Now celebrating ten years in existence and its first-ever vinyl LP release, Fragile Rock was never supposed to actually be a real thing. Before it went into the studio to record the album Microfamous, before it was a touring rock band, before it was a comedic stage show with puppets, Fragile Rock was just a joke on Facebook.
“Ten years ago, I was going through a breakup and I put out a Facebook post that said, I'm going to start an emo puppet band called Fragile Rock, thinking a good pun is its own reward,” says creator Brently Heilbron. “And in the comments, people started to say, ‘I'll play guitar for that. I'll be in that band.’ And the band formed and so by the end of that post, I was in fact in an emo puppet band called Fragile Rock. So. That was 10 years ago and it's been a wild ride.”
Megan Thornton was one of the people responding to that initial post. “I am super earnest,” she says, “so I reached out to Brently and said ‘I would like to audition for the project.’” But no audition was required. “He said ‘You're in!’”
“I'm a big fan of the Little Rascals, like, if you're in the room, you're in the show approach,” Heilbron explains. “And so the group of us that assembled, a lot of them came from the theater community and the improv community in Austin, and musicians, and so together we formed these characters that have now endured for about ten years.”
“We didn't know that this was going to be a band,” Thornton says of the early days. “We knew that we were going to do a show at one point. So for a while, we were a theater piece. We were like this comedy theater piece. And then somehow we just started booking gigs at actual music venues.”
“Yeah,” says Heilbron, “suddenly we got asked to play South by Southwest, the music festival, which was the greatest acknowledgement that we were a band. And we've had opportunities that have come our way… at our South By show, Bob Boilen from Tiny Desk came and offered us a Tiny Desk concert on the spot, which blew our minds and suddenly we were in DC and doing our own Tiny Desk concert and we weren't even supposed to be a band!”
“And also,” Thornton adds, “at our first South By showcase, we went on dead last. It was 1:00 a.m. when we went on. There were maybe 10 other people in the audience. We didn't know Bob was there, but he came and he stayed through the night.”
Through the years, Fragile Rock has become less of a theater show and more of a real band, though the puppets remain – Heilbron plays the character Milo S. and Thornton puppeteers Nic Hole. And there’s still plenty of drama onstage, as one would expect from a group of extremely emotional puppets. “I love band infighting,” Heilbron says. “This band fights all the time and breaks up constantly. And it's really good to get out your emo feelings in a healthy way because we all feel that way sometimes.”
Fragile Rock has previously released some singles and an album in digital format, but the just-about-to-be-released Microfamous will be their debut in physical media, on what Heilbron describes as “limited edition sad black vinyl. It’s really hard to get emo vinyl these days,” he says.
“I used to be a very big proponent of like, nothing should be recorded. It just needs to be in the air,” he says. “Very pretentious artist. But It's nice to hold the thing and say ‘I made it.' And it took all of us to make this.”
To celebrate the release, the band is throwing a record release party later this month. “It's at Austin City Limits 310 on September 25th with Great Howl opening,” Heilbron says. “It's going to be a blast of a night. There's new songs and surprises. We'll play the album in full. We'll have it for sale, and a lot of new merch, and it's just a way that we can celebrate ten years of puppet pain and keeping Austin emo.”
Will there be another LP to follow this one? That depends on whom you ask – the humans involved seem up for it but the puppets are less inclined to commit. “Yeah, you know, we put on the back of the album that ‘Fragile Rock was’ because the band had broken up by the time it takes to listen to the album,” Heilbron explains. “The band is very volatile. These puppets really hate each other. So I can't promise there's going to be a second album or even a second show. So you really just have to take your opportunities where you can.”
Fragile Rock's record release party for 'Microfamous' is September 25 at ACL Live at 3TEN.
