ifitbeyourwill S06E27 • Hand Gestures

A packed car pointed west, and a travel-size instrument wedged between sleeping bags—this is how records get made when life is crowded and the need to create won’t wait. We sit down with Brian Russ of Hand Gestures to trace the long arc behind a self-titled album that sounds lived-in, melodic, and unforced.

Russ maps a route from college shows in Philadelphia to AmeriCorps on Pine Ridge, then into Brooklyn’s warehouse-show ecosystem, where CMJ weekends blurred into community and bands kept each other afloat. Along the way, he built Campers Rule Records—a micro-label with pragmatic ideals: small cassette runs, break-even math, and hands-on help that gets music over the line.

The mechanics matter. Voice memos from a cross-country drive became song kernels; late nights with an interface turned sketches into arrangements; a remote drummer locked in the pulse. Brian tracked guitars, bass, keys, and vocals himself, then sequenced the record for an arc that rewards close listening.

There’s life in the margins, too—two teachers, two kids, and a creative practice built one quiet hour at a time. We talk rebuilding a live band post-COVID, why the album title became the band’s name, and how to stay sane about press and reach. For anyone invested in DIY recording, Brooklyn indie circuits, sustainable labels, or the alchemy of turning notes into songs, this conversation offers a clear, hopeful blueprint.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Intro
• 1:08 Brian’s Origin Story
• 5:01 College Bands And AmeriCorps
• 9:23 Moving To NYC And Backwards
• 12:26 DIY Label Campers Rule Records
• 16:01 Brooklyn Indie Scene Snapshot
• 19:22 Cross‑Country Trip Sparks New Songs
• 22:49 Balancing Family, Teaching, And Art
• 26:07 Recording Process And Band Rebuild

Transcript

colleyc: 0:27

Welcome everyone back to another episode of If It Be Your Will Podcast. Today I'm reaching down south a little bit. We were just commiserating about the snow because we're both getting hammered with snow these days. I'm reaching down to New York City. Brian Russ is here from Hand Gestures. A great new band, but Brian is no uh newbie to this. He's been doing this for about two decades, and we're gonna kind of dive in a little bit to his past, but also this great new uh project, this great new band, hand gestures that he's uh pulled together. So, Brian, thanks so much for taking some time and with us today.

Brian Russ: 1:05

Thank you, Chris. I'm psyched to be here. Thank you, thank you.

colleyc: 1:08

So this record came out October 31st, just this past year in 2025. Uh I've been reading some reviews, like people are just loving it. They they like the authenticity of it, uh, the originality of it. It's familiar, but also not familiar. I just love it. But uh Brian, before you started all this, you had other bands, um, you know, backwards, uh The Love Supreme example. Um you've been doing this for quite some time, plus raising a family, working, like this is a a piece of what you do in life. How did you come into it? Like, what were some of those early poignant moments in life where music uh was there and it was just like this is gonna be something permanent? Like I'm gonna do music forever.

