Bloodbirds’ Mike and Brooke Tuley share their philosophies on music and life

When Anna St. Louis, the bass player for garage-rock trio Bloodbirds, departed for California in October 2013, the local music community was bereft. A beloved band had come to a sudden stop. Feeling even sadder were Bloodbirds’ lead singer and guitarist Mike Tuley and his wife, drummer Brooke Tuley.

“We wanted to keep the band going, and we talked about it at first,” Mike says. Doing that, though, meant more than simply finding a replacement for St. Louis.

“It didn’t seem right, to try and take what you have with one group of people and take another group of people and do those same things,” Brooke says. “That seems untrue.”

“We had this thing at the beginning of practice where we sort of jammed, where everyone just played whatever they felt like playing,” Mike adds, “and it was this cacophony, and eventually we’d get a chord or a loop and tie everything together.” He adds: “Anna is, like, the soul of the band. She wrote the bass lines that start a lot of our songs. She’s a principal songwriter. We can’t replace her.”

I’ve met the Tuleys at their Westwood home, and we’re sitting together in the couple’s backyard. The sun hasn’t quite set, but the Tuleys’ 8-month-old son, Blue, has gone down for the night. A baby monitor sits on the patio table. Both musicians admit that the arrival of their firstborn made them somewhat less motivated to reconfigure Bloodbirds, yet the band has survived.

“I mean, yes, our friend moved, but our relationship still exists, and there’s always potential,” Mike says. “Every time Anna’s come back, we’ve gone down to our basement and jammed. We were sitting on hundreds of songs, too, and we recorded 17 or 18 before she moved.”

Eight of those recordings, from 2013, made it onto MMXVIII, Bloodbirds’ new full-length, which the band introduces with two shows this weekend: Friday at Love Garden Sounds, in Lawrence, and Saturday at FOKL Center. MMXVIII is the first release for the band since the excellent Psychic Surgery, which came out in February 2013, and it doesn’t disappoint. Mike Tuley’s voice is as raw and guttural as ever, embedded here in layers of face-melting guitar riffs, deep bass lines and fierce drum rhythms. It’s very fine psychedelic punk-rock.

St. Louis is flying in for the record release. The trio hasn’t practiced the songs together since she moved, but the Tuleys aren’t especially worried about that.

“Two years definitely feels, emotionally, like a long time ago,” Brooke says. “Those feelings in those songs have a different meaning now, but I don’t think it’ll be hard to get back in the groove.”

“I think it’ll be a good release,” Mike says. “We’ve been spending some time on those songs, rehearsing in our basement — mostly when my parents come over to watch the baby — but we won’t really know what they sound like until Anna’s here and we’re at full volume.”

Mike is quick to add that, though St. Louis is back in town for the shows and both old and new Bloodbirds tunes will be played, the group isn’t making strict rules about the set list. Brooke released her own solo album, the moody and enchanting First Midnight, last April, and St. Louis has also been working on her own tunes. These are extensions of the band, Mike says, and Bloodbirds fans will recognize that.

“You know, some of the best advice that I got in my life was from Kirk Kaufman at Juniors Motel [Recording] Studio, up in Iowa, when I was 18 and I was trying to be, like, a band dictator about something,” Mike says. “He goes, ‘Hey, man, no makin’ no rules here.’ And it washed over me. We’ll just play whatever we feel like playing next week. It’s still Bloodbirds, even if that means Anna is singing and Brooke is playing bass and I’m playing drums.”

Brooke agrees: “I think if we had continued to play, even without her leaving, the sound would have evolved to be different than how it started, like everything does.”

The air is getting cooler, and Brooke rubs her hands together. A second-grade teacher by day, she has, at any hour, an air of infinite patience, with a calm, even voice. Her eyes drift occasionally to the baby monitor, but Blue seems to be enjoying an uninterrupted sleep. Becoming a parent, she says, has transformed her and the way she approaches music.

“I think creativity just changes and takes on different forms,” she says. “For me, musically, playing my own solo stuff works well because it’s easier than forming a band and finding a practice space. It’s so easy and natural to pick up a guitar and sit on the floor and sing to the baby. That’s nice.”

She goes on: “One of the biggest differences of being a parent now and playing music is that we don’t get to be as uninhibited as before because it’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a baby that relies on us.'”

“And then you don’t get to see him, which is a bummer,” Mike agrees. “Like, ‘cool, I went to band practice, but I don’t get to see my kid today.’ That sucks. Your energy is torn, and obviously the kid wins out for us.”

The Tuleys liken playing in Bloodbirds before to being on a search for a specific sound, for an elusive, perhaps unattainable element. A year and a half later, the dynamic has changed — but no one seems upset about that. “The chase,” as Brooke calls it, has been forfeited for a set of new experiences.

“I always say that while Anna was here, it was like extra enrichment. She just made it really nice,” she says. “But life in Kansas City here has been good for us, and we’re happy.”