Early years Lead singer/songwriter for the band, Vaden Todd Lewis was recently coming off of a short-lived reunion of his platinum-selling band
Toadies, and after an unsuccessful album release and tour, the band once again broke up. Meanwhile, drummer Taz Bentley was known for working with the
Reverend Horton Heat and
Izzy Stradlin. Lewis and Betley were both residents of Dallas, and had been friendly for years due to their respective bands appearing at the same tours and festivals. The two began jamming together, and eventually decided to start a band in 2002. They took their name from a sign on the side of a building in Dallas, with Lewis explaining "I Just like the connection of family and guilt associated together. It also kind of makes me think of brothers - like me and Taz doing it as a team". After bad experiences with record labels, Lewis and Bentley decided to keep the band low-key, making tracks available via the internet, but soon received interest from local record labels. After warm reception to these EPs, and radio play of their promotional single "Beautiful Night" in Tulsa, Dallas, and Houston areas in heavy rotation, the band decided to release a full-length album. Thus, the band ended up keeping Corey Rozzoni who worked with Clumsy, and Casey Orr who was famous for his work with
Gwar. After winning on-air "smash or trash" radio competitions in
Austin, Texas for several weeks with a demo of "Beautiful Night", the single became added into heavy rotation in the area. The single spread fast into Dallas, Houston, and Tulsa radio markets, before the band signed with
Kirtland Records, an independent label run by studio engineer John Kirtland who had also played drums with
Deep Blue Something. a hard rock throwback that many critics stated as "fresh, driving, and fun". The
Dallas Observer noticed the album was "early Soundgarden. Think 70's arena rock".
MTV said the album was "Tough, driving metal & head-bobbing arena rock". The album received fairly positive reviews, as they sighted it was fairly fresh, catchy, and fun, with a mix of sounds from "garage rock" to "murky grunge...that has a lot in common with Soundgarden or early
Pearl Jam."
Mercy Years In 2005, the band went back to the drawing board for their next release. They wanted to keep that fairly catchy, edgy sound, but this time, they wanted to take risks by experimenting more with their music. The recording sessions finished in early 2006, and in 2006, they released their second album
Mercy. The album was produced by Grammy award winning producer Joe Chiccarelli (The Shins, Beck, Hole, U2) and David Castell. Vaden Todd described the album as "moody". The album's lyrics approached the downfall of society and finding out "who you are at the core." The album includes unorthodox instruments for a rock group, such as strings, bells, etc. Mercy once again had a relatively positive critical and fan reception, which track "Everybody is Easy (We Sink/We Swim)" receiving moderate airplay across the country. "Shine" was also released as a single, but did not chart as well as "Everybody is Easy". The album "rocks your backside about 75 percent of the time" according to the
Fort Worth Weekly. However, the album did not sell as well as
Buried in Your Black Heart and did not receive near as much promotion by their record label as their debut. The band did not have much of a successful tour for the album as well, and the commercial failure of the album was one of the many reasons for the departure of much of the band. The album has gone on to sell around 50,000-70,000 records in the United States, well below
Buried in Your Black Heart's total.
Hiatus and Reunion The band went on hiatus in 2006, with Lewis rejoining the Toadies and other band members moving on to other projects. The band remained on indefinite hiatus until April 2015, when it was announced that the Burden Brothers would be playing at the annual
Dia De Los Toadies music festival to be held September 11–12, 2015 at
Panther Island Pavilion in Fort Worth. The band performed at Panther Island Pavilion on September 12, 2015, in their first live performance since 2006. == Band members ==