Brian Russ: 1:54

Great question. Thank you, thank you. And I'm psyched to be here. And and you know, for me, I kind of caught the bug of rock and roll when I was a teenager. Um, I grew up in Penn in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, kind of in the suburbs and listening to local radio stations. And my dad would put on some uh like old back then they had oldie stations, and the oldies was uh mostly like Motown and 50s and 60s music and early rock and roll and stuff, and I was just getting really into it. And then I remember watching MTV and VH1 as a as a ear as a like a preteen and a teenager, and just one day I was and I never had any music experience, I never took lessons in anything. Just one day I was like, oh, I really want to get a guitar. I would love, I would love to have, I would love to try this out myself. Like I've watched enough Bob Dylan and Hendricks and just on MTV and VH1 and documentaries, and I was just like, I want to do, I want to try this out myself. And I didn't like have access to any instruments in my home. So I just started asking around to people in my high school. And my friend Jamie, she was like, Oh yeah, you know what? This actually is this, I actually wrote about this in the song Justin's Funeral, kind of reflecting back to this time. And she was like, you know what? I but there's a guitar sitting in, there's an old acoustic guitar sitting in my attic. I'll give it to you. And I was like, How much you want for? And she was like, How about five bucks? And I was like, Done. So, you know, I went into her attic and we found this guitar and it's been sitting there for years. It was a crappy old acoustic guitar. I brought it home. It was like missing some strings and missing some pegs at the bottom, and I didn't know what I was doing, and I just took it to like the local music shop in in town, and those the guys there kind of helped me get it set up and I brought it home. And then back then, this is before there was YouTube and the internet and stuff. This is like the 90s. So the only thing I remember is like I wanted to learn how to play. I would just play along to the radio stations and mess around with stuff, and then I finally figured out, oh, there's something on the internet called guitar tabs. And I would, yeah, and I would, yeah, I would start looking at tabs for some of my favorite songs. And then that led to me like figuring out how to play some chords and stuff. And Tom Petty and people like that used to say, Oh, three chords is all you need, or bono or something. And I would be like, All right, uh, once I had the G, C, and D down, Brown, you know, and then some of the made the major and minor chords. By then, I was like 17, 18, and about ready to go to college. And my goal was like, I want to go to college and start playing music. I want to be in a band. You know, I I feel felt like I had enough guitar at that point. Like I learned enough. I could start write, I was starting to write my own songs. And then through college, I had a band, like I played in a band that was like everything in the world to me. This college band, we were called Grayson. We play local shows. I went to a school in Philadelphia, a small Catholic Jesuit college called St. Joe's. But we would play like there was a there was a local kind of like stage at on campus. We would play like every weekend, play shows there and stuff, and have a little community of musicians. And then I caught the real debug for it. But so then I moved to South Dakota after I graduated college to do a volunteer stint on an Indian reservation called the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which is the home of the Lakota Sioux tribe. And I was doing something called AmeriCorps, volunteering teaching. But, you know, while I lived there, I was like writing songs there too. And I met uh there was a drummer guy out there, so him and I started playing too. We would play at the local, we would drive into a town called Rapid City and play in like the Barnes and Noble or like the coffee shops there and stuff. And then I moved to New York City, and then two after two years of living in South Dakota, and that was like, okay, one of my goals to in New York City. We moved there. My my current wife and I, we met each other in South Dakota, but we both moved to New York City kind of to pursue art and music. And she's a writer and she was pursuing her writing. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna go to New York City, I'm gonna, you know, form a whole new thing there and get get involved in the music scene in New York City. And that was around 2005. And then over a couple a couple years, I I played in this group and this group. And then I decided to form my own group called Backwards. And that's when we were like, okay, you know, we're gonna write these songs and we're gonna keep keep the tradition of rock and roll alive. We're gonna write like 60s inspired pop, psychedelic, folksy kind of stuff, and try to keep that going. And then I got involved in the Brooklyn music scene and playing shows all the time and meeting other bands and stuff like that. And that's kind of like how it all went down for me. And just I ended up like becoming really interested in recording and writing music songs, and I would record my bands, and then it was kind of very DIY. I had enough gear to be able to record, and I've always kind of recorded whatever bands I was in, kind of on my own. Maybe only once or twice we would go to like a more proper studio, but I always kind of did it DIY because I just really love the process of recording, and and that was always part of it too. So, you know, even so that hand gestures was kind of a newer thing.

colleyc: 7:14

And yeah, Lauren and I my way Brian also started a label with that, right? Like you there is a label that you bore out of this campers Rural Records, right?

Brian Russ: 7:26

Yeah, so Campers Rule Records was an idea we had when we were young playing in backwards. We were like, oh, there's we out we started touring a little bit uh kind of on our own. We got a we got one of those old school Dodge Ram vans and we would tour around the country for for a couple of years. We had all quit our day jobs and we're like, let's see what we can do out on the road. We would meet all these bands. We met a bunch of Canadian bands too, and they were really cool because they always told us that their government had uh grants that were supporting their tours and stuff. We oh, they don't have yeah, and that was so cool. We like, we don't have to do that, yeah. Very awesome. And but we were like all these great bands that no one ever heard of. What if we had our own label? And like, what if we could just, you know, very small release cassettes, you know, cassettes of small runs and just just a cool community hub. And that became Campers Rule Records, and now I'm in my like in my 40s, and you know, that's kind of a fun like labor of love project that I'll uh I'll I'll sometimes it goes into a lull and I won't really find anything to release or I won't, but then I'll like oh I got a friend that really wants to put out a record. Let's do this, let's make you know, it's really fun to do that. So that's what Campers Rule is. Yeah. Are you involved?

colleyc: 8:40

Like you had mentioned that it's very, you know, do it yourself and the label I imagine as well. You're running it, and like, yeah, do you always like be are you involved with the bands that you put out via your label as well?

