Josh Bryant

Ask anyone involved with music and they’ll tell you that things often take time to cohesively gel between bandmates. Groups, even those who have yet to tour the states, rehearse week in and week out, and take months, even years, to make albums. But Mechanical Animals are a different breed entirely: For area singer/songwriter Josh Bryant, getting things going with both his comrades (Randy Bryant on bass – who also engineers for the group – and newly-minted, and stage-named drummer, Vuck) took exactly a week before taking the stage. This speaks equally highly to Mechanical Animals’ talent as it does to their shear love of music making, and how their vibrant blues-rock is continuing to make waves within the Chicago area.
Summer of 2014 saw the original incarnation of the Josh Bryant Outfit, recently switching over to the new moniker and performing at a wide range of Chicago clubs such as the Elbo Room, Debonair, the Original Mothers’ and more. A classically-trained musician with a degree in cello performance, Josh’s guitar playing is in line with that of John Mayer or Carlos Santana, finding a perfect meeting point between scorching blues and contemporary pop/rock. Also classically-trained, but in viola, Randy’s limber performance style allows him to not only interact extremely well with Vuck’s time-keeping but to play notes around notes, giving each song some room to roam.
A great audio example of the above descriptions is “Find My Way,” a life-affirming, feel-good jam that begins, ironically enough, with a relationship dissolving. Over a series of relaxed down and up-strokes, Josh lays some good advice on the song’s antagonist (“Hold your head up / Your future’s bright as day / but if you stare into the sun too long / you’ll lose your way”), and later delivers a blistering solo. It’s the kind of song that could easily find its way on to major radio while enthralling your average Chicago rock club.
“Stuck Up” captures the band in a more rebellious mode, lyrically on the lam as outlaws. A mid-tempo barnstormer a la Stevie Ray Vaughn, the vocals draw a mental picture of a Robin Hood-type character, galloping town to town committing thievery to feed his family. The line “It will all be over soon / and we’ll live another life” closes out the chorus, and you get the sense that the fun the song’s subject is having creating a little mischief serves an entirely worthwhile purpose.
Mechanical Animals are in the process of recording currently and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better blues-rock outfit within the confines of the city. These are talented individuals who know structure and perform with passion. In that light, they’re far from mechanical but still play like a well-oiled machine. - Radio One Chicago