Much is made of music’s ability to harness the power of harmony to bring us together. Unfortunately, it can do the opposite, as well.
Brookhouse is the genre-spanning project led by singer-songwriter Alex Foster, who grew up in Fairfax as the son of a Cuban-American and a lifelong Virginian. “Sing to Me,” which was born out of an experience in which another singer’s words turned into weapons of division, is the second single from an EP Foster is planning to release in November.
It’s actually his second official single ever. While his upcoming EP was recorded at the well-appointed Spacebomb Studios on Robinson Street, Foster didn’t pick up the guitar with writing songs in mind until he’d had more than a decade’s worth of experience singing in choirs, starting when he was young and continuing through his time as an undergrad at William & Mary. “There’s no feeling that is exactly the same as raising your voice with another person,” he says. “I’ve always loved singing, and [chorus] was a good outlet for singing, so I stuck with it.”
He’s also relatively new to Richmond, having moved here in 2020 after a stint in the Peace Corps was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. His desire for a more tightly knit community was front of mind when he decided where to go next, and he’s already made an impact in this city’s singer-songwriter scene, including a Shockoe Sessions Live performance last summer and an appearance in January as part of the Anyfolk listening room series. On Saturday, July 5, 60 years to the day after members of his family left Cuba as refugees, Foster held a release show at Gallery5 for his EP’s first single and title track, “American Sounds,” an energetic yet reflective blend of bossa nova and funk-rock with lyrics about assimilation and finding one’s own cultural identity.
In “Sing to Me,” identity is split along different lines. Foster illustrates how divisive words turn people against one other, and how accepting division fractures us internally, driving a wedge between our best and worse selves. “You nourish my dark side when you make me your enemy,” he sings as the song builds to a stormy catharsis in its second half.
“That’s the crux of the issue,” he says. “We feel like once someone’s been mean to us, we now have permission to be mean to them. But what does that do? What are you actually accomplishing?”
Style Weekly spoke with Foster about “Sing to Me,” whose central antagonist remains unnamed, but whose message of overcoming the urge to draw battle lines is plain as day.
Style Weekly: Was “Sing to Me” inspired by a real-life incident?
Alex Foster: I think, as with a lot of music, you have something that happens and that inspires the seed of the song, and then you think about how that event fits into your your life and other related experiences, then you start drawing from all of those experiences. So definitely elements of a single experience, but also a composite.
When you wrote “Sing to Me,” did you set out to show an arc from experiencing conflict to wishing the initiator of that conflict “the best”?
It certainly wasn’t the intent when I wrote the first verse. I think it’s the distance from the experience that allowed for that reflection. In the moment of an argument, of a confrontation, it really is someone trying to paint you as this villain. In doing so, you’re provoked to be like, “Alright, I will be your villain. Fine. Now I feel justified because you’ve been bad to me…” I guess in that moment, I was feeling that impulse, but also knowing that impulse was not something that I should necessarily give into, because it’s not productive. And then with more time, cooler heads prevail.
“We really don’t benefit from anger in most situations … Condemn the action, Don’t condemn the person.”
What are you hoping listeners will walk away thinking about after listening to “Sing to Me”?
I have a line at the end that [says] “Separate the art from the antagonist…” Often in those moments, you’re just giving in to the least favorable interpretation and giving fuel to the fire of the other person’s least favorable interpretation of you. I think we need to give each other a little more patience. That extends well beyond my personal life. Someone cuts you off on the road? You don’t know — they could be having a bad day, there could be a bee, someone could have called them to give them weird news, their kid could be doing something they shouldn’t be doing in the backseat. Online it’s the same thing. We really don’t benefit from anger in most situations … Condemn the action. Don’t condemn the person.
Who plays on the song?
Mike Hofmeister is playing drums. Brad Rogers is playing upright bass — there’s some upright bass on this, and there’s also bass guitar, so he’s playing both of those. Betsy Podsiadlo is doing harmony vocals, and Robert Torrence is doing all the piano parts. I’m doing all the guitars and the lead vocals.
Did recording the song go as planned, or did the approach change once you were in the studio?
This being my first time doing all this, [there are] lots of things I’d probably do differently from a process standpoint. But we’ve been playing this song live for quite a while — me, Mike on drums, Brad on bass, Betsy on vocals. We had all played that together a ton, so we had all of that pretty well down. Then I was like, “I feel like this song needs piano.” And so I reached out to Robert. Actually, my first gig in Richmond was me, Robert and Mike, and we played at Hardywood for a fundraiser in May of 2023, so it was fun to be able to bring him back in, because I haven’t played too much with him since then.
Have you found the community you were looking for when you moved from Northern Virginia to Richmond?
I’d say so. Everything is always changing, but the whole attitude that people have down here is very, very different, and the lifestyle is very, very different from what you can get up there, just based on the geography. Everything’s pretty close together, and that makes for a very different experience — the whole small-town feel despite it being a city.
When did you first start writing songs?
I am coming to this later in life than a lot of people that are in the scene, but it was something that I had wanted to do for a long time. I think it’s emblematic of my relationship with music. Going into college, there was part of me that was like, “I’m interested in majoring in music,” but the many well-meaning people around me were dissuading me from that, and I was a pretty compliant and practical guy, I guess, so I was like, “Okay, I won’t do that. I’m gonna major in finance and psychology instead.” So I did that and music kind of fell by the wayside, at least in terms of my personal musical development.
I sang in choirs from elementary school through the end of college. I was still in a choir in college, but I was barely playing guitar. It’s not like I performed out, and I really hadn’t been in a band or anything like that. After college, I no longer had choir, so I had no musical outlet at all. That’s when I turned back to playing guitar a little more and having this growing desire to play music in different ways, and ultimately, to write music.
What does the rest of 2025 look like?
Playing as many gigs as I can possibly get, just trying to lean into music as much as I can. I’m playing all over Richmond for the next few months, and branching out a little bit to Fredericksburg and Charlottesville, and trying to go to some other places — hopefully Williamsburg, Norfolk, [Washington,] D.C., Harrisonburg. Just learning the lay of the land and also learning how the industry works, and trying to make all of this happen musically. Trying to shoot my shot for the first time.
To hear “Sing to Me,” visit brookhouse.bandcamp.com. Brookhouse will be playing a release show in Charlottesville at Dürty Nelly’s Pub on Friday, Aug. 15. His next show in Richmond will take place on Saturday, Aug. 23 at the Bellwether Garage. He’ll also be performing as part of Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden’s Flowers After 5 series on Thursday, Sept. 4. For more information, visit brookhousemusic.com.