Brian Russ: 8:53

Yeah, sometimes a little bit. I've there's been ones where like I'll I'll do everything from like recording it to you know prep getting it all pressed or set up or like put on duplicated on tape and like even doing some of the artwork. And then there's ones where they'll the that that they've come to me with were stuff that had they've already finished and recorded and they just need an outlet to release it. And then, you know, so it's like anything and everything and uh in terms of that, but always just kind of like our goal is let's produce enough that we think we can break even on, right? Like we'll we'll make 50 tapes and see how those go. And if we make our money back and we make a little then and if it's sold out quickly, we'll make 50 more or something like that. Right, right.

colleyc: 9:36

Yeah, that's cool. And yeah, Brian, tell me a little bit about the Brooklyn scene because I know there's so many bands and a lot of do-it-yourself bands, you know, a lot of indie bands that that you know station themselves in Brooklyn. What is it about Brooklyn that makes it so special for independent artists like yourself?

Brian Russ: 9:54

You know what I think like when I first moved here, I've still live, we still live in Brooklyn. When we first moved here around 2005, there was just so many places, there were so many bands, first of all, and then also so many great venue spaces, so many great DIY type spaces that were like either like warehouses converted for shows or like loft spaces where people were living and performing in in places like Williamsburg and Bushwick. And there was just so many, so many bands, so many shows happening all the time. And like once you kind of got in there, and once you kind of like people started seeing, hey, this band wants to, this band is reliable and they're and and they're looking to play. And then you just it just formed a really nice community of like, oh, we go and support each other's shows, and they come to our shows. And there used to be something called CMJ Music Marathon, which was like this big New York City event, kind of like South by Southwest, but for New York City. And then it was like, oh my gosh, the whole city had all these venues, and there it was like a week or two of all these shows and all these venues around the clock. And it just felt like it was like a hub for music at that time. I mean, I kind of I think it still is. I've lost touch a little bit and I'm kind of getting back into it a little bit here, but all ever a lot has changed, but there's tons of new venues that I know nothing about, and there's tons of new spaces that I know nothing, and the places where they are has shifted a little bit. But yeah, there's that vibe is still here, you know. But things have changed in New York City, you know, rents have gotten higher, and it's harder to be a work, a working artist in a lot of ways, but it's still there, and I'm I'm trying to re-enter it myself and kind of discover it again.

colleyc: 11:40

Yeah, yeah. Uh and this latest record, it kind of brings me to that. It's it's funny how you said about that first guitar because I read the story about how this album came to be on a cross country trip, and you had you had to pack a tiny little guitar to fit in to the space that you had available, and a lot of those songs came out of. Can you kind of bring us through that journey of how these songs came to be that are on the record?

Brian Russ: 12:09

Yeah, so so my wife and I are teachers or middle school teachers, and we have off on the summers. We have two kids, and every summer we kind of try to plan like a fun adventure to go on with the kids. And, you know, one year, a couple years ago, when I we decided we're gonna do kind of drive almost cross-country. Our my brother-in-law, Lauren's brother, was living in Montana at the time. So we were like, let's make this a fun cross-country road trip driving from New York City to Montana and hitting up a lot of parks and campsites and and and things along the way, and then along the way back. And yeah, the car when we do that, our car is like massively packed because we have the thing, we have like a bag on the roof filled with all the camping gear and the sleeping bags and like the suitcases. We kind of approach we're DIY kind of people and always have been. So we kind of like approach these trips as like, let's let's do them where we can camp a lot. And it's just really fun for us. And yeah, I I like to be, I always like to have a guitar with me in case like you know, an idea pops up. And over that, and over the summers, usually I'll be like, okay, I have time to focus on on an artistic project. The school year's over and I can keep focus my mind. And I and you know, that's what I did. Like when I'm I found an hour here or there or sitting by the campfire, or, you know, just just hanging out, I would come up with little licks and be like, I'm saving this for later. I I use my phone voice memo app. I would come up with little ideas and licks, and then, you know, when the trip was all over, I would sit down with them and kind of write out full songs with some with like a cell phone full of like 50 voice memos of ideas, basically.

