Brett Dennen

0:00Got a bread dent in here in the studio. Thank you so much for stopping by. Hey, thanks for having me. Playing the Folk Festival today. Mm-hmm. Or you haven't been there yet. But I'm sure you've done the festival. I've done many festivals and I've been in many beautiful cities and I came here and I was like, wow, this is one of the most beautiful cities I've been to in a little while. So I have a feeling the festival's gonna be great. However, it's pretty hot outside. Yes, like 34 today. Oh, it's gonna be uh, gonna be fun. Yeah. Especially for a big guy like yourself. Exactly. Um, I'm wondering if you traveled the mountains yet? Did you come here from the west or did you come up from the east or something? Uh, we came from the air. Uh, and landed in an airport. So uh, we saw the airport first and then drove in and uh, we had an early flight in the late show last night in Edmonton. Oh, okay. So uh, I took a nap this morning.

0:48First time in Alberta? Yeah, this trip has been my first time in Alberta and I love it. Yeah. There's a lot of places on this new tour that you haven't been yet. Are you starting to branch out into those kind of markets? Well, in in terms of Canada, yeah, I mean, we went to Montreal and Toronto, but I've played both those cities before and I've been to Vancouver before but not to play music. So the day after tomorrow we're going to Vancouver. I were flying again. I know one of these days we're gonna we're gonna do it by road and I'm gonna love it and I'm gonna see a moose and I'm gonna freak out and it's gonna be the best day of my life. I'm sure you've done the road thing in the States. Yes, and we've been all I've been you know, I've been through all the all the different parts of the United States and seeing all the beautiful landscapes there.

1:34So I kind of have a clue as to how it might be here, but you never really know. Exactly. In Group in California, you know, you have had landed Fillmore in the fun of the other week. That's amazing. Yeah, you know those venues? I do. I went on the fond of the urban of San Francisco though. San Francisco is probably, you know, my favorite city in the world and I say that because I'm sort of from there and I have an attachment to it. So and the Fillmore is a legendary venue and you know, it's kind of the epicenter of everything that went down in the 60s and the Summer of Love and the Grateful Dead and that was the venue that everybody played out and it was like, you know, you were nothing until you played the Fillmore. Nowadays people play, you know, big arenas and stuff like that, but the Fillmore was like the place where Jimi Hendrix would play or Janice Joplin or Santana or something. So it's

2:27in the County Crows. I love the County Crows. They're a great Bay Area local band. Really? Interesting. How do they do up here? Are they pretty good? Are they pretty big? They were. Really? I mean, I saw them last summer and it was sold out. It was nice and Toronto at the Big Amphitheaters. It's like 20,000 people. Awesome. Not bad. Yeah, they were co-headlining with Gulli Dolls. So no cross. Okay. The crowds. But I mean, good show. More on the County Crows tip than I am with the Gulli Dolls tip. Back in the day, Gulli Dolls were okay. It's kind of like very some better stuff, dude. Speaking of what stuff you got. Got gray hair. Got a gray hair, dude. He does have gray hair and big arms. I'll put these buffed. He's got a nice chin. Nice chin. Your lyrics though, amazing. Thanks. There's some stuff I just sit there and I'm like, wow, even that just the one line I wrote it down to.

3:13People walk a tightrope on a razor's edge. Not like a deep liner. I think it's just a really cool way of saying it. Well, yeah. I mean, I think it's like a balancing act or maybe people have a lot of pressure on them or they build up a lot of pressure. And you know, I mean, razor's edge means what it means to whomever. But I think basically what I'm trying to say is there's a lot of built up stuff. You know, there's people that I feel like a lot of people have so much going on, so much built up that there's a lot of anger and hatred and stuff buried down deep inside that sometimes I feel like any minute it can erupt or fall apart or snap. Yeah. Are you talking about that along the record? Yeah. Just stuff. I mean, if your base culture at the state of Tanzania is starting to come up here.

3:58I think it is a little bit. You know, I was in Edmonton. I saw somebody with a sign on the side of the road that said, stop the Americanization of Canada. I was like, whoa, it's getting heavy up here. And but yeah, I mean, it's a big issue in the States. You know, there's a lot of hatred and there's a lot of unfairness and injustice going on and there's a lot of fear for sure. And there's a lot of demoralization of people and that's what I like to sing about the most. Giving people hope and trying to offer a bigger picture and trying to make a positive impact on the world through positive conscious lyrics and a good message. Happy little tunes.

