By SHANNON O. WELLS
When Jacob Stempky and Johnny Willett, aka Jebbh and Red Mixus of the Mixus Brothers, first heard one of their songs on the radio, they were understandably over the moon. The goodwill the duo had built with Joey Spehar and Liz Felix from WYEP had finally paid off.
Well, there WAS a bit of a catch.
“They would play our songs, but at like 2:30 a.m. — somewhere between 2 and 4:30 a.m. — and I was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s getting played regularly! Like, once a night, you know?!” recalls Stempky, assistant chair and chief of staff in Pitt’s Chemical & Petroleum Engineering department in the Swanson School of Engineering. “Yeah, it would be a moment. It’s great though. I’m not complaining in any way. It just shows, you have to get lucky.”
Part of that luck is cultivating what he calls “those super fans,” of whom Stempky says the Mixus Brothers have been fortunate enough to find. “At least two or three.”
“It took a while to get them, but we had a gentleman in the United Kingdom named Mike Morrison who discovered our second album and just loved it,” Stempky says. “He had a radio station in Brighton, UK, and would play one of our songs — maybe every other week — on his radio show for years, and would talk about us, and I would listen to it online.
“And it was just wild to hear him and compare us to these bands that I’ve idolized, the Beach Boys and stuff like that. I mean, I’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s too much!’ you know?” he adds. “But in the end, it definitely was pretty amazing to be even in that possible category.”
One unique category the Brothers — Stempky on guitar, banjo and vocals; and Willett, a home health occupational therapist who got his graduate degree at Pitt, on drums and vocals — share is that of prolific recording and performing acts with ties to the University’s faculty and schools.
The two friends — who, for the record, are not actual brothers — got together around 2011 after several encounters while taking their respective daughters to a playground in Frick Park. Both lived relatively close to the park, so getting together to pick, drum and sing was easy — at least until Willett moved from Swisshelm Park to Monroeville, just far enough to throw a kink in the plan.
“After we moved, we would write songs and record them on our own, but that wasn’t the same,” Stempky says. Then when he got a job at Pitt, they would meet in Oakland. “I can still recall all these memories of writing songs out on the lawn of Soldiers and Sailors (Memorial Hall & Museum), like at lunch — and coming up with stuff.”
That chemistry, as hard to ignore as the Cathedral of Learning on a clear day, was first captured on their debut release in 2012. It has endured and flourished through a series of albums, singles and extended play, or EP, releases. The duo’s new EP, "The End of the Drive — Chapter 1,” is set to be released on June 30.
“We realized that many people don’t have the time to listen to 12-song albums anymore,” Stempky observes. “So we will release (‘The End of the Drive’) in three-four-song EPs. That way people get a little taste and get on with their other tasks, but can also choose to listen all the way through as well when they all come out.”
Naming names
The Brothers’ eclectic, Americana-based musical stew features richly layered vocal harmonies, dynamic acoustic guitar flourishes and textured percussion. Their collaboration, and the resulting familiar yet somehow quirky and exotic mix of old-school and futuristic sensibilities, seemed to come to them naturally, fully formed.
They’re a working duo in the truest sense.
“We’ve always done two-part harmonies,” Willett says. “It’s always been just Jacob and I as the main songwriters and then recording the music that we’ve had. (Other) people play on the songs and whatnot, but all the songs have been written by us.
“We’ve done all the videos, we’ve done all the covers, all the advertising, everything like that,” he adds. “So yeah, it is interesting that this duo, it truly has been a collaborative mixture of us,” he emphasizes. “It’s so weird.”
Their fourth album, “Let the Cards Decide,” released in 2016, was named by the Pittsburgh E-magazine “Sound Scene Express” as one of the top 10 roots albums of the decade.
“We have faith in the quality of our music,” Stempky says.
Sure, but what’s up with that name, anyway?
“We had come up with 100 different band names, and every single one was taken, if not taken twice,” Stempky says.
Rejecting previously claimed monikers like the Far Away Eyes, Stempky, a fan of Western novel master Louis L’Amour, thought of the villains from “Showdown at Yellow Butte” — the Mixus Brothers. Thus Stempky became brother "Jebbh," and Willett morphed into brother "Red."
“We thought it would be neat to have some sort of an alter ego,” Willett says, “a persona that we could have, sort of like (New York punk rock pioneers) The Ramones, where the last name is different. We could kind of be different people and get away from our normal lives and do this thing as those people.”
Innovative smiles
Given how their partnership unfolded and grew, the choice of “brothers” seemed to be almost divinely inspired.
“It seems like everyone and their brother is a ‘brother’ these days (in the music world),” Stempky says, “but it’s really something that we started and we never really thought it would get to this point. Really, I don’t think we did. … We just kept making music and just being creative. I can recall calling Johnny and being like, ‘I know one thing in my life is I want to continue to make music with you forever.’”
Making music also includes creating videos and marketing materials using innovative technological approaches.
The Brothers’ video for “The Smiles You See” was created with the help of Chris Wilmer, Pitt associate professor of chemical engineering, and some experimentation with artificial intelligence software. “(Wilmer) makes videos in his spare time with his kids, and so I threw out the idea of making a music video,” Stempky says.
“We started chatting about it last November and using Runway ML, an AI software available online.”
Building the video using six-second increments for “The Smiles You See,” Stempky would describe the scene and see what the “computer brain” came up with.
“It is pretty strange but also super fun, just the fact that we were able to put together something that was even somewhat close to cohesive.”
The Mixus Brothers’ videos can be viewed on the duo’s YouTube page.
Keeping it real
For both Willett and Stempky, playing in a duo together — regardless of how few and far between their live performances around Pittsburgh can sometimes be — is simply part of bringing balance to their sometimes over-committed daily lives.
“Playing in a duo outlet, you’ve got the ability to have a place where you can go and be absolutely yourself or even this other person, this pseudonym, and that’s our work balance,” Willett says. “We have our jobs. We have our stressors in our jobs, our good days and our bad days.
“And our creativity, things in our music may reflect the things that we see day to day, but really what our music has done has … it’s been an ability to get closer together as people.
“We’re able to bounce things off of each other and have that cathartic experience,” he adds, “whether it’s once a week or once a month, to create something new and also just to be able to just kind of free our minds from all those other things and not think about anything else.”
Stempky concurs. “I feel like I’m probably a better employee. I’m a better boss. I’m a better co-worker, because I have a way to release that stress a little bit, right?” he says. “That creative side of me is something that I feel is a benefit for the people in my life.
“Because if I didn’t have that, I probably would have gone insane.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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