colleyc: 13:49

Wow. Wow, that's pretty inspiring. Ah, well I appreciate too. I'm a teacher as well, so I love the cycle of our world, you know, where we get those two months to kind of just turn it all off and focus on our own projects, which I, you know, is is amazing for us to have that all that privilege. Also with kids as well, like you're always trying to find time. And as I was doing a deep dive into your music, I was uh it brought me back to my days too, and trying to find all those little minutes that you could piece together to get your projects moving forward still. What are the challenges of you know a whole other life that needs attention and care, meaning you know your family and your job, and and then also having this passion that you just keep wanting to push forward. How do you manage that kind of tug and pull of life?

Brian Russ: 14:43

I know, I think it's very challenging. And we're like a lot, we're both artists and Lauren's a writer, and it's hard to find the time, but you know, I think like it it's it's like what keeps us finding a little bit of time here and there to do creative projects like this. They're who we are, like it's it's who we are as people, and it kind of makes us when you know it it brings the best out of us when we're when we're able to to to get some of this stuff out there and have some time to think and be creative. And it comes in weird ways. Like, like I said, like maybe over the summertime I'll find a little time, or usually maybe late at night after everyone's asleep. I kind of have a little setup in our home where I can plug in and it's quiet and I can plug my guitars into like an audio type interface situation and I can record stuff quietly or work on the mixing and and stuff. Spent basically it's like an hour here and there. And I would say I'm the type of person who I don't really sit down and watch TV shows or I I don't I I I get give up the time of that, of like, you know, plugging into TV or even like movies and and and stuff like that, or and this is my number one, this is like my passion, and like it's passion/slash hobby. So finding the time to do it kind of is essential in a way.

colleyc: 16:06

Yeah. So I mean, this your record, which is self-titled, um, hand gestures. What was the process of putting this together? I know that it took you a you know a couple of years to to finally see it come to fruition. Yeah. What was some of that process like? Like how did you uh get this record finally out there for us all to reap the benefits of your creativity?

Brian Russ: 16:30

Yeah, you know, it was a slow process, but but it was also interesting because like basically I I I was playing music with a couple of people, a couple of guys here locally, and another friend of mine who was someone who I played with in a band in Brooklyn, but he moved out to Nashville. And this guy who moved to Nashville and I were like, let's try a remote recording project where we're sending tracks back and forth to each other, and that blossomed into something where we started writing some songs and recording through this remote project. This was even before COVID, actually. And that grew, and I wanted to like make that a live band, and I got some people interested from the scene here, and that became kind of a live band, but then COVID happened and that slowed it down. And then now let's go post-COVID. And, you know, we're I'm playing, I'm rehearsing, I have a shared rehearsal space that I share, and I'm playing with these couple of guys, and they were both kind of were like, Yeah, they weren't really into it. So I kind of had a talk with them about like, you know, I'm looking to push forward and kind of get back to playing some shows and stuff and recording some new music. And they happily this was a mutual, like, yeah, we're not into that. So I kind of had to start over and I found some and I just reached out to the community. I reached out to a drummer I know from the past. And before I knew it, I was a new band kind of formed. Like we were, I had already written these songs and I had already been like working on them and recording them, but to play them live, like a new drummer, a new guitarist, a new keyboardist, and and a new bassist kind of all came about kind of like in the span of five or six months. It just kind of happened. And we were like, you know what? Let's come up with a new band name and let's call and and I was gonna call so the old band was called Unisex, or I think we were calling it Unisex USA, and that's what this record was gonna be. But then we were, but and the the name of the record was gonna be called hand gestures, but uh, but we were like, the these other new people approached me and were like, how about we it feels like a whole new project. Why don't we come up with a like let's let's get rid of the unisex thing? And I never felt really good about that name anyway. And we were like, all right, let's do it, let's start a whole new band. But what should we call it? Let's call it what we were gonna call the record anyway. So we we were like perfect hand gestures, right? So that's what it is. So so the people that play it live, the people and the people that are playing it live were not on the recordings. The recordings was basically me and the previous drummer I was telling you about. And I kind of recorded everything myself. So that you you talk about, oh, it took two years. That's kind of because I did everything. I did bass, guitars, I did all the keys. It's the only thing I didn't record on this on this hand gestures record was the drums.

colleyc: 19:27

Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. And and Brian, kind of like you've had some distance from it a bit. October 31st, it came out 2025. How are you feeling it's it's being received? Is it hitting the mark you wanted to hit with it? Like, do you feel that that you you were you were able to achieve the vision that you had for this record when when it first the idea first started? Good question.

