Page 9 - RYAN'S GIG GUIDE NOVEMBER 2014
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RGG November 2014 - p.9
Nick J Townsend:
Boy were they wrong
Brandon Mendenhall:
I wanted to play guitar
since I was very young like four or five years old
and my dad had kind of forbidden me to play he
said "
no son of mine is going to be a musician
"
When I was seventeen years old I told my
parents "
fuck you I'm going to do it anyway
" My
mom lent me a thousand bucks to buy a guitar
which I had to hide from my father and
eventually a couple of months later he found
out I was in my bedroom playing and I'd only
been playing for like two
months; I had no idea
what I was doing he goes
to use the restroomwhich
was adjacent to my bed
room stands in the doorway
smoking a cigarette and he goes
"
you'll never be a guitarist don't
even try
" and as he walked away he
goes "
turn that shit down
"
Now that to me was very hurtful and
damaging to hear my own father say that
about his son but it also lit a fire in my soul
so bright that I was like "
You know what?
Fuck you I'm going to do this
" and it just
pushed me All the other people in my life
surrounding me that said "
You'll never play an
instrument
" like fellow local bands and local
musicians they didn't have no faith they didn't
believe in me they thought that me playing an
instrument would be an impossibility I came to
LA to visit a friend and I never went home
Check out the music of The Mendenhall Experiment at:
You can also watch on YouTube the full interview with Brandon and
fellow band members Mike Lira and Mario Valadez who appear in
the short film CLINGFILM - LA STORY which is a Documentary film
created especially for the readers of RGG magazine.
r
gg
since 1995
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