Interview | Mama Feet: Brazilian indie rock band releases their second album, “Something Blue”
It’s a wrap! After three years of pre-producing, mastering, and mixing, with five singles released and one big premiere, Mama Feet finally unleashed to the world their second album, “Something Blue”, alongside their most ambitious video so far: “Someone to Die For”.
To celebrate this release, Mama Feet launched a premiere at a cinema in Rio de Janeiro on January 26th. The band presented their entire album with lyric videos and six video clips to the guests invited to the event. “Someone to Die For” was the only one that had never been seen before.
With a 007 atmosphere, they invited the well-known Brazilian comedian, Diogo Defante, to play the part of James Bond. Filmed in five different locations, this particular video reminisced their first album, “Brazilian Democracy”, with references such as their exclusive merch and Mylo’s (vocal and guitar) computer with Tynho’s (bass player) e-mail entitled ‘Coração’ (sweetheart), representing their ‘relationship’ that brought the album to the world.
They also revered some of the most renowned Bond’s movies, such as Live and Let Die (1973), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), GoldenEye (1995), Casino Royale (2006), Skyfall (2012) and No Time To Die (2021). On YouTube, “Someone to Die For” reached 242k views. One can ascertain that Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig are proud of them!
Immerse yourself in the Musical Bond Extravaganza
The new album came out with 11 songs ranging from romance and breaking-ups to marriage and friendship. From the traditional Americanized version of marriage, “Something Blue”, tried to create not only an atmosphere where the couple realizes they no longer belong together, but also shows that we need to bring emotions to the surface that are usually kept locked deep down in our hearts.
Something Blue is out now! Check it out on Spotify and YouTube
From Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the band describes themselves as “a work inspired by Mariah Carey’s heavy guitars, Sepultura’s soft vocal melodies, and David Gilmour’s ula-ula dance”.
According to Fey Samp, guitarist and backing vocalist, “Mama is not just a band. It’s a concept, it´s an energy. Something transcendental that is reflected in our songs, pictures, and video clips.”
Amaze yourself with the beautiful surroundings of Rio de Janeiro – Brazil in this fantastic clip here
Formed in 2013 by four friends, Mylo Samp (vocal and guitar), Fey Samp (guitar and backing vocal), Tynho Campo Grande (bass) and Tommy Lee aka Braulio Drumond (former drummer), Mama Feet created a whole new concept for Brazilian bands, in which they combined their lyrics with animated video clips and, to introduce the band to the world, they recreated famous movies with a bit of ‘Mama touch’.
However, in 2016, Tommy Lee moved to another city and it was hard to finish the album in these conditions, which made Fey (guitarist and producer of the album) to also play the drums on some tracks. While looking for another drummer, they exploited the troubles to their advantage of this distance, creating a song especially for him: “Tommy Lee Dick”.
Safe to say that the song represents just a prank since they all remain good friends. That same year, they met the iconic and current drummer, Pedryta Araruama, and finally the band felt complete.
Mama Feet recreated the cover of ‘Home Alone’ to introduce their newest drummer.
Mama Feet: Eurotour
Back in 2019, Mama Feet fulfilled their wildest dream: an Eurotour with shows throughout England and Spain. London, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and Madrid were amongst the cities visited where they were able to present their authentic work to their British audience while having tons of fun and sightseeing prestigious places and attractions, very esteemed to rock fans.
Mama Feet ended the tour with an exclusive concert in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, closing their first chapter.
The band loves to recreate covers of famous movies and to announce their Eurotour, they did a ‘Eurotrip’ movie cover with Mama style
“The experience was amazing! England was the birthplace of many bands that shaped me. Even before preparing everything, bags already packed, I felt goosebumps, mostly because I didn’t know how the audience would accept our authorial music.
But all it took was getting on stage on our first show to replace this feeling of doubt with a great feeling of ‘that was going to work out very well’. Two memorable moments for me were getting emotional playing “Safe Side of Sound” in Keighley, and that one when someone came to us out of the blue, praising our music and saying that “The Old Room” had strong lyrics.
That felt amazing! I must say that this tour was very important to our newest phase, because we made the live debut of “Red Lights” and also recorded pieces of our trip that became its videoclip.” (Mylo Samp, in an interview with Rock & Art)
From left to right: Fey Samp, Mylo Samp, Pedryta Araruama, and Tynho Campo Grande at Abbey Road Studio, in London – UK
Check out an exclusive interview with Mama Feet about their newest album and both past and future experiences.
Rock and Art: Can you tell us a little bit more about your creative process? How do you know which riff goes to which song and how do you choose which songs will be part of the album?
Mama Feet: We have a special group on our ‘mamaphone’ to exchange riffs and inventions. We share there our finished songs, fragments, and mash-ups of harmony and melodies. Usually, the songs’ kick off, so to speak, comes individually and, after that, specially in these pandemic times, we have a lot of online meetings to figure out which ones we are willing to work with.