Brian Russ: 19:49

You know, I I'm at the I've I feel like I'm seasoned and I've been long been doing this long enough where it's like it's always hard to figure out how you're gonna release it, how who's it gonna Who's it gonna reach? How's it gonna reach? And I've kind of like in some ways been like it doesn't, I don't really I'll put it out there, we'll put it out there, we'll see, we'll let the word spread, and I and I'm totally fine with whatever happens. And it and and we tried a little press push on it, and we've gotten some some nice feedback, and it was cool to hear some really nice stuff about some of the songs and some of the rec and the record on as a whole. So I'm totally down with hearing whatever people have to say critically. You know, in a way, I'm like whatever whoever it reaches, it reaches, and whoever it doesn't, it doesn't. I put out a lot of stuff. I just want to keep putting out music and and that's what I love to do. And you know, I'm happy when people when people it connects with people, and that really it's really nice to hear those things. I'm a little bit of a shy person and and and in a way, so like you know, I take that and I'm just like, oh, that's just really nice. It's nice to hear positive feedback on the songs, but I just I just want to keep making music and that's kind of what keeps me going. And I'm already like thinking about let's make it, let's let's go for the next thing. But um, yeah, yeah, yeah.

colleyc: 21:09

I was like, uh I've I've I've read some of the reviews and they are really quite special. Just one we love that sound uh came out with a review and they said hand jesters could actually become your new favorite band. And I am agreeing with that. I totally love this record. The more I listen to it, the more I I get from it. And I love how you put it together. Like I love the song sequencing and how you structured all that together because I know that that is very important. And I think that you did such a great job with that. I guess Brian, just to kind of wrap up again, thanks so much for your time today. I I love your stories and and your journey. It's very inspiring. What what what's coming down the road that you can share with us for any hand gestures? What can what can we look forward to in 2026 that you can share with us?

Brian Russ: 22:01

Yeah, awesome. We have we do have a show coming up in February early February, February 6. We're playing locally here in Brooklyn at a cool little local venue, and that's gonna be really fun. And um you know, in our last kind of get get together, like band practice we talked about. Let's keep rolling, let's keep let's try to do a show every, you know, every couple every couple of months or so, and let's try to add some new songs, and like I think everyone's excited that we have all kind of agreed, like we're gonna keep this band going. And I plan to write some new material. It'll take a little while. And I think there's uh there's some of the other guys in the band are like psyched about some new material, and we're just taking it kind of like slow, or we we're all most of us are our parents and our are um in this band, and and uh we're all we're we're all coming from the same place where like we really enjoy making music, we really love making music, and you know, we don't have crazy expectations, but we want to keep making music, so so we'll see where it goes. We have this one show coming up right now, and I think by the time spring rolls around and summer, maybe a couple others will be there, and in the meantime, we're gonna be working on writing some new material.

colleyc: 23:18

Amazing. Well, you're on my radar now. Hand gestures Brian, it's been such a pleasure. I I wish you all the best too. Family and work and obviously your your creative outlets as well. And uh if you ever want to come back on when you have something new to talk about or you have a new record you want to plug, uh let's let's keep in touch. It's been a lot of fun.

Brian Russ: 23:39

Awesome. Thank you very much. Yeah, we would love to. We'd love to. All right.

Hand Gestures: 24:15

What if I love some wheel? Say everybody wants a chance at something bad. So I'll take you up on me. If you don't, what are we gonna lose? Just one shot of it, one more drop of it. Let's see what you do Now that you got Everybody's cheap. But everything's gonna stay What if you could be in? I like to wear these walls down, shake these walls down, I don't wanna go to sleep Cause in this moonlight, everything's all right. What else do we have to see?