A year and a half ago, the Brothers Comatose were playing for free beer.

Right now, they’re somewhere between the Bay and the mountains of Northern Idaho—guitars, banjo, mandolin, stand-up bass, and foot-stomper packed into their newly-acquired vehicle, a red 1988 Chevy g-20 conversion van with a CB radio. There are probably tambourines and beer bottles rolling across the floor.

If experience is any indication, it’s going to be a long road.

A day after the rapturous release of their debut record, Songs From the Stoop, at Café Du Nord, the Brothers Comatose played a sold-out show with their good friends, Sourgrass, in Santa Cruz.

Screams. Tambourines. Chopsticks tapping against broken beer bottles. An inflatable alligator knocking around like a beach ball. That old-timey sound replete with three-part harmonies that would make the Kingston Trio cry. This is the kind of atmosphere you get at a Comatose show.

A lot of friends had come out to support, and around 3am, after a round of drop-offs around Santa Cruz, the Brothers got the van pointed north.

Mandolin player and swordsman Joe Pacini picks up the story from there. “Coming up over [Highway] 17 there’s a cop pulled over on the side of the road, so Phil, our fiddle player, who was driving, went over into the other lane.”

Joe pauses, and explains, “I mean, we had pre-partied in the van, so there was definitely odors, and empty bottles and things rolling around. Didn’t have insurance. Phil doesn’t have a Cali ID. People passed out. Everyone’s drunk, except for Phil, who was sober. So we get pulled over, ‘cause [Phil] swerved into the other lane, cut off the guy who was in his blind spot. I think the first thing Phil said [to the cop] was, ‘Yea, so, I’m in a band.’”

The Brothers Comatose band is comprised of five principal members. I’m sitting with three of them, including the two actual brothers in a street level Mission District apartment.

There’s Ben Morrison, funneling paint into a squeeze bottle to prep for a round of in-house t-shirt silk-screening. He has about 18 months on brother Alex Morrison, who sits in a rocking chair and flips over a copy of Dylan’s Desire every 20 minutes or so.

When Ben was nine, they both started playing guitar.

“We were taking a guitar class at the community center with a bunch of people sitting around in a circle, like, ‘Play the G chord,’” says Ben, “First song we ever played was a Creedence song, ‘Proud Mary.’”

“And you stuck with it, and I left, ‘cause it was too hard,” adds Alex. “My fingers were just bleeding, basically. We played a full-sized guitar.”

“Our dad has this big, old-school Vox,” says Ben. “A big jumbo-bodied thing, and it’s impossible to fret. Heavy as hell.

“So I guess I kept going on the guitar. And then Alex, a few years later—I’m just messing around playing stuff—and Alex decides to learn how to play guitar, and I swear to god, not even two days later, he just sits there on the couch all day, like ‘I think I’m gonna figure out guitar,’ and learns a Chili Peppers song flawlessly, in like two days. I come back, and I’m all, “Fuck you, man.’ So Alex surpassed me in that.”

Ben set about playing modern rock in a heavy band called Elephant Hunter, while Alex got into finger-picking folk music and eventually swapped his guitar for a banjo. All the while, Joe, a friend since the 8th grade, was learning a trick or two at the Brothers Morrison household.

“I started playing a little later,” says Joe. “It was to the point where every time you go over and hang out there would just be guitars and chairs; you just pick it up. Watching TV or just hanging out, there was always some sort of musical instrument around.”

Joe is outside smoking a hand-rolled cigarette when I ask about his work “playing” the sword. When he returns, he recalls his time with the side project Orphans of Doom, whose only live performances were in support of Toast Machine, a popular drum-and-bass band in Petaluma.

“We all dressed up in black cloaks and came out and kidnapped [Toast Machine]. It was a packed house and all of a sudden the band [the kids] came to see gets taken off the stage, and they’re listening to fantasy death metal. All I did during those shows was walk out with a giant Conan sword and stand there onstage as the enforcer.”

Significantly, Toast Machine and Orphans of Doom cofounder Giovanni Benedetti now plays bass for the Brothers Comatose.

“Gio was always like this reclusive, awesome musician that we were friends with,” says Ben. “But he never hung out with us. Instead of hanging out on the weekends, he’d go home [to Sonoma]. He’d just be practicing his bass in his room. And he was up there, on a pedestal. We always thought Gio is the guy.”

It was like asking Willie Mays to come play catch with you,” adds Joe. “And he’s like, ‘Shit, I’ll be your starting center-fielder.’”

Finally, “long lost brother” Philip Brezina rounded out the band on fiddle. Phil’s from Pennsylvania—hence the lack of Cali ID during their traffic stop. “I dropped flyers off at the Conservatory of Music,” says Ben. “It just turns out this guy that’s studying classical music is a country boy that likes to jam.”

“You can’t really jam out on Chopin,” adds Joe. “He grew up like a country boy, so he’s got that in him. He can play these 45-minute Mozart pieces that are ridiculous.”

“Yea, [a] first-chair performer,” says Alex.

“But then he can get down and drink whiskey, and [play] over three chords and jam out in a sticky bar and love it,” says Joe.