The Brewer Boys: From Covering Rihanna on a 2011 "X Factor" to Building a Career
Greeted with stifled yawns from Paula Abdul and Pharrell, the teens-at-the-time feature the naturally-beautiful harmonies of classic brothers and others like The Everlys and Simon & Garfunkel.
Since the turn-of-the century debut of FOX’s American Idol, I had become hooked on not only the pick-your-fave voting nature of the show, but on hearing new voices you’d hear nowhere else! It didn’t matter that the music wasn’t new (these were all covers being performed, after all)…it’s clear that there is an amazing amount of prodigious talent lurking in the bedrooms of small-town and big-city America!
The birth, proliferation, and the ratings-race of copy-cat talent competitions was on…to varying degrees of network success and the uncovering of new, gifted talents. At some point, was it a foregone conclusion that the talent field would be inherently and inevitably thinned?
Cut to Simon Cowell’s The X Factor, his UK replacement for that country’s Pop Idol (2001-2003), the precursor to the States’ American Idol iteration. The X Factor, then, was “farmed out” to other countries, including the U.S. from 2011-2013, as The X Factor USA, also airing on FOX.
I was watching in 2011, when The Brewer Boys (Justin was 17, and Nathan, 14) made their appearance on X Factor USA before show judges Paula Abdul (who had put in time “judging” on American Idol a few years earlier) and fellow hitmaker, Pharrell Williams, at a Santa Barbara mansion’s backyard. The image here is flipped, presumably to skirt YouTube copyright issues:
RiRi Lays the Foundation
At the time, I was unfamiliar with Rihanna’s music, although I’d heard the name. I think it might’ve been several months to a couple years until I heard her original (above). Regardless, I was stunned by the Brewers’ overall arrangement (they played the guitars on a pre-recorded track they sang along to), and their remarkable vocal blend and harmony precision. But, it all started with the original.
From the song’s Wiki: “Serving as [her 2010 album] Loud’s lead single, “Only Girl (In the World)” was released on September 10, 2010. Crystal Johnson wrote the song in collaboration with producers Stargate and Sandy Vee. Rihanna contacted Stargate (aka Norwegian songwriting and production duo, Tor E. Hermansen and Mikkel S. Eriksen) before Loud’s production, and asked them to create lively, uptempo music. “Only Girl (In the World)” was the first song composed for the album, and the singer decided to include it on the track list before she recorded her vocals.
“Backed by strong bass and synthesizer, it is a dance-pop and Eurodance song that has an electronic composition.” In other words, there wasn’t a guitar within hundreds of kilometers of the recording studio!
Bring on The Brewer Boys
So, within a year (from RiRi’s 2010 release to the Boys’ The X Factor 2011 ep), Justin and Nathan had worked up a guitar-forward arrangement that had nothing whatsoever to do with dancing or synths. How the hell do you hear Rihanna’s original and manage to “hear” a version the likes of which The Brewer Boys brought…including the introduction of an original harmony scheme that was as scarce in Rihanna’s as anything with “Gibson” printed on it?
The October 13, 2011 Hollywood Reporter chimed in with this nugget: “The judges then assigned each person or group their song and proceeded to hear them out one by one in an outside setting.” So, the Brewer Boys were handed the song…actually given the song to do something with! That raises the level of difficulty just that much more!
Heard It On the X
The lads’ journey on The X Factor was rather brief, but let’s see if we can re-construct it. According to a show fansite, their initial audition was with a cover of the Plain White T’s “Rhythm of Love.” It’s less than half-a-minute, but this rough snippet seems to be all that’s available:
This pushed them through to “Bootcamp,” as it was called, and their next appearance was their Judge’s House showing with the Rihanna song. This sent them through to the live shows during Week 1, where they performed a medley of “Rich Girl”/“Faith” in a clever Hall & Oates/George Michael mash-up. I gotta think they came up with the arrangement themselves (as Nathan pulls out his mandolin):
The earlier-cited fansite mentions that the boys’ show journey was halted by Paula Abdul, who was, ironically enough, their show mentor. The show ended with The Brewer Boys coming in tied for 13th.
Sweeping Bowl Cuts? Their Roots Are Showing
Here they are, again, around that 2011 time, with their cover of an Old Crow Medicine Show song from 2008, “Caroline” (written by that band’s Ketch Secor, shown above), from the OCMS Tennessee Pusher album:
From 2011, The Brewers tackle the 1997 Bob Dylan song, “To Make You Feel My Love,” that was originally released by Billy Joel that year for his Greatest Hits Volume III album. According to David Browne in Rolling Stone in 2019, “it is one of the few songs to have achieved the status of becoming a ‘standard’ in the 21st century, having been covered by more than 450 different artists”:
Justin and Nathan’s harmonies again take center stage on this 2012 Mumford & Sons cover of “Winter Winds,” a song from the British folk rockers’ 2009 album, Sigh No More. Justin reveals in the video’s notes that they recorded the song in-studio before recording this video, and thus, are synching their playing and singing here:
Inspired by the Mumford & Sons’ “The Boxer” cover, here’s Nathan (l) and Justin with their take on the Simon & Garfunkel classic, written by Paul Simon. Their beautiful tones and timbres are obviously familial, but it’s also quite clear they work hard on the razor-sharp precision of their harmonies:
🎄Holiday Harmonies🎵
From a busy 2012, Justin wrote this on the boys’ YouTube page: “Inspired by our recent visit to Manila where the Christmas season starts really early, we arranged, played, recorded, and shot our first ever Christmas music video,” a medley of the evergreen Mel Tormé chestnut, with Justin Bieber’s 2011 Yule-tune, “Mistletoe”:
Nathan’s Pant-less “Valerie” Cover
From August 2020, in the throes of full lockdown fever, Nathan writes about his Amy Winehouse cover: “Took inspiration from a great version done by The Brothers Comatose, hope you enjoy! Filmed in the flannel jungle that is my closet; also did not wear pants while filming this!”
Drifting, their most recent album (released in January 2021), is announced in this video, and the Brewers play “Drifter” from it here:
More Sibling Singers to Discover
Singing brothers/siblings recording artists (non-exhaustive): The Everly Brothers, The Jackson 5, The Osmonds, The Wilson brothers in the Beach Boys, The Paley Brothers, The Bee Gees, the Alessi Brothers, The Isley Brothers, The Williams Brothers (‘30s and ‘40s quartet, with Andy Williams), The Williams Brothers (traditional Black Gospel group, 1960 to present), The Williams Brothers (‘70s teen pop stars, late-’80s/early-’90s adult artists on Warner Brothers, nephews of Andy Williams), The Smothers Brothers, The Keane Brothers (John and Tom), Tim and Larry, the Melby brothers of Liaison (late-‘80s/early-’90s CCM rock group), Kristy and Jimmy McNichol.
Sisters are doing it for themselves, also! Along with The Pointer Sisters and Karen and Richard of The Carpenters, here’s a good start to discovering more recording sisters and sister acts (click here)!
More bluegrass? Brewer bluegrass buddy, Billy:
I didn't know about the Brewer Boys and I'm glad they've stayed indie and done the music they've wanted to do.
Another brother band I saw before they hit it big were Hanson, in a local park in my small town.
This was a great deep dive! I wasn't familiar with them at all. It was great to see their evolution and how much they improved since their X-Factor days (kudos for their ballsy attitude, though). Interestingly, I think the younger one has been more consistent than his older brother (or less pitchy, at least 🤣). Loved their Garfunkel cover (which I think is a studio recording, but still, very nice arrangements), and I enjoyed their "live on radio" clip as well!