Meet The Broken Records
When Steve Malloy fell in love with Jojo Muhairwe, he knew she had two boys, Moss and Morris, from her previous marriage. However, he had no idea of what was to come regarding music.
Steve had played in some underground rock bands when he was in his 20’s back in Southern California, most notably Peer Pressure, which consisted of Steve on lead guitar, Brandon Powell on lead vocals and guitar, Vic Mason on bass, and Dave Bibona on drums. Peer Pressure recorded a demo at Public Recording in Brea, CA, but Brandon was leaving for law school in Sacramento, CA so the band just fizzled out. On that demo were some songs that evolved and have now been released by The Broken Records, specifically Morning After and Wicked Waste.
Time had moved on and Steve’s band became Garageband on his iPad, and he just enjoyed playing and singing along to original songs he was writing including versions of Morning After and Wicked Waste. He had however, decided that music was just a fun hobby, and he just enjoyed jamming along with Garageband in his mancave at his home in North Carolina. Then along came the woman of his dreams, Jojo, and they became inseparable after meeting in January of 2023. Jojo’s oldest boy, Moss, had always been fascinated with drums, and so on his thirteenth birthday Steve and Jojo bought him a drum set. Steve would send links to YouTube videos from Rob “Beat Down” Brown and Jeff Randle to inspire Moss, and, WOW, did Moss ever apply the skills those guys were teaching. Steve and Jojo also enrolled Moss in some private drum lessons for about a year.
Soon Moss had mastered wrist strokes, finger strokes and slide technique on the kick drum. The young man was highly self motivated and was developing rapidly. Moss would jam to his favorite bands, Hillsong, Maroon 5 and Onerepublic on the bluetooth PA in the mancave at Steve’s place, and also Steve and Moss would jam together on the songs Steve had written. Steve and Jojo encouraged Moss to get into the Middle School band in eighth grade, which also helped his evolution as a musician. Freshman year of high school came and Moss was excelling in the percussion section. End of freshman year he auditioned for the kit, and viola he got it.
Summer after freshman year Steve decided that they should record their songs for a summer vacation project. The mancave had become a pretty decent recording studio. They had a Macbook Pro with Logic Pro X, an Apollo X4 interface, a couple AKG condenser microphones and a couple of dynamic microphones, the drum kit, bass guitar, Yamaha keyboard, three electric guitars and a Taylor acoustic guitar.
The songs came out so well that they decided to release them digitally through CD Baby. Steve created some Social Media accounts (YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok) to help promote the band. They created many Shorts to help the algorithm discover them. It was pretty darn fun!