Rock and Art: What does ‘Something Blue’ represent to you guys? Who came up with the idea for the album’s name? Maybe there will be perhaps a ‘something old’ and ‘something borrowed’ coming up…
Mama Feet: “Something Blue” came to represent our newest blue phase that we are living in since May 2020, with the release of our first single, “Red Lights”.
After finishing the process of composing and selecting the repertoire, the title of the album came to light. There are several factors that helped us choose this name. For example, that blue feeling; the contrast with our third song, “Something Real”; and mostly due to this marriage atmosphere.
There are songs that approach both success and failures in a relationship, alongside that first moment after breaking up, under different perspectives that are related. What we know for sure is that, in the end, the situations we talk about in our songs brought us closer together, like a ‘mama’ marriage.
About our next steps, we have a few ideas and about 20 songs ready to go, but we will focus now on the release of “Something Blue” and keep composing regularly.
Watch their very first video recorded abroad, with some aesthetic footage of their Eurotour here
Rock and Art: How did you become friends with Diogo Defante and came up with the idea to ask him to be in “Someone to Die For”? Will you record any more video clips?
Mama Feet: Right from the start we realized that this song had the 007 vibes in its harmony, so we came up with the idea to create this ‘sequel’ before the song was even ready.
When we finished the first recording draft, we noticed that it had to be this way, so we made a list of possible names that had the ‘James Bond spirit’ and thought of something creative to show this idea to them.
Defante was our very first choice and, luckily enough, we were able to reach him! To win his heart, we sent a storyboard full of pictures of scenes we imagined for this clip, replacing Bond’s face with his. That was awesome! The rest of it, as they say, is history!
Mama Feet with comedian Diogo Defante at the ‘Something Blue’ release premiere in Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
Rock and Art: Mylo, “Something Blue” is an album that talks about relationships, and broken hearts, but it also talks about friendship. Your music maturity is remarkable, in contrast with your first album, “Brazilian Democracy”. Did you compose your lyrics based on personal experiences? What was it like for you to showcase these experiences and feelings in your songs?
Mylo: Yeah, it was indeed like a rescue of all my emotions and basically how to learn to talk about it, especially when I say “my weakness is not a secret” on “Echo – The Next Room”. I learnt to put my emotions out in the open and the ability to show the world my weaknesses, anguish and reflections might be useful and help not only me, but also someone that is going through something similar. This is so gratifying and one of the reasons that art exists!
Rock and Art: Since you mentioned “Echo – The Next Room”, you ended a story that began with “The Old Room”. Can we expect more songs related to this particular theme or it will be a duology?
Mama Feet: We don’t rule out a trilogy, but only if the context still makes sense in the future. The point here is that an echo happens more than once, so it could be twice, three times, and so on…
Sing along with the lyric video of Echo – The Next Room
Rock and Art: You guys recorded the entire album during this pandemic and dedicated “Something Real” to the healthcare workforce that helped in the last two years. How did you guys handle surviving as a band and, most importantly, how did this Covid situation change you?
Mama Feet: The isolation kinda opened up a lot of doors to us, regarding the compositions that we put in the album, like “Something Real” which talks specifically about those feelings during the pandemic.
This song was written in April 2020, when the pandemic was starting in Brazil. We felt everything, so it helped us create this particular song that focuses on hope. Even with social distancing, we would have the strength to go through this dark phase together. After all, “we are families that share the same lawn”.
In addition to the inspiration for the new compositions, the pandemic was crucial for us to discover that we would have to be productive without meeting in person at all or keep it to a minimum.
This paved the way for new production mechanisms of the album at a distance, via remote meetings or broadcasting live streamings in the studio for the other band members who could not be present in the recording of a particular instrument.
Dance it out with this rockabilly gem called ‘Something Real’ by clicking on the video below
Rock and Art: Which song was the most difficult to record/produce? And which one was the easiest?
Mylo: I think the biggest challenge to me was to sing a song that I didn’t actually write. This beautiful song,”Sunset 9550″, was composed by Pedryta and I felt honored to play it. I saw a greater responsibility in preparing my vocals and it took me some training and toning to get the final result.
Fey: To me, the recording was pretty easy for two reasons: our good repertoire, since we had more vocal/guitar demos to choose from; and the fact that we already produced our first album at my private studio, which relaxed us in a sense of knowing ‘we would get there’.
The whole pressure got much lower, we pretty much did the exact same thing we already did and tried to get away from the pranks we had already experienced.
Now, in the role of guitarist, what I enjoyed most was expanding my setup in the recordings, meaning the tones we got using new guitars and pedals (us musicians love some debt by getting new gear lol) made me so in love to the point of wanting to do more solos on that album.
Mama Feet at Solar Botafogo, in Rio de Janeiro – Brazil. Last day of the ‘Eurotour’
You can check out Mama Feet. Diogo Defante (every pun intended!) – Someone to Die For by clicking here. If you want to listen to the new album, “Something Blue”, click here.
Follow Mama Feet on social media:
