Speaker 1: Pushkin. True to her Texas roots, Edie Burkel can seemingly
Speaker 1: find a song anywhere, including out of thin Air. Here
Speaker 1: it comes as the new album from Edie and her
Speaker 1: collaborators CJ, Camereri and Trevor Hagen, known as Heavy Makeup. Together,
Speaker 1: huddled with Edie and her Texas studio, they improvised over
Speaker 1: one hundred songs before selecting the eleven that make up
Speaker 1: their new album. Heavy Makeup is, of course, only the
Speaker 1: latest musical iteration for Edie, who's found herself ever evolving
Speaker 1: over her career. From her first hit with the New
Speaker 1: Bohemians co writing their massive nineteen eighty eight single What
Speaker 1: I Am, She's never stopped looking for songs. She even
Speaker 1: spent the better part of last decade writing and performing
Speaker 1: with Steve Martin, including their verial musical Bright Star, that
Speaker 1: ran on Broadway in twenty sixteen. On today's episode, Edie, CJ,
Speaker 1: and Trevor discussed the origins of Heavy Makeup, the making
Speaker 1: of the new album, and finish with a short performance
Speaker 1: demonstrating the unique improvisational nature of their work. This is
Speaker 1: broken record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 2: I'm justin Mitchman.
Speaker 1: Here's Bruce Hedlam's conversation with Edie Brikel, CJ. Camereri and
Speaker 1: Trevor Hagen, who has heavy makeup, released the new album
Speaker 1: Here It Comes.
Speaker 3: It's a wonderful album. Tell me the idea behind this album.
Speaker 3: Tell me your idea is going into it.
Speaker 4: You guys go ahead, please please.
Speaker 5: Well, this record, much like the first record, kind of
Speaker 5: happened before without us knowing we were doing it. We
Speaker 5: came to Texas to visit Edie like maybe like exactly
Speaker 5: a year ago, right, yes, and the idea was that
Speaker 5: we were going to work on this musical. So we
Speaker 5: set up all our equipment and we just started jamming
Speaker 5: and revising together and it was so much fun that
Speaker 5: we did it again the next day and we realized
Speaker 5: by the thirteenth day we hadn't actually worked on the
Speaker 5: musical at all, So we started working on the musical vigorously.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I think we left Trevor can answer this,
Speaker 5: but we left with like, well over one hundred songs and.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, it was about one hundred.
Speaker 6: Yeah, different song ideas or different improvisations that we kind
Speaker 6: of started, and yeah, different ideas that we're kind of
Speaker 6: trying out.
Speaker 3: So tell me what it's like when the three of
Speaker 3: you are improvising. What instruments are you playing, What are
Speaker 3: you working from? Do you just lay out a few
Speaker 3: chords or is it much more free form than that?
Speaker 5: What I kind of think is interesting is that it's
Speaker 5: not really that free form, Like we're improvising in song form.
Speaker 5: And so I think that that as a starting point
Speaker 5: is like an interesting building block, right, because a lot
Speaker 5: of when you think about improvisation, you immediately go to jazz,
Speaker 5: and jazz is in song for him, but you know
Speaker 5: it isn't in pop song for.
Speaker 2: Him, let's say.
Speaker 5: And so we create an A section and Edie goes
Speaker 5: and then she gives us a look, and then we
Speaker 5: know we're going to a chorus or a bridge, and
Speaker 5: we go to a chorus, and we go back to
Speaker 5: the A section. Or're creating loops and where I'm usually
Speaker 5: doing a bunch of synthesizers, and then I also play trumpet,
Speaker 5: french horn. Trevor's got a whole big bag of tricks
Speaker 5: over on his side of the desk.
Speaker 2: He can tell you about.
Speaker 5: We're immediately trying to inspire Edie to start telling the
Speaker 5: story and start singing.
Speaker 4: A song and they do that and it feels effortless.
Speaker 4: I feel like they just roll out the red carpet
Speaker 4: just for any melody. It's so open and so much fun.
Speaker 4: It's just it's it's playful, which is what I love,
Speaker 4: and it's welcoming and it's just wide open to just
Speaker 4: listened to the magic thread. Whatever sort of falls down
Speaker 4: in your thoughts, you just grab a hold and trust
Speaker 4: and start climbing up until it weaves into something that
Speaker 4: makes sense somehow.
