The Advocators is the musical chimera creation of alt-country outsiders Leroy Brown and Mark Bruce.
Leroy and Mark were born and raised in the neighbouring small rural towns of Kaiwaka and Maungaturoto in Northland, New Zealand, somewhere between the hillbillies, the misanthropes and a general sense of desperation.
The pair have been writing and performing sporadically throughout their lives; Leroy learnt chords as a child out of the back of old Hymn books and Mark picked up the guitar after seeing his mate Billy Aiken shred a Led Zeppelin solo in high school.
Despite attending the same high school, they only started playing music together in 2019 after Leroy recruited Mark for an ambitious wedding band project. That project quickly collapsed as they realised that they could not stay faithful to whatever song they covered, and so they began writing and performing their own songs.
The result of this collaboration is their debut album ‘Songs From An Endless Night’. The album has a sparse, gritty, vintage sound, oscillating between bluegrass country ballads and hostile gospel stomp rock and features the singles ‘Dreams’, ‘Bad Girls’, ‘Elijah’ and ‘Waitin’ Round to Die’ (the latter an abrasive cover of the classic Townes Van Zandt song). The singles have gathered thousands of streams on Spotify, along with student radio airplay in New Zealand.
To help record the album, Leroy (guitar, banjo, harmonica and lead vocals), and Mark (guitar, backing vocals and melodica), recruited another local talent, producer and drummer William Jackson (Sharpie Crows, Erny Belle) as well as esteemed kiwi violinist Anita Clark (Motte, The Phoenix Foundation, Nadia Reid). They used Jackson’s shed/studio, situated in rolling Northland farmland, and recorded the album between wintry sou’westerly squalls and cups of tea.
The Advocators look forward to independently releasing the full album on May 15th, 2024, with tour dates set to be announced for later this year.
