Aircraft, Mudders' Milk, Shindigs, Rock & Roll from SPACE! The Browncoats are a comical rock band hailing from St. Louis that laments about outer space, drinking, flying airplanes, and shenanigans. The band literally flew onto the national music scene driving a Cessna in the release of their first music video for "The Hero of Canton" in April 2009. Since the release of their debut album CD/DVD combo at Dragon Con 2009, they have been touring conventions, nightclubs, and other shindigs. The Browncoats have a live show that stays fresh by consistantly pairing with unique acts from comedy, to rock bands, to circus freak shows! They have worked with actors from Saturday Night Live and MTV and are always in production of new music and video.
The Browncoats -- Rock & Roll from SPACE!
NOW MEET THE BROWNCOATS
The Flight Deck:
Captain Paul Moerke:
Airplanes, Lead Vocals, Lead Guitars, Audio Engineering
The Browncoats front man Paul Moerke has a history in the 80s Omaha punk scene. He moved to St. Louis with the band Clever. Not only being a professional pilot, he has also been a professional audio engineer for 20 years, working for such acts as Chuck Berry.
Air Marshall Bailey: Guitars, Cigarettes
Bailey has been playing guitar for over 15 years. He and Gary, both originally from the band (6) have played on stage together in various projects since ’97.
Co-Pilot Miller: Drumming, Producing, Mudders’ Milk
Gary has been rocking concert venues since the age of 13. With a long career in the entertainment business as an engineer and manager, Gary has toured with a wide variety of acts from Moscow Ballet to Ozzfest.
The Crew:
Dominic "Squirrel" the Baggage Handler: Bassist, Sales Management, Baggage
Amy The Stewardess: Stage Lighting, Cleavage, Sunglasses
In-flight movie maker Chris Robertson: Cinematography, Cameras, In-flight movies
Ground Control Rob: Information Technologist, Tobacconist
The Back Story of 4 tracks written by Co-Pilot Miller:
Starting at the age of 13, I played countless rock concerts as a drummer and guitarist throughout my teenage years. Simultaneously, I dealt with a heart condition from birth. One time, during a performance at POP’s in Sauget, IL, I was hauled off stage by paramedics and stuck into an ambulance outside the front door.
I had three heart surgeries during my time – one at the age of 17, one at 18, and the last at 22. Just before the last surgery, I recorded my first real album with the band called “(6)”, in which Bailey and I played. The engineer and co-producer of that album was Captain Moerke. And that third surgery finally fixed my heart - FYI that's the date I have tattooed backwards on my left forearm.
Two months after that surgery, I was offered a job at the Touhill Performing Arts Center before its opening in September of 2003. It was my first theater job. In November of 2004, while working at Touhill as a sound engineer, The Moscow Ballet rolled through for a three day run. It was there that I met Tom Marchionne, who I refer to as “The Broadway Legend”. Tom was the Stage Manager and Lead Carpenter for the tour. His sound engineer quit during the run at Touhill. After I ran the final shows for him, Tom offered me a job to finish the tour with the Moscow Ballet.
I mentored under Tom and a lighting engineer named Stinky. Stinky had just gotten off tour with Van Halen and had toured with Tom for many years before that. Stinky had also been the Lead lighting engineer for Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance for many years, and had worked for The Moody Blues and several Broadway Tours.
You can still see one of Tom’s spray paint tag on the inside of the upstage right garage door at the Fox Theatre from the Broadway tour of “The Civil War”. Actually, if you are ever backstage at any theater in America, you should look out for the tag of Tom Marchionne, Gary Miller, or Stinky – we may have been there!
The Story of the Broadway Legend:
Before I met Tom Marchionne, he had already been on tour with Broadway shows for the last 20 years. The guy is a legend on the road. Now Tom is retired in Florida swamps and only surfaces when I provoke him! The skit “Captain Moerke loads into the Theatre” is a pretty direct interpretation of Tom’s daily motif performed by Captain Moerke. One of the many things Tom is well known for is his rubber chickens. In theater, we typically use a thin 100ft. measuring tape to set “trim height” for drapes and set pieces that fly out during a show. Well, during the Broadway tour for “Kiss of the Spider Woman”, Tom and Stinky built a giant strand of small rubber chickens to use in place of measuring tape. So instead calling out trim height by feet, he called it by rubber chicken number.
The line in the song “the lights go out on the inside, yet the acrobats still glow” refers to an incident that took place during Tom’s tour with Cirque Ingenioux. There was a “strong man” act by two Polish circus guys named, Yerek and Derek. They would do hand stands on top of each other’s heads and stuff like that. During one of their performances, all of the power went out in the theater. Yerek and Derek just kept on going, so Tom gathered all of the stage hands that he could find with flashlights, ran them all out on stage, and lit the act by flashlight until it was done.
By far, the most important rule that I learned from Tom is that only an unhappy man wears a watch. If you ever asked Tom what time it was, the answer was always “..oh, about a quarter-of!” In other words, the time is always NOW!!
Story of Trans-Siberian Express:
While we were in the butt cold of Minneapolis on tour, I also met one of the beautiful ballerinas named Yulia Kazantseva. Yulia and I fell in love during the tour and created a fairy-tale like love story that still resonates with people involved with that tour today. When the tour was over, I flew to Moscow to see her again. It was during that time that I decided I would propose to her. Since the United States would not allow her a visa to visit me here, we got married in Russia. In June of 2005, we road the Trans-Siberian Express for two and a half days to Yulia’s home city in Siberia, Novosibirsk. Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia and is a spectacular place. We got married in Novosibirsk on July 2nd, 2005. I was in Russia for 4 months in 2005. Yulia moved here in 2006 after finishing her Bachelor’s Degree.
Yulia comes from a family of theater professionals. Her sister Yana Kazantseva, is one the most well-known prima ballerinas in Western Europe and Russia, and still dances at the age of 37. Her mother was a ballerina at the Musical Theater in Novosibirsk, and her father still works as the head librarian for the orchestra at the Opera and Ballet Theatre of Novosibirsk – notably one the most beautiful theaters in the world.
The Story of the Moscow Hooligan:
Another amazing character, and now good friend, I met during the Moscow Ballet tour was a principal male dancer named Leonid Flegmatov, (a.k.a. Leo.) Leo is a close friend of my wife, Yulia. They toured Spain and Portugal together in 2000 and several other countries. Leo, who’s father is a ballet master in Moscow, absolutely puts to shame to stereotypical idea that all male ballet dancers are flamboyantly homosexual. This guy nailed at least six different women that were on the tour with us just in the first month that I knew him. One time, I watched him put down almost an entire fifth of whiskey and two packs of Marlboros during rehearsal time before dancing a two hour show as the prince in the Nutcracker – which, for people who do not know anything about ballet, is no easy task.
In October of 2005, a year after we met, Leo came back to the U.S. with the Moscow Ballet as the principal dancer. He jumped ship during the first month of the tour and has been working as a freelance principal male ballet dancer ever since. He’s worked for many different well known U.S. ballet companies such as Miami Ballet, New Jersey Ballet, Philadelphia Ballet and more. Leo has a beautiful dog now that is just as much of a hooligan as he is. Leo taught his dog, who is female, to hump other people’s legs on command - quite hilarious.
--Gary (Co-Pilot) Miller