Speaker 3: I'm a little shocked because the idea that you're improvising
Speaker 3: lyrics as you go, I think that would terrify most people.
Speaker 3: What is it in your background or makeup that makes
Speaker 3: that possible?
Speaker 4: Just walking through nature singing as a little kid, just
Speaker 4: singing all the time. And then, you know, really breaking
Speaker 4: through that one fear of joining a band when I
Speaker 4: was in college and I looked at all the majors
Speaker 4: and I thought I wouldn't be good at any of
Speaker 4: this stuff, and it's not what's in my heart. So
Speaker 4: breaking through and joining a band was, you know, taking
Speaker 4: the biggest risk of my life to try to live
Speaker 4: that dream. And then everything worked out for us. But
Speaker 4: when I first joined the band. We would be booked
Speaker 4: at little clubs, and we were brand new bands, so
Speaker 4: we didn't have enough songs, so we would improvise there
Speaker 4: and I tried to make it sound like a song.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 4: People ended up feeling it and liking that, and they
Speaker 4: would come and see us again in our crowd snowballed
Speaker 4: and so it became a part of our shows, and
Speaker 4: it was always ended up being my favorite part.
Speaker 2: So we didn't really know this when we got together
Speaker 2: with Di. She did.
Speaker 5: Trevor and I were touring with a project called karm
Speaker 5: and we had collaborated with Edie on a song and
Speaker 5: we were making a music video for it, and she
Speaker 5: was like, guys, you should come over and we could
Speaker 5: jam one weekend. We were like, sure, let's do it.
Speaker 5: So Trevor and I got together. We didn't really know
Speaker 5: what we were doing. We were like, you know, we
Speaker 5: didn't have a set purpose for being there. We were
Speaker 5: trying to start a new band or trying to make
Speaker 5: a record or whatever. So we just kind of set
Speaker 5: up our gear that we were using on on stage,
Speaker 5: and Trevor got a cool thing going on a drum
Speaker 5: machine and OPI one. We had a little Yamaha refaced
Speaker 5: keyboard and I got a little French worn texture going
Speaker 5: with a line six pedal and I remember this incredible
Speaker 5: moment where Edie said, do you mind if I sing something?
Speaker 5: We're like, of course not, and she just sang a
Speaker 5: whole song right, metaphors, stories versus choruses, and we were like, well,
Speaker 5: that was funny. And she did this like four or
Speaker 5: five times, and then she left the room for a
Speaker 5: minute and Trevor looked at me.
Speaker 2: And says, like, what are these I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm sure she's like just.
Speaker 5: Been writing lyrics on the side, and you know, it's
Speaker 5: just like things she's been working on. And that was
Speaker 5: we asked her though, and they were all just really
Speaker 5: improvisations and it was perplexing and amazing to be in
Speaker 5: the room for that. And and as a musician, it's
Speaker 5: a big challenge, right, so you're going to follow, you know,
Speaker 5: she says, we're going to a chorus. You got to
Speaker 5: play improvised chorus chords right and keep the keep the
Speaker 5: energy of the music flowing and follow where her melodies
Speaker 5: are going. So it's it was It was a it
Speaker 5: was a lot of fun and a fascinating musical challenge. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I think and once we kind of started realizing like
Speaker 5: CG and I are both I think, you know, we
Speaker 5: both in res and jazz before and different environments and
Speaker 5: and it is well with many different like not jamming
Speaker 5: but long form solos and like things emerge and and uh,
Speaker 5: it wasn't It was a little different kind of improvisation
Speaker 5: than that. But I think once we figured out, okay,
Speaker 5: we're kind of making a painting here, and we just
Speaker 5: kind of kind of sit in this chords or in
Speaker 5: a beat or in a groove and just kind of
Speaker 5: let Edy kind of stare out the window and see
Speaker 5: a picture in her head. And then when she starts say,
Speaker 5: we can kind of just slowly follow her.
Speaker 2: And then and we.
