While trying to guess what musical duo the members of Good Brother most identify with, there are a few that may immediately come to your mind:
K-Ci and JoJo
Simon and Garfunkel
McFadden and Whitehead
or maybe…
“Ernie and Bert” says Dan Goode,the younger half of Good Brother. “There will be days when one of us is in the mood to be playful and the other one is absolutely serious and vice versa. We’re brothers and you can tell onstage with the banter we have. We have the same interactions on stage as we do when we are off stage.”
Their onstage camaraderie would make it seem like they’ve been performing as a duo all of their lives but actually that’s not the case. Although they grew up singing in their church choir together, it would be a good number of years before Balmour, the older of the two, would realize that he could actually sing. “Daniel had been singing all through church, getting all the solos. Even now, if there is a wedding they call Daniel. If that’s your little brother, that’s his lane. I was in choirs but never in front.” However, all of that changed once Balmour went off to college. “I first started singing on my own when I went away to school at Shippensburg University. I wanted to be in the choir because I didn’t want to lose that connection I had to God when I was home. As we were in rehearsal, they were giving out sections. We were going over notes one by one and as I did my scales, they were looking at me like “So you can just do that?” At that point I got a solo and later did more solos. I didn’t think I could sing solo before that.” “I will not forget when he came back the first time from college” says Daniel after discovering that his older brother could really sing. “When this man came back he blew my damn mind! Before then he would sing so gingerly like he was holding back. And then I was like, where has this been?” Soon after, the two started collaborating- blending Dan’s love for R&B and Balmour’s affinity for Indie Folk and Alternative.
Balmour got his hands on a guitar at an early age after a life changing event in their family. The passing of their father prompted the kindness of a mentor named John McDonald, who was part of the school system, to provide them gifts for Christmas. “I asked for a drum set and my brother asked for a guitar.” explains Dan. “That was the jump off point where I became obsessed with music.”
Balmour began teaching himself to play guitar from YouTube videos and books. Dan began playing in church after intently watching Roots keyboardist James Poyser, who was also their pastor’s son, play during church. “From then I went from singing to playing drums in the church to percussion and fast forward to now, I’m trying to switch over to piano. That’s a similar path that Uncle James is on. He played the drums when he was younger and then switched over to the bass guitar. Then he played the piano and you see how that worked out for him.”
Singing and playing instruments in church has proven to be a great foundation for Dan and Balmour’s musical creativity. However, it was not enough to feed their insatiable desire to immerse themselves in a broader pool of music. Growing up in a strict Pentecostal home, the brothers often had to sneak to hear mainstream music. Balmour explains, “Our parents were Contemporary Christian Pentecostal islanders. Daniel was absorbing R&B from church and that was an unwitting thing. Those licks and hits from Contemporary Gospel were the same as Neo Soul and R&B.” Still he found a way to sneak some actual R&B and Neo Soul into their home. “Daniel snuck cassette tapes in our book bags. The way that I first got introduced to music, the kind of music I like even to this day, was from TV shows like Smallville. At the end of the show they would tell you what songs were in the episode, sometimes by groups like Carolina Liar and Coldplay. I was super nerdy and would be like “This is beautiful, son, I have to play that.” My roots are more Indie Folk. I sing Soul and R&B but I started with acoustic guitar.”
The brothers were soon determined to make their mark musically. Before they officially became Good Brother, they had a few bands together as well as solo projects. They started writing songs together and purchasing studio equipment for Balmour to use to produce and engineer. They also began hitting just about any open mic they could around the city. Their former band Emotae dropped its first single in 2017 and Balmour released a solo EP later that year. As Good Brother, they recently released their first single “Operator” and are currently working on their first EP as well as Dan’s solo project. “We have plenty of songs” Dan explains as to why it’s taking them a while to come out with their first Good Brother EP. “It’s really all about timing and nailing down the songs that flow well and come together as a complete thought.” Good Brother is confident that while fans can expect for the EP to be cohesive, they don’t ever want to be boxed into a genre. “We dropped “Operator” but the next song may be a Gospel song. We have plenty of those. Or it could be straight Hip Hop. Music isn’t to be compartmentalized or generalized. We just want to make what we love to create.”
You can follow Good Brother on Instagram at @GoodBrxther and listen to their new single “Operator” now on Soundcloud.