4:43Yeah. You play a lot of stuff higher up on the guitar. I've noticed you were talking before a little bit. Do you ever play stuff like on the low end of the guitar too? Yeah. Because everything can hear up. Is that just to suit your voice or is that just? No, no, no, no, no, no. It depends on what I'm going for. Like most of my songs are done in the first position, which means, you know, the first three or four frets. But then other times when I'm trying to do like more get more like an African sound or something like that or I try to I try to go up to the higher notes and use a cape. But I get those really, really high configurations of chords. Yeah. What I'm thinking of though is that's what was the first blessed way back. Blessed is not that's all done on um is done in uh it's like it's the song

5:29played with long time. This sounds like it needs to. Really? Well when I'm live I play with two but really I mean I'm just playing it it's in C but I'm playing it up here and and it's a lot of I mean it's just different voicings I think of chords that you know standard chords. Yeah. Thanks. It's funny because I heard it probably about a year ago now and not many people had heard at the time mayor was telling me this dude right down and got to check him out. Yeah. It's amazing. That's cool. And he went on tour with him. I thought I was like oh no way. Wow. He really did it. That's cool. He wasn't just saying check this guy out. Thanks John Mayer. Is John Mayer you're talking about right? Not a Freddie Mayer or Lucinda Mayer. Yeah. Are the other mayors out there in the world?

6:16Oscar Mayer. Mayer. Come on. Yeah. Joining Mitchell. I heard you're a big fan of what do you think of your Starbucks thing? You signed the Starbucks now with McCarty. She did? Yeah. Like three days ago. I think that's great. Really? Yeah. Honestly I do. She's one of my all-time favorite songwriters and I mean you know as well as I know the music business is crazy. I mean I got into playing music wanting to be like all my heroes and like put out a bunch of great records and do things that traditional standard way. And now with the managers I work with and the record label I work with. It's like every time I have an idea about what I want to do they're like well that's the music industry 10 years ago, 5 years ago. That's the music industry last year. It's changing every day and it's like labels are having you know less and less power

7:06and these different models are coming forward. And Starbucks has been a huge retailer in selling actual discs which is hard to do because it's hard for labels to sell discs these days. You know there's a whole generation of people who would never even consider getting their music in a store you know in a plastic case. It's like music is something I either download for free or I get it off iTunes or some other source for downloading. And so and Starbucks has been really successful in kind of changing the way that the music industry is and they started a label and Paul McCartney's on it and he's been doing well and it's awesome for Joni Mitchell that she makes a big record and sells a lot and does

7:53a big tour I'm gonna freak out and I'm gonna like bug the heck out of my manager every day and say can I open for Joni Mitchell? Because you know I've told my girlfriend many many at times if the only woman I'd leave her with would leave her for would be Joni Mitchell I don't care how old she is I just wanted to sing me to sleep. Yeah she's the best. What do you feel about that? You mentioned kids don't even buy their records and stuff. I think it's great I mean it's the new the new way is taken over the old way is changing all the time. You know pretty soon it's gonna be all digital and for those of us who love to have

8:40the records and the artwork and everything we're just gonna. You don't know what they mean. Yeah but I mean to have the album artwork I think it's sad for those of us who like that but I think it's gonna make the industry advance a lot more and maybe like you know change shape to move towards a more digital digital world I mean it's already happening but I mean you can't you gotta you gotta keep up with change and technology I mean if you try to fight it then you get you get kind of left behind and it's it's just different tools it's different words it's different situations but I mean this has been happening all throughout history there's changes always always happen so instead of trying to fight against the change it's better to just um I think deal with it and learn how to make the best of it and use it to

9:28your advantage. As long as it's not you know hurting anybody and if it's the big giant labels that take a fall then or the big corporations or whatever then that might not necessarily be a bad thing. Exactly. Yep. See how that works. It's awesome. We do the same five questions. Okay. Quick questions one more answers. iPod or CDs. I have to choose one or the other. Like on the road. What are you using right now? iPod. Let him go cartney. Blending all the way. Come on. Hey you know there's something for no one. There's you know pomacartney is the man. I mean what they did together you know it should be linen McCartney or Martin because what they did with George Martin. I mean but for me it's

10:15linen is the the rugged you know activist and fighter for love you know that it broke all the rules and that's that's who I admire. Cool. Alcohol and marijuana. Gosh I guess I did drink alcohol more than marijuana so than I'd smoke marijuana so. Drink it's a pot. I don't drink pot but I love a scotch. Cool. Something you've written your most proud of. Ain't no reason. How come? I think it's because it's short it's to the point and it's got a good message. And it sums up the record pretty well. Yeah. That's not me. That's not me. In one word. Brett down. One word. One word. Some of your music not yourself. That's kind of hard.

