Jesse and Ryan Dermody – The Brothers Burn Mountain. Submitted photo.

I had no idea what a unique musical experience a friend and I were in for when we met recently at Ursa Minor, unwittingly taking a table that gave us front row viewing at an incredible performance by the Brothers Burn Mountain.

At least it seemed incredible to my friend and I, and seemingly to many others at the full tables in attendance that night. But for the brothers Jesse and Ryan Dermody, nothing incredible here. This is just what they do.

There’s an organic beauty to the music they create together on guitar and drums. There’s a tendency to want to say “just” guitar and drums, but that does not do justice to the big sounds they make on those two instruments. Their closeness as brothers seems to make their music more intuitive, more spontaneous, than if they were simply bandmates.

They will tell you they felt that connection the very first time they played together.

Their musical journey together began in 2000. Younger brother Ryan had been playing guitar since age 12, and his high school band had just broken up when brother Jesse was returning from Brazil.

“I went to the airport to pick him up,” Ryan said. “He came off the plane with a homemade barrel-style conga on his shoulder.When I saw that, that was the start. We went into our parents’ basement that very night and started making music.”

Asked if they went into the basement that night with thoughts of teaming up as a musical duo, Jesse says no.

“There was no thought,” he said. “It was less cerebral and more instinctual in the chest. I remember my exact chest sensation when we first started playing. Ryan was on bass guitar and I was on the djembe and conga. We had some poems, mutual poems, scattered on the floor. I would just recite some poems and Ryan would dabble with some vocals. It was really simple. It felt so singularly wholesome. I wanted that in my life, I felt, for a very long time. We slowly figured out that perhaps this long time can be as long as we’re still alive and kicking.”

“It’s been a non-linear path, but that was the spark to begin with,” Ryan said.

 Once they realized music was their musical path forward, Ryan, the more experienced musician, offered guidance to his older brother. 

“I say I’m the drummer but we’re both drummers,” Jesse said. “My brother started drumming on a kit before I did. He taught me a lot. It was under my brother’s subtle but very forceful guidance that I got a drum kit. He basically told me that I was going to get a drum kit, and so I did. It was a Red Tamla, in 2001, after I’d already been hand drumming for several years.”

But there’s a big difference between the two styles of drumming.

“Boy, my body did not take to it,” Jesse said of the drum kit.

He said it took him a long time to grow into the kit, and he does mean grow.

“It’s very organic,” he said. “I think it’s this way for a lot of musicians, if you do it for many years, it’s as if my body grows out little cilia roots into the instruments.

“It’s the same way with Ryan. We talk about this very rarely because we both know it. My human roots become so much a part of the earth materials of the drum kit that I don’t have to intellectualize anything about music while we’re playing. There’s no difference between my body, my being, and the drums. That’s the way it is for a lot of musicians I think that I like so much. I usually don’t like my drumming though, I will say that. I like other people’s musicianship when they’re in that state of organic connectedness.”

Watching them play it does seem Jesse especially enters a tantric trance state while playing.
“While playing with my brother, yes,” he agrees. “And a few other key musicians in my life, yes. It’s particular to who I’m playing with and how much I love my brother. And there are other musicians I play with who I deeply love.That induces, I guess, what you call a trance.”

A meditative state where you know exactly what you’re doing?

“Yes,” both brothers answer.

They felt the musical connection they had that momentous first night playing in their parent’s basement.

“Music is just a high form of communication,” Jesse said. “We already had a brotherly communication that didn’t even use words, even before we started playing music together. When we’re playing, making music, we don’t have to say much. On a good night, we just understand where, when and how without even saying a word.”

Also since that first night, they have played “literally every single day,” Jesse said. “Every day. Sometimes we don’t know whether we want to or not. We show up.”

They are able to play daily because they live next to each other on separate 10 acre plots in Cotton. They helped each other build their own homes (with assistance from a master carpenter neighbor who has become a good friend). They are currently busy building a recording studio to help mark their quarter century of making music together. 

“It’s cumulatively kind of a big year for us,” Ryan said. “The recording studio is kind of a big deal, and then we have a 25 Years Best Of compilation coming out in 2025 as well.” 

“We just got the masters back,” Jesse said. “There’s about 20 tracks, give or take. It spans our last 13 albums. Kind of cherry-picked what we love, our tracks that we love the most, and then kind of over the years what people have told us what their favorite tracks are.”

The brothers played together for seven years before going public.

“And then when we did come out, it felt great. We were playing immediately 200 shows a year,” Jesse said. “No great foresight into how difficult it was going to be and how much we were going to get our asses kicked or how much joy it would bring into our lives. That beats all else except the joy of being with family.Nature, family and music, those are all a joy, oh man. If that’s all I get, I don’t need any recognition. I don’t need shit tons of money. I just need music, art, creation, constant creation, constant, close connection with family and the healing essence of nature.”

It had to be asked – what’s with the name?

“We always ask, which answer do you want? Which fable?” Ryan said, before adding, “Jesse came up with the name.”

“I was walking in the Kettle Moraine forest in southeast Wisconsin, which I love because it undulates with the hills and the old forest. I basically just concussed myself against a tree because I wasn’t paying close enough attention.  In the concussion, I mixed up words improperly, and I liked it. But I was in the woods when it happened.”

“What does that mean?” Ryan said. “Is it nonsensical? Does it mean anything? I watched my brother talk about how he’s very passionate and elevated. I think it has to do with that. It keeps us doing what we’re doing.”

“The burn makes it worthwhile,” Jesse said.

“Yeah,” Ryan added.