Honolulu, Lassie’s Pet Vet, Your Average Zombies Podcast.