11:03Honest. Cool. Yeah. Awesome. Tell us about the mosaic project. It's when I was in college I was in a social justice program called the Community Studies and Social Change and it was a combination of activism and social theory and working with non-profit organizations and activist groups and I found out about this program that was just beginning called the mosaic project and so I joined in I was one of the founding members and I helped write a whole curriculum with them and in a whole musical curriculum everything we teach has a song that goes with it and it's basically what we do is we bring fourth and fifth graders of extremely different backgrounds racial, ethnic, religious, economic backgrounds, bring them together in a situation where you know we mix them up into different groups around

11:54kids they all know that they've never experienced before and expose them to a whole curriculum of building community across our differences and celebrating diversity and understanding that like we can build community across our differences and drawing parallels to the work that we're doing at this school to what's going on in the whole world so we might talk about bullying on the playground or clicks or different racial groups that hang out together in different parts of the Bay Area and then we like draw a parallel to war or to you know what's happening in the Middle East or whatever and it's a pretty phenomenal program. Yeah. You still have time to do that? I don't have time to actually work there anymore. I'm on the board of directors now and I'm out there like kind of holding the torch so the rest of the world can you know and doing stuff like this with

12:42you right now and directing people to the website. What is website? www.mozaicproject.org and I'm just trying to spread the word about it. Is it only in the Bay Area? You're trying to make it. It's only in the Bay Area. Eventually though we'll have a model that we can use to incorporate different places all around. Yeah. And here also a little portion of your proceeds from every show go to charity. Local charity? Is that charity? Local charities. Yeah. That's something that we did on the last tour. We haven't been able to get it together on this tour because it takes a lot of planning. We've been bringing nonprofits out for every show and having them talk about what they're doing. Let me talk about like a local issue that they're working to bring change for and just connecting the audience to this nonprofit organization and

13:32you know having the nonprofit organization give a list of ways they can help or get involved and you know having music being played the whole time and so. That's cool. Yeah. I'm going to see a lot of at the folk festival today. Good. There's a lot of little booths and stuff set up and it's awesome. That's you know I mean that's the most important thing about a community is getting people organized and working to always make things better. So. So I found the folk festival taking on 420. I heard which is a great time. I'm on a 420 at a songwriters in the round and then I'm doing a tweeter. It's like one of those you know you get three or four songwriters together and they sit on a stage and take turns. Well I think usually what happens is you take turns doing a song and then I think it's like usually it's it's encouraged that people play together and

14:18sometimes it's it's happy and peaceful and nice but then sometimes in certain circles that I've been in and get pretty competitive. Yeah so I don't I don't think anything's going to go down like that but there's always the possibility I don't know. I hope not. It should be a nice laid back out. Yeah I hope so. Cool. And then what else? And then tomorrow we're doing three shows is I'm going to do a band set with a drummer named Randy who flew here with me sleeping in the hotel. Yeah I couldn't bring the rest of the band because the rest of the band was also in a band called ALO the Animal Liberation Orchestra. Yeah well Zach not Zach though the guitar player and the bass player and they had to go on the road. They're going on the road doing their own tour and then they're going to do Japan or something like that and so so we have to get a new band and the new

15:08band comes in Vancouver so we got a couple shows just me and the drummer. Yeah it's gonna be yeah. Loop pedal? Yeah. I don't do any of that stuff. I you know I admire people that can do it. I don't admire a lot of people who can do it. Sometimes it can be a little distracting but folks like like a howie day really I think has a grip on it. Yeah it's good. And it's like he kind of he kind of makes everybody else look a little sips silly. I'm not like a huge howie day fan but I don't I can't really name one of his songs but I saw a DVD where he did it and I was like wow you know Damian Rice when he was first I think going around touring and stuff before he had a big band he was doing it too and he was he was putting people to shame. He's the man. Yeah I know. I love that. He is awesome. I mean he he he comes some I think

16:00he comes across a little too heavy sometimes but that's not a that's not a bad thing it's just from my own personal taste but that guy man he he goes there. You play New shows? Yeah we did. Yeah open for him in Seattle Washington and it's beautiful. It's called Benaroia Hall. It was this big symphony. It's big beautiful symphony where all the wood was you know built a specific way so that it was like made for music and you could I mean he went in there with a huge band and like rock the place but I could I would in soundcheck I was playing acoustically and singing and you could hear perfectly from the back row. It's pretty cool. I think so. I think it's out there somewhere. I have a website or I don't have it but somebody set up a website of a bunch of live shows and training