Speaker 6: Just would do that over and over again. We just
Speaker 6: do it for ten minutes, stop, start a new BPM,
Speaker 6: started a new progression, and just go I mean for
Speaker 6: this album, we did that for every day for yeah,
Speaker 6: CJA mentioned for about two weeks, and then we just
Speaker 6: had all of these song ideas and it's very exciting
Speaker 6: and then we go back through all of them and
Speaker 6: we're finding all of these great tunes and then we
Speaker 6: have to decide which ones do we keep and which
Speaker 6: ones do we let go or come back to or
Speaker 6: you know, what fit together in a certain way, the
Speaker 6: songs fit together, so really it's it all kind of
Speaker 6: emerges in a very natural, intuitive way, and so we're
Speaker 6: just trying to We kind of stumbled upon that whole
Speaker 6: process really the first time we went and jammed with Eadie,
Speaker 6: and so with this album we kind of knew a
Speaker 6: little bit more like, Okay, how can we set the
Speaker 6: environment correctly?
Speaker 2: More or less Eadie?
Speaker 3: Were you improvising the melody as well over the chords?
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, that's it's really my favorite thing to do
Speaker 4: as I As I said before that I discovered with
Speaker 4: playing with my first band, with New Bohemians, because the
Speaker 4: energy of it is so of the moment you're it's
Speaker 4: and you know how everybody says living in the moment
Speaker 4: is your is your is the healthiest way to live
Speaker 4: and it and that's what I love about inviting these
Speaker 4: players to come and jam, because we're all right there
Speaker 4: in the moment, and it does make you feel so
Speaker 4: alive and so good, and it also makes you trust
Speaker 4: the strange first thing that may come, you know, and
Speaker 4: and when you allow that to unfold and you hear
Speaker 4: the rhymes and you just go with it. Then later
Speaker 4: when you listen back, it's it's like a Sometimes it's
Speaker 4: a gift to yourself, say oh, look what's Look what it's,
Speaker 4: Look what it's whatever. That's what it's saying. Look what's
Speaker 4: happening there. And and as a writer, sitting down with
Speaker 4: an instrument playing a chord progression with piano, I wouldn't
Speaker 4: flow in that same way. That's why I really like
Speaker 4: to flow as a singer making melodies and lyrics as
Speaker 4: a band plays, because it completely frees me up. All
Speaker 4: we're engaging in a conversation together. We're really listening to
Speaker 4: each other, and it's like writing on the best roller
Speaker 4: coaster and or doing just something really super fun together,
Speaker 4: and we're you're really just connected with other people in
Speaker 4: a musical conversation, and that musical conversation involves unpredictable energy
Speaker 4: and unpredictable emotions and imagery that just flow out.
Speaker 3: So you weren't playing at all during this, you were
Speaker 3: just singing.
Speaker 4: I'm just singing.
Speaker 3: So I'm interested if you sat down with one of
Speaker 3: these songs and I want to talk through some of
Speaker 3: the songs later and you were playing the guitar chords
Speaker 3: along with it. You don't think you would have the
Speaker 3: same experience as a singer and writer.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't. I would know, I would be mindful of
Speaker 4: the structure, whereas with this, I can play with phrasing,
Speaker 4: I can play with the energy of it a lot better.
Speaker 4: And as CJ pointed out, I mean I can just
Speaker 4: give the guys a look that says, Okay, I'm finished
Speaker 4: with this partner, let's move on and we But they
Speaker 4: feel it too. It's it's really not It's not a
Speaker 4: lot that I'm directing at all. I'm not. I can
Speaker 4: just glance over. It's almost like a courtesy look where
Speaker 4: they won't change until I offered it. Okay.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a shame this is a podcast because
Speaker 3: you just gave be that look, and you know, I
Speaker 3: thought I should wrap things up. It was like, well,
Speaker 3: onto the B section, you know, the look of the interview.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'm not going to mess with that.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Heavy Makeup. After
Speaker 1: the break, we're back with Edie Brokel, c J Camery
Speaker 1: and Trevor Hagen of Heavy Makeup.
Speaker 3: The fact that you were doing this mainly with electronic instruments.
Speaker 3: I mean, there were a couple things in this that
Speaker 3: really interested me on is you did very little treatment
Speaker 3: of Edie's voice, And there was something about the different
Speaker 3: temperatures of the sounds coming out the electronic sounds and
Speaker 3: you know, I'm going to deal in cliches here, but
Speaker 3: we tend to think of them as technological and quite cold,
Speaker 3: but then her voice was very, very warm. It was
Speaker 3: really something in the album. Was that something you want
Speaker 3: to preserve or.
