Now a father of two, Isaac Brock—frontman of Modest Mouse—has gained a new empathy for what his parents were going through when he was a child.
“I'm an old parent,” Brock said. “I've got like a six and eight year old. But my parents were in their very early twenties when they had us, and people that age don't have very much money.”
Brock’s childhood was split between Montana and Oregon, with each place offering a different perspective on the world.
“We lived in these really small rural towns, that were very church driven, in Montana. The economics of being able to rent a little house there is doable. When we moved to Oregon, the option was a trailer park. So I-5 was my backyard.”
With his mom being a dancer, Brock grew up surrounded by a mix of musical styles, from Amy Grant and classical music to Irish and Hungarian folk.
“I still like it today,” Brock said. “Not Amy Grant, but that was never my thing in the first place. The Irish folk music and stuff like that, I still love. It probably has a bit to do with how I write too.”
But it wasn’t until Brock was in school that he was introduced to the music that would become a more direct influence on him.
“When I was in the third grade, I got my first records, which were like Starship and Sting. Not The Police, but Sting solo stuff,” Brock said. “There wasn't much rock music in our world because they were pretty fundamentalist Christian.”
In his teens, he found another outlet for music through his growing connection to nature.
“Being in nature is what I just did. I would go walk around the woods behind our house when I was high school and just singing to myself or whatever. That was just another way to write music.”
Brock’s nature-inspired worldview can be traced throughout Modest Mouse’s catalog, which now spans exactly 30 years. “I think I was born an environmentalist. I've been worried about the environment before I knew there was even a chance of environmental problems.”
Listening back to Brock’s music, it makes sense. After all, ice age heat wave, can’t complain.
“Part of that might be having lived in some pretty shitty parts of Montana, where it was just a big stinky dead sulfur lake with a bunch of oil mosquitoes everywhere. There was the fear and constant warning not to wander too far, because you might end up in a tar pit,” Brock said.
Though environmental influences can be found throughout Brock’s lyrics, he never approached songwriting with a specific agenda.
“When the music makings good, and when the music itself locks in, there's part of me that just wants to sing to it. It all just falls out. I have to go back and transcribe the whole thing.”
Brock describes this side of his brain as the unconscious part of himself, separate from the more administrative part of his mind that operates in his day-to-day life.
“More often than not, my thinking is, ‘Well, I just said a bunch of shit that probably doesn't make any sense.’ So I go through it and use the shape of the words, because the rhythm and stuff, that worked, and I just fix a couple things,” Brock said.
“Maybe I mumbled a word, but there could actually be a real word there. I don't need to keep a mumble. So that is the process. That is almost all of it.”
What might initially sound like a mumble is actually Brock’s most articulate self.
“I wish when I was having heavy conversations with people, that this part of my brain was having the conversation. Because logical me just trips over words. I can't find the point, you know?”
But maybe Brock is at his best beyond consciousness. When Modest Mouse’s drummer, Jeremiah Green, passed away in 2022, Brock experienced what he felt was a form of communication from his past bandmate.
“The night I found out he died, I ended up eating a shit ton of mushrooms. I remember I was on the floor of my kitchen, and every single thing I'd pick up or look at was somehow an obvious communication from Jeremiah,” Brock said. “Here's the bummer, I don't remember what most of it was.”
For Brock, not having a good memory has been both a blessing and a curse.
“I've never put much weight on having a good memory and so I didn't develop one. That is a regret. I found it more useful not to remember than I did to remember as a safety.”
The upside is that Brock has learned to move through life with one foot in front of the other.
“I do not dwell on the past. I'm not a ‘remember when’ guy, just hung up on the good old days or any of that shit. It doesn't mean that much to me.”
Brock’s focus on being present is something he has also recognized in the final stages of other people’s lives.
“I've seen this with people who are about to die where they get a clarity in what's actually important, including Jeremiah,” said Brock. “I think the closer you get to that, the more you realize all the circles you were walking in that didn't matter.”
At the end of it all, whether facing an environmental crisis as a child in the oil fields of Montana, another decade of music-making, or the loss of a loved one, Brock has stayed true to the one thing he has: Today.
“It seems like everyone is always telling everyone to, at the end of their life, spend time with the people you love and be present.
“Tomorrow's worth a thousand yesterdays.”
Modest Mouse
GLC Live at 20 Monroe
Oct. 2, 7 p.m.
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