16:50it's called messagesestray.com so yeah yeah yeah yeah there's the man right there yeah thank guys. I'm gonna play some songs for us. I love to. Let's talk about the songs first because I'm going to have the other one. You got it. So in the reason tell me the best. Well that was one of the ones we were talking about before. I think it's just sort of an observation about things I think are building underneath people's skin and under the skin of people and specifically in America and you know I think I touch on a lot of different things and I'm not trying to be general. I'm just trying to like let everything that I thought of in a stream of consciousness sort of writing

17:38come in come into play when I was writing it. But then there's like a in the choruses that lines that say love will come and set me free and that's kind of like just a I guess that's me and in my religion maybe you know if I if I have one that's that's the faith in me that it kind of plays the advocate to the verses saying you know what what are we doing how are we going to fix what we're doing you know. So it's kind of like dealing kind of style verse with Beatles kind of chorus. Really? Well it's the way you're writing it. The whole love thing in the chorus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. John Lennon wrote a lot about a lot of songs just about love. That's how that love is real. That song is ridiculous man. Love God is love. Is that God? I don't believe in Beatles. No no no. Well

18:27that's God is yeah God is a concept but in that song love is touch. Yeah God is love. Beautiful man. I know. She's mine which is the current single and that's that's the song. That's like a just a traveler walking through the streets of you know any given situation and just I think being tempted by lots of deception and trickery and holding true to what you believe inside so that you know you're not going to let anybody like blow your candle out or you're not going to let anybody taint or you know taint your purity and I'm also going to do the song we were talking about earlier the one who loves you the most which is actually the song that brought me to Canada because

19:18Rogers wireless or Rogers community I don't even know the name of the corporate big corporation Rogers yeah used it on yeah on one of their commercials for like Rogers TV and so and that's a it's it's a bit of it's a it's a devotional song it's a love song it's really about loving yourself though. You see revenue from that kind of thing like do you notice that? Yeah I mean it's usually like a like a lump sum so but it's not like every time I it plays I get a check or something like that it's like I make a deal and it was a nice deal and it allowed me to travel a little bit more comfortably for that time being when I was on the road. Yeah it helps I mean it helps to in this day and age it helps to find any kind of like I'm on an independent label

20:07where and I don't have a world I have a world deal with them but they what they do is they contract out to different distributors the different countries and my label doesn't put up money for me to really like travel and be out on the road to help you know but it's a blessing because I'm on an independent label and so I have a you know I have to do it my way and but you know if you're on a major label a lot of artists who are on a major label can get like you know money to live in a bus on the road I don't have that luxury I have other luxuries so when something like that comes in like a sync licensing or something like that on a tv show or you know on commercial it's nice because that kind of helps you live a little bit more comfortably on the road. Yeah it's funny people just don't think about it selling out. You know what it's not. You know

20:55you can still think it depends selling out maybe if you use your your music to sell a certain product that you wouldn't normally believe in but it's happened with another one of my songs the song blessed that you're talking about earlier got got on in the United States it got on a Hilton commercial and it's like you I guess you just have to value what is it that it's selling like what you know how bad or how good is the company that your song is helping to sell a product for and it's like yeah I mean in this like and ultimately though looking beyond that it's like what is it really doing it's getting my music out there into what you know I have a hard time getting songs on the radio you know I it's it's picking up right but you know I've been doing this for four years and

21:42it's just now this last year I've been starting to pick up so and John Millencamp said when they asked him about his song I you probably never saw the commercial here because no we have it. Okay same commercial it says like Chevrolet's America or whatever oh really yeah oh they've just completely switched it and he says from the east coast to the west coast and all that like this is our country here whatever the song that's great that's awesome well anyways he's when somebody people were grilling him about that for a long time because he's such a blue call it comes across as such a blue collar working man's musician and he is I mean in the tradition of springsteen and all that he said I heard him say and in like when I heard him say this I was like yeah he's the man I'm not gonna let anybody criticize me he said Chevrolet has been the best

22:32record label I've ever been on and it's true man I mean that he said you know he he made and that was an old song from an old record a couple years back and he heard that the most recent Tom Petty record and he goes man Tom Petty's songs can't get on the radio if he can if he can't get on the radio I sure as heck can't get on the radio so I got to figure out some other way to get my songs out there and luckily he found that commercial or that commercial found him and you know it it reintroduced the world or at least you know Canada and the United States to to that song and his his music so the coug the coog headies new records amazing though it is but it's not on the radio like he used to be on well you know what what's your format what he called AAA okay yeah so

23:23I love AAA by the way right there's some hot AC stations out there who are doing some good music and some you know there's great radio stations out there but yeah I mean Tom Petty used to be like number one on the pop charts you know it's not the same that he's well yeah but he's still he's a legend and he's written some of the greatest songs ever and he continues to do it and no but they're not on the radio.