San Luis Obispo composer and winemaker Brook Munro creates album from sounds of harvest
Story by Jaime Lewis
Photography by Richard Fusillo
The inside of Brook Munro’s garage studio in San Luis Obispo is a simulacrum of Brook, himself. There’s his musical life: two monitors on a desk flanked with speakers, a spinet piano holding the score of Stravinsky’s “Petrushka,” an array of guitar pedals on the concrete floor. There’s also his daytime life: a wine rack stacked with bottles and a bulletin board made of corks from his employer, Claiborne & Churchill Winery in the Edna Valley.
Holding a mug of coffee while seated in his office chair, surrounded by electronics, he could be any music enthusiast fiddling around in the garage. But the moment he clicks play on his first record, “Harvest in Twelve Parts,” it’s clear he is no hobbyist. Brook Munro is a composer.
Gather
“This album really is meant for anybody who enjoys music, art, wine,” he says. Indeed, in “Harvest in Twelve Parts,” Munro has braided together his 15 years as Claiborne & Churchill’s wine club manager with his lifelong love of music — first as a guitarist in the punk band The Mighty Fine, then scoring award-winning films and now composing a full-length art record. As the track progresses, the music yawns open, a rhythmic crunch of leaves underfoot, the cello singing across a sustained synthesizer bass. Everything that can be heard on this recording, Brook says, he collected during the harvest of 2021 and 2022. He stops the music and opens a spreadsheet on his computer.
“I had to catalog and file my sounds,” he says. Brook opens a file labeled “Tanked Cork Pops” and plays what would traditionally be called middle C on the keyboard. The sound of a cork inside a tank booms, higher as he climbs the keyboard, lower as he descends. He shares another called “Vineyard Cello Swells,” featuring Bob Liepman bowing in the vineyard behind Claiborne & Churchill. Another, “Max Tape Loop Guitar,” is named after a co-worker who helped out by playing guitar, also in the vineyard.
“I realized I was familiar with the different sounds of the winery, so why couldn’t we just immerse ourselves in that?” he says. There were organic sounds like birds singing, mechanical sounds like crusher/destemmers grinding. And there were performative sounds, like a violin recorded inside an empty 4,500-gallon steel tank.
When Brook embarked on the project in 2021, he anticipated releasing the record in early 2022. But even with his exhaustive audio collection, inspiration hadn’t struck yet. “You might have sounds, but you don’t necessarily have songs,” he says. “How it comes together is the act of patience.”
Ferment
Brook’s self-imposed deadline for the project came and went. He faced a full slate of films to score on top of his full-time job at the winery. He and his wife Britnee also looked forward to the arrival of a set of twins. In the background, he thought about the record he still wanted to make. He started playing with the sounds he’d harvested, manipulating them through both analog and digital means to become instruments in their own right. Like an artisan that makes his own tools, Brook started building what he calls a “harvest synth orchestra,” bespoke for the record. Once in place, he layered and wove in organic audio and performative melodies for a set of 12 tracks that soar and stretch, sometimes plaintive, often joyful.
“Winemakers and songwriters are quite similar,” he says. “You’re taking many variables that are particular to yourself, imbuing your own artistic ventures into it. If you and I play four chords, we might play with different guitars, different amps, different settings and rhythm. That’s just like when three or four winemakers use fruit from one vineyard. Once the fruit is picked, it’s about the expression of the winemaker: how are we selecting the fruit, processing it? Are we going to destem or go whole cluster? Through every stage of the process, there are basic ways for someone to give of themself.”
Blend
Since Munro released “Harvest in Twelve Parts” in 2023, the record has taken on a life of its own. Filmmaker Kyle Plummer produced “Harvest Calls,” a documentary about the project that’s screening on the festival circuit, and Brook is currently at work arranging the record for live performances. It’s even been set to ballet by a local dance conservatory.
In the garage studio, he leans back in his chair and folds his hands, an artist clearly fulfilled and energized by his work. “This album really was a celebration of what I’d consider potential,” he says. “It’s the idea that we may start at a certain spot and go on this journey, and we may arrive somewhere we hadn’t meant to.”