Speaker 1: Not not not?
Speaker 2: Maybe intuitively, I think.
Speaker 6: Eatie's voice is so centering I think to of course,
Speaker 6: to every song, so it's kind of leading that just
Speaker 6: front and center, and you know, we we experiment a
Speaker 6: few different times, maybe trying to like bring the voice
Speaker 6: down to the mix a little different, and there's some affecting,
Speaker 6: but really it's just that was just like it just
Speaker 6: flowed so nicely within already the mix of what we've
Speaker 6: been doing and all the treatments we've been doing, and
Speaker 6: it just didn't need it.
Speaker 2: It just just spoke for itself.
Speaker 6: Not that other things needed it either way, but this
Speaker 6: is just kind of, like it said, it's a different flavor,
Speaker 6: a different texture and it seems like it almost comes
Speaker 6: out in a very unexpected way sometimes, So yeah, we
Speaker 6: just kind of let that flow and we never really
Speaker 6: looked back. I don't think, you know, we've I mean
Speaker 6: there's a few times maybe we try something, but it
Speaker 6: was pretty good otherwise.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think, I mean, it's it's a really
Speaker 5: great question and something I definitely noticed and thought about
Speaker 5: from an arrangement perspective. Yeah, I think a lot of times,
Speaker 5: I mean, there might be horns on every song, which,
Speaker 5: as I say, that is like a little bit embarrassing,
Speaker 5: but I think sometimes the horn texture and character kind
Speaker 5: of bridges that like purity of the vocal sound with
Speaker 5: the electronic instrument, So it's sort of like in between.
Speaker 5: Trevor would treat the horns in a certain way a
Speaker 5: lot of times, so it kind of characterized, you know,
Speaker 5: both sort of you played with both characters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I misspoke because there's times I'm particularly
Speaker 3: thinking of the first song, Shoe in the Air, that
Speaker 3: there's a nice but trumpet duet. I think it's both trumpets,
Speaker 3: but I might be wrong. Trumpet duet that kind of
Speaker 3: starts before the vocals come in. It's very very warm
Speaker 3: and it's really lovely pace.
Speaker 2: Right, So it's a little bit of like you know,
Speaker 2: sonic foreshadowing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, kind of bridges those two worlds, but there, you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's the world we're interested in. So it's what
Speaker 5: we with the instruments we had when we showed up,
Speaker 5: you know, and so and yeah, it just kind of
Speaker 5: happened naturally.
Speaker 3: This is going to sound like a naive question, but
Speaker 3: I think I would know how someone would compose at
Speaker 3: a piano. I think I might know how they would
Speaker 3: compose at a guitar with a guitar part in me.
Speaker 3: But when you sit down with electric electronic instruments, you generally,
Speaker 3: you guys use like small MIDI controller.
Speaker 2: Is that what you're using? Yeah, I mean, well, like
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of keyboards.
Speaker 6: I mean I think CG and I have like a
Speaker 6: setup like a table together, and I think that kind
Speaker 6: of kind of came out of working in karm together.
Speaker 6: And so we're kind of connected with keyboards, drum machine,
Speaker 6: MIDI controllers and other small instruments to kind of we're
Speaker 6: kind of playing a set up together in some way.
Speaker 6: And and and that allows us to i mean c
Speaker 6: JO to have you know, agnored to reface and he'll
Speaker 6: be playing those. So we have you know, uh, synthesizers,
Speaker 6: and it's not just midti, but we have that to
Speaker 6: control you know, loops and to control different parameters of
Speaker 6: stuff when we're playing live more but essentially when we're improvising,
Speaker 6: we have these. We're all connected, you know, kind of
Speaker 6: to it's some kind of breathing breathing heart or beating heart,
Speaker 6: I guess Trevor would. Trevor kind of makes the initial
Speaker 6: decision with picking a BPM, you know, and so like okay,
Speaker 6: you know, and so what is that where you know,
Speaker 6: and then I sort of pick a synthesizer sound you know,
Speaker 6: we have you have four or five different keyboards or
Speaker 6: all create a front shorn texture, the line six pedal
Speaker 6: or harming you trumpet thing which you know pushes here there.
