August Burns Red released their brand new album, "Leveler," this week. To celebrate we asked guitarist / primary songwriter JB Brubaker to tell us about some of the favorite songs from the album. Here is today's song "Poor Millionaire": Poor Millionaire is one of the heaviest most straight up songs that was written for Leveler. It is the track that probably best represents the name of the album. I don't remember much about the actual writing of this song. What I do remember is the process of us pulling the song together as a band.
This was the first song we played together as a band when we started putting the finishing touches on each song. We started playing this song together on the Fall AP Tour in Oct/Nov 2010. Everyday during sound check we'd run through this song and work on tweaking parts of it. I remember in Pomona, CA at the Fox Theatre we had a lot of extra time to sound check. We ended up working on this song for a good hour and a half, scrutinizing every little part, every single drum hit. It was fun to basically write and practice on a beautiful stage with a huge PA.
Jake wrote the lyrics to this song. They're about a man who is wealthy on the outside, but is unhappy and a complete faker. He may have everything materialistically, but he's a waste of space bringing those around him down in order to try to make himself feel whole. The lyrics are pretty angry for us and at one point Jake screams "you bastard!" which is probably the closest to a 'bad word' ABR has ever used in a song. Controversial!
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!
