Britt Walford (born March 16, 1970) is an American musician best known for being the drummer, co-founder, and occasional guitarist for the
post-rock
Post-rock is a form of experimental rock characterized by a focus on exploring textures and timbre over traditional rock song structures, chords, or riffs. Post-rock artists are often instrumental, typically combining rock instrumentation ...
band
Slint
Slint was an American rock band from Louisville, Kentucky, formed in 1986. The band consisted of guitarist and vocalist Brian McMahan, guitarist David Pajo, drummer and vocalist Britt Walford, Todd Brashear (bassist on ''Spiderland''), and ...
.
Early life
Walford grew up in
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana borde ...
and attended the
J. Graham Brown School, an experimental school based on self-learning and direction in early adolescence where he also met
Brian McMahan, the future lead singer of Slint.
Career
He was a member of the punk band
Squirrel Bait
Squirrel Bait was an American punk rock band from Louisville, Kentucky active from 1983 to 1987. Squirrel Bait's dense, moody, melodic hardcore sound, featuring pronounced tempo shifts, foreshadowed the grunge sound of the late 1980s as well as ...
, but was replaced by Ben Daughtrey when he quit to play with future Slint guitarist
David Pajo
David Pajo (born June 25, 1968) is an American alternative rock musician. He has played a wide variety of music, loosely fitting into several other genres such as hardcore punk, math rock, post-rock, electronica, folk rock and indie pop. Though ...
in the band Maurice. After the breakups of Squirrel Bait and Maurice, some of the members joined to form the band that would become Slint. In 1989, Walford joined
Pixies bassist
Kim Deal
Kimberley Ann Deal (born June 10, 1961) is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She was the bassist and the co-vocalist in the alternative rock band Pixies, before forming the Breeders in 1989.
Deal joined Pixies in Janua ...
in her new project
The Breeders
The Breeders are an American alternative rock band based in Dayton, Ohio, consisting of members Kim Deal (rhythm guitar, lead vocals), her twin sister Kelley Deal (lead guitar, vocals), Josephine Wiggs (bass guitar, vocals) and Jim Macpherso ...
at the request of
Steve Albini
Steve Albini (pronounced ; born July 22, 1962) is an American musician, record producer, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman and Flour, and is a member of Shellac. He is the founder, owner and principal en ...
(under the pseudonyms Shannon Doughton & Mike Hunt), with whom he recorded their first album, ''
Pod
Pod or POD may refer to:
Biology
* Pod (fruit), a type of fruit of a flowering plant
* Husk or pod of a legume
* Pod of whales or other marine mammals
* "-pod", a suffix meaning "foot" used in taxonomy
Electronics and computing
* Proper ort ...
'' (1990),
also appearing for live performances in
drag
Drag or The Drag may refer to:
Places
* Drag, Norway, a village in Tysfjord municipality, Nordland, Norway
* ''Drág'', the Hungarian name for Dragu Commune in Sălaj County, Romania
* Drag (Austin, Texas), the portion of Guadalupe Street adj ...
to suit his stage name. After Slint's break-up in November 1990, Walford remained semi-active in the music scene, eventually in underground New York jazz bands
and playing for bands such as Evergreen and friend Brian McMahan's
The For Carnation project.
Walford was the unnamed subject of
The Jesus Lizard
The Jesus Lizard is an American rock band formed in 1987 in Austin, Texas and based in Chicago, Illinois. They were "a leading noise rock band in the American independent underground… hoturned out a series of independent records filled with ...
song "Mouth Breather" from the album ''
Goat
The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of ...
'', which describes the outcome of an episode wherein producer
Steve Albini
Steve Albini (pronounced ; born July 22, 1962) is an American musician, record producer, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman and Flour, and is a member of Shellac. He is the founder, owner and principal en ...
asked Walford to house-sit for him.
Walford later joined
Watter, whose first album, for the label
Temporary Residence A temporary resident is a foreign national granted the right to stay in a country for a certain length of time (e.g. with a visa or ), without full citizenship. This may be for study, business, or other reasons.
Various countries have their own r ...
, was released in 2014. Also in 2014 he appeared in the music video for Kim and Kelley Deal's song "Biker Gone", for which he also provided the drums.
Walford left Watter sometime after 2014, only being credited as a guest on their 2017 release ''History of the Future''.
References
External links
*
American heavy metal drummers
Living people
Musicians from Louisville, Kentucky
1970 births
Rock musicians from Kentucky
J. Graham Brown School alumni
Slint members
20th-century American drummers
American male drummers
Squirrel Bait members
The Breeders members
The For Carnation members
21st-century American drummers
King Kong (American band) members
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