When their press materials mentioned Belle and Sebastian as an influence, I knew I couldn’t resist reaching out to Gentle Brontosaurus for an interview. Turns out they have a sense of humor as well. Or at least vocalist/guitarist/ keyboardist/ukuleleist Huan Hua does — check out her response to my question about the band’s name! So without further ado, here’s my interview with Gentle Brontosaurus…

Nick, you belong to both Gentle Brontosaurus and Spiral Island. Is there a broader connection between the two projects?

[Nick] Huan-Hua and I have been taking part in February Album Writing Month since the days of our previous band TL;DR. Songs that I write can become material for Gentle Brontosaurus or Spiral Island (my solo project), for one reason or another, or a lot go nowhere. Similarly, Huan-Hua also has miscellaneous owl and Vowl Sounds. And any of us can bring songs to the band. Scott contributed a couple of songs on the latest album as well.

How are the two projects different from each other? 

[Nick] In GB, there’s five of us fleshing out every song, refining it in the thunderdome of live performance. Spiral Island is all home-studio tinkering. It’s a good way to get experience with more production/mixing techniques, and then that experience becomes useful for Gentle Brontosaurus too.

Gentle Brontosaurus is a cool name for a band. How did you come up with it, and what does it say about your music?

[Huan-Hua] It was my grandmother’s maiden name. She was such a strong, smart, beautiful woman and has always been an inspirational role model for me, especially her Eurorack synthesizer work, which is quite different from her early period but retains many of the same free jazz influences in its harmonic choices. 

“Luxury Bones,” the first single from your album Three Hares, is about dental insurance. How did you zero in on that topic?

[Huan-Hua] The phrase “Luxury Bones” is from a tweet that was going viral (credit @itsdansheehan/notawolf)—“According to most health insurance companies, teeth are luxury bones that I must pay more to continue enjoying.” Like everyone else in the band, I have a white collar day job, where I earn money to buy snacks and guitars, and health insurance has been a factor in some career decisions in the past, so the phrase and idea definitely speak to me on a personal level. Also, I work in a very niche field: translations for high risk medical devices and in vitro diagnostics. Sometimes I think about how there must be so many people out there like me who are working in very specific jobs or industries like this that they never even knew existed when they were children. (I remember grilling my dad at some point in my childhood about what an “engineering manager” actually does.) So that plus anxiety about my receding gums all ended up coming together into this song. 

There’s a playfulness to the song, but the lyrics have a more serious undertone, speaking as they do to class differences within the American healthcare system. Do you think a certain amount — or perhaps a certain type — of playfulness is missing from political discourse? 

[Huan-Hua] I don’t know if I’d say it’s missing (see, for example, inflatable frog costumes in Portland) but I do think being a little unserious about the Horrors now and then helps keep us from sinking into inescapable pits of despair. 

Your press materials cite The Beths, Alvvays, and Belle & Sebastian as influences. What do you take from each of these bands?

[Scott] Those bands are all focused on the craft of songwriting and make approachable music while retaining their unique quirks. 

I was looking at your website, and it looks like the last update you posted was in 2019 when Scott Stetson joined the band. Obviously, a lot has happened since then, not the least of which was a global pandemic. What does the band look like now?

[Scott] We’ve had the same lineup since I joined in 2019. When the pandemic hit, some other Madison bands tried things like livestreaming performances, but we decided to hit pause and wait it out. Sadly, a lot of bands we used to play with didn’t come back after Covid. When we regrouped in Spring of 2021, the timing couldn’t have been better. Venues were just starting to book bands again, and we jumped on some exciting opportunities, like opening for Ratboys and sharing a festival bill with Friko.

[Huan-Hua] The pandemic is also a big part of the reason for the gap between our last album and the new one—we had to spend some time figuring things out again after our hiatus. 

The band has actually been around since 2013. How have you managed to keep going for over a decade?

[Scott] I haven’t been here since the start, but something I picked up right away is this is a low drama crew with similar shared expectations. It’s not an exciting answer, but that stuff is so important. I feel like most of the friction I’ve seen playing in bands was rooted in members not being on the same page about things like how often to practice or what kind of gigs to aim for. We aren’t dealing with any of that, so it’s easy to stay focused on the music and enjoying ourselves.

[Huan-Hua] Totally. I really appreciate that. This is a terrible way to make money, so it’s really important to enjoy what you’re doing and who you’re spending time with. I’d say this also is not the same band we were when we started. We had some lineup changes in earlier years, and I switched from ukulele to electric guitar in our live shows around the time Scott joined the band—adjusting to a different instrument took some figuring out. I was also very green when we started the band, and I think my technical and songwriting skills have improved with time and practice, so it’s felt like our music has grown and changed over time. (Some of us were good at everything to begin with and didn’t need to improve, so I’m just speaking for myself.) 

What are your plans for the future?

[Huan-Hua] I’m hoping “Three Hares” goes platinum and we can travel all over the world wrecking hotel rooms on tour. I’ve never gotten to throw a TV out of a window and I think this is the year it’s going to happen! I’m manifesting it. (Seriously, though, I think touring again would be nice. Also, maybe pressing some vinyl for the first time? We’ve started working on some new songs, too, and I’m excited to add more new ones to the mix.)