Episode 117: Brandon Flowers of The Killers

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This is FUV Live Sessions with Brandon Flowers of the Killers.

I'm Megan Suma, and I'm here with host Russ Boris, and we're at WFUV.

But this session is pretty different from most of our other sessions.

We do a lot of sessions that are off-site, but this was like a completely reimagined version of a session for us.

We met up with Brandon Flowers, of course, of The Killers, to talk about his new solo record at Chelsea Studios in Manhattan.

And you got to sit down with Brandon and have a conversation with him.

And then we actually watched on screen in the moment two live performances, which listeners will hear in this episode.

But listeners will also hear some 30-second excerpts of songs from the record because you guys talk about them.

So walk me through this day with Brandon Flowers and what this was like for you.

This is a really interesting experience because obviously you're going in and you're thinking, OK, this is this is the front man for one of the biggest bands in the world who has done a completely different project than most people would associate with him.

And, you know, having not met him before, you don't know what kind of personality you're going to deal with or they're going to be, you know.

difficulty in terms of navigating a conversation.

But I found Brandon to be just extremely generous with his answers, with his thoughts about where he's looking at this solo record, how he's framed it, how it really came to be.

It was a really interesting conversation.

And I just was very appreciative of how giving he was during that conversation.

The fun part for me going in Maybe it wasn't so fun, actually, when I think about it.

I guess it was more of the intimidating part.

Once you get past the, okay, how is this conversation gonna go? Then I start to realize, okay, I'm sitting in front of a room full of people next to Brandon Flowers.

And we're going to listen to some new songs from his record.

And I'm in front of people.

So we're not watching the television for the two songs, which was great, by the way.

I have to sit and not look really dorky listening to a song for four minutes and like... what do I am I nodding my head am I like

I did give you I gave you a pencil as a prop

yes and it helped because I did have moments where I would hear something and I'd write down a note to myself because I oh let me remember to talk about this when we come out of the song so that was helpful but other than that like I was stressed in my brain it was like one of those weird interview quirks of like as the interviewer you're overthinking it yes But I think we had a really cool conversation.

I appreciated so much of what we were talking about.

And I think he was really open and we got a lot of really interesting answers and learned a lot about the record, where his headspace was in making it, you know, how how a lot of these songs came together and the meaning of it all.

Yeah.

So just as a reminder to folks, you're going to hear Russ and Brandon's conversation and you're going to hear two live tracks that were recorded at RCA Studio A in Nashville.

And then you will also hear some excerpts of the songs from the new album.

But please make sure that you go out and support Brandon Flowers' new solo project.

Again, the album is called Thrasher and it just came out on August 21st, shortly before this episode aired.

Here's me and Brandon talking at Chelsea Studios.