Speaker 6: The thing we really learned was one of the fun
Speaker 6: lessons of that time in Texas, was we'd immediately try
Speaker 6: to make the most interesting thing we could make, right,
Speaker 6: So Trevor would get a beat going, and I'd create
Speaker 6: a synth texture and then I'd add a little harm
Speaker 6: in you trumpet with a delay, and Edie would get
Speaker 6: the light bulb and she want to start singing, but
Speaker 6: then I would add a move base part.
Speaker 2: She'd be like, oh, no, now I'm thinking about another thing.
Speaker 5: And then Trevor would ad to you know, because we
Speaker 5: created the thing that we thought was really good, but
Speaker 5: like we weren't paying attention to like her initial moment
Speaker 5: of inspiration that she needed to like follow and trust
Speaker 5: right away.
Speaker 2: And so she say, hey, it's.
Speaker 5: Really cool, you did a cool thing, but we need
Speaker 5: to like, you know, but now I'm got three stories
Speaker 5: going in my head and I got to just pick
Speaker 5: the one and focus on it.
Speaker 2: So it's it's just like this, this whole project is
Speaker 2: such a.
Speaker 5: Fascinating music musical journey and like exploring your skill sets.
Speaker 5: You know, Trevor and I both been professional musicians for
Speaker 5: twenty years, and this just really draws upon everything we've
Speaker 5: ever had to do.
Speaker 2: Because it's chamber music, but it's jazz.
Speaker 5: But these are you know, what end up being sort
Speaker 5: of like pop songs, and you know, it's you're using
Speaker 5: all of these skills and it's and it's you have
Speaker 5: to trust them.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't say, but maybe this one will
Speaker 2: be better. No, you can't. You can't do that, because
Speaker 2: then near you missed it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: So once you had the songs that the eleven songs
Speaker 3: you wanted on the album, did you then redo them?
Speaker 2: Did you re record them?
Speaker 3: Did you add elements? How did how did that happen?
Speaker 3: How did the actual recording happen?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so after I mean, we recorded everything down in
Speaker 6: Texas that time, and then we kind of peered down
Speaker 6: those we'll say, one hundred ideas down to twenty and
Speaker 6: then from there we're like, okay, these we actually I
Speaker 6: think we maybe had fifteen that we really worked on,
Speaker 6: and there's there's four that didn't three or four that
Speaker 6: we really worked on a lot afterwards that didn't make
Speaker 6: it on to the album that just didn't fit with
Speaker 6: the other tunes in the flow of the whole things.
Speaker 6: We kind of had to pick these eleven songs and
Speaker 6: how they spoke to each other.
Speaker 3: But okay, was that an argument?
Speaker 2: Were we uh no, really, I don't think so. No,
Speaker 2: We're yeah, no, no, it was it was there. They're great.
Speaker 6: I think Edi has a great you have a great
Speaker 6: way to say, how you like to choose these songs?
Speaker 4: I do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, puppies.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's like choosing puppies. Yeah, it's impossible for me.
Speaker 4: So I love them all. So I trust. I like
Speaker 4: these musicians. I like these guys there. I trust their ears.
Speaker 4: And that's a big element of this whole kind of
Speaker 4: band is trust across the board. I trust that they're
Speaker 4: great musicians. I trust their ears. I trust that they
Speaker 4: can help me as a songwriter find that song that's
Speaker 4: more interesting. And I think they've done that, and they'll
Speaker 4: show them to me, because I haven't heard all those
Speaker 4: hundreds of songs that we've done. They curate them and
Speaker 4: then they give them to me, and so many of
Speaker 4: them I've just completely forgotten about. And the last time
Speaker 4: we got together, they said, oh, you got to check
Speaker 4: this out, you and the air and and I love
Speaker 4: that they chose that and that they pointed out that
Speaker 4: that was good and so and then they they'll edit them.
Speaker 4: And so from those edits, I'll take that initial subconscious
Speaker 4: song and write a second or third verse if it
Speaker 4: needs it. But the one song on this album that
Speaker 4: most excites me is Let Them Lie, because it was
Speaker 4: just a complete improv. It's one that we didn't touch
Speaker 4: the only thing that they touched is that Trevor had
Speaker 4: to change the vocal tone because we recorded it in
Speaker 4: this room in this barn that I'm in here, and
Speaker 4: when these lads are on, they had a little buzz
Speaker 4: and they and since we didn't know that they were
Speaker 4: going to make an album, we didn't eliminate the buzz
Speaker 4: and he what did you do?
Speaker 6: You just fixed that was just to just put a
Speaker 6: filter on it, because there was this budget buzz that
Speaker 6: you know, I don't know, ten thousand.
Speaker 2: Killer hurts, and so it was.
Speaker 6: Maybe like just had to put little filter on it,
Speaker 6: and then it gave this really nice dark quality to
Speaker 6: Edie's voice. And then then there's a little treatment on
Speaker 6: that too, with every voice is a little treatment, but
Speaker 6: it's trying not.
Speaker 2: To like mask the tone of her voice at all.
Speaker 2: So just just a little bit gave it a nice.
Speaker 6: Sound to even what Edie is singing about too, which
Speaker 6: is a very kind of internal monologue.
Speaker 2: That that song has.
Speaker 6: So there's definitely editing and things that happen in the songs,
Speaker 6: but there are like these beautiful passages, like you know,
Speaker 6: songs like let Them Lie or they have It all improvised,
Speaker 6: the lyrics at the choruses, solos, beats, whatever, whatever we
Speaker 6: got on there. So it's very exciting to see that
Speaker 6: process and even things like showing there like those are
Speaker 6: I believe all the original lyrics, and maybe there's a
Speaker 6: lot of original it takes on the album that we
Speaker 6: kept from those recordings from me here, its just one word,
Speaker 6: and you just changed one word from Merovs.
Speaker 2: He changed it from like him to his or something
Speaker 2: something like right, I.
Speaker 4: Don't even remember. I think it's it's I don't know.
Speaker 5: But so I think in almost every song you're hearing
Speaker 5: you know, you're in the room, and I think that
Speaker 5: that is hopefully what makes it special, and you're hearing
Speaker 5: just these really honest like this sound makes me feel this,
Speaker 5: those words make me want to do this musically, like
Speaker 5: you know, you're really you're really hearing you know, a
Speaker 5: chamber music exercise.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, the kernel the idea of every song that
Speaker 6: feeling like that. Every song was improvised and happened in
Speaker 6: the room to three of us together, and then there's
Speaker 6: some shaping that happened afterwards and things like that, but
Speaker 6: the spirit of it is all from us just sitting
Speaker 6: around looking at each other and smiling and nodding and
Speaker 6: playing music in a very in a very great way.
Speaker 6: It's really it's a special in some way, especially after
Speaker 6: coming from the pandemic of years of being locked away
Speaker 6: and doing remote things. This is great to be in
Speaker 6: the room together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And what I wanted to say this about let
Speaker 4: them lie too it. I do love that he changed
Speaker 4: that sound and then it ended up happening that way
Speaker 4: because it is, as he mentioned, this internal kind of
Speaker 4: thought process within the song. But the other thing I
Speaker 4: like about it is I think that at one point
Speaker 4: CJ wanted to change the tone of a chorus and
Speaker 4: suggested that I re sing that so that we could
Speaker 4: have this bigger tone. And we went into a recording
Speaker 4: studio and what I recognized immediately is I couldn't get
Speaker 4: the same phrasing. I couldn't match it. And because it
Speaker 4: was improvised, it has a different movements. It almost has
Speaker 4: a delay where I can hear that I'm thinking, I'm
Speaker 4: looking for the next rhyme, And so it's a little
Speaker 4: a little past a moment. You can see, you could
Speaker 4: you could feel like just the energy of it is
Speaker 4: a little slower and a little more relaxed because it's
Speaker 4: and then all of a sudden it speeds up because
Speaker 4: once I realize what it wants to say, then it
Speaker 4: just flows out quickly. But it lands a little funny.
Speaker 4: And I could never get that landing correctly. And see
Speaker 4: J kept trying trying to say, no, it's a little
Speaker 4: it's a little cooler than that, it's a little past that,
Speaker 4: and I couldn't do it.
Speaker 2: M h I was.
Speaker 4: I would love when they kept it, I said, I
Speaker 4: just and and also the way it feels is what
Speaker 4: I was telling you before. If I were playing an
Speaker 4: instrument and writing a song, I wouldn't write it in
Speaker 4: that way. But when other people are playing and that
Speaker 4: magic happens, you do flow in this other way that
Speaker 4: then you can't even imitate later mm hmm.
Speaker 5: The other interesting thing about that song, too, is is
Speaker 5: that you know a lot of these songs, you know,
Speaker 5: we'll go back and we'll add a bass element, or
Speaker 5: we'll add you know, an arrangement, a horn arrangement, or
Speaker 5: you know, Trevor will find the drums or add a
Speaker 5: you know, a counter melody, or and in this song,
Speaker 5: I was just like, oh, we got to add bass.
Speaker 5: Obviously nobody was playing bass on the song, and it
Speaker 5: just didn't work. I kept trying to do it, and
Speaker 5: we'd listen to it and be like, that's not the song.
Speaker 5: That wasn't what was in the room, you know, And yeah,
Speaker 5: it's just a really amazing exercise to trust the what
Speaker 5: happens in the room is.
Speaker 2: Is the kernel of inspiration that you have to go
Speaker 2: with and you really have to believe in it.
Speaker 3: You had a lovely phrase for this, which is you
Speaker 3: said that it was like they were creating a soundtrack
Speaker 3: to a movie and then you had to write the movie.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, that's right. You hear the music and then
Speaker 4: the images come as opposed to that opposite way of creating,
Speaker 4: And that's what would happen. You would you just listen
Speaker 4: and you pay attention to what what are the images
Speaker 4: in the in the music, and then and then if
Speaker 4: it if it's articulated in a thought, I'll hear it,
Speaker 4: and then I'll just go hm. Because if you edit
Speaker 4: something like I thought I saw a flying saucer, but
Speaker 4: it was just only issue in the air. If you
Speaker 4: edit that, you don't get to find out what that means.
Speaker 3: Did you know what it meant when you said it?
Speaker 4: No, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I'm saying
Speaker 4: you you say, well, I remember saying many times, especially
Speaker 4: the very first time we ever played together, I say, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm hearing something really odd, but I'm just gonna say
Speaker 4: it okay, And they were like okay, and then I
Speaker 4: don't I can't even remember what that one. Oh, I
Speaker 4: think it was. I don't remember.
Speaker 6: I think I know what we were talking about. It
Speaker 6: maybe could be, Yeah, that was something, those lines.
Speaker 4: I mean, you never know. I think it's really important
Speaker 4: not to edit the moment of inspiration. I think you
Speaker 4: just allow it and let it show you something. Is
Speaker 4: it going to show you you're really goofy playful side
Speaker 4: or is it going to sound like it's goofy and
Speaker 4: then turn into something far more meaningful, which often happens
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 3: Is there a particular song you have in mind when
Speaker 3: you say that, well, Shoe in the Air, Shoe in
Speaker 3: the Air.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And even again, I love the idea of let
Speaker 4: them Lie because there was just a lot of truth
Speaker 4: in that for me.
Speaker 3: Now, I love a lot of these songs. But I've
Speaker 3: wanted to ask you about Under Construction for this reason,
Speaker 3: which is and I think it's all through the album,
Speaker 3: but it's not as though your improvisations.
Speaker 1: Are just.
Speaker 3: What people might worry they're going to hear, which is
Speaker 3: just like, oh, it's her feelings. You actually really establish
Speaker 3: characters in these songs, and I think that's one of
Speaker 3: the strongest songs for that. But all the songs have
Speaker 3: like I don't think, oh, this is the innermost thoughts
Speaker 3: of Edie Brukel. I think, wow, she's she's made a
Speaker 3: character here while you're improvising, which I found really impressive.
Speaker 2: Do you put.
Speaker 3: Yourself Are you putting yourself in a different role? Are
Speaker 3: you thinking consciously of that?
Speaker 4: I'm not thinking consciously of of any of it. I'm
Speaker 4: just trusting what comes and letting it lead me.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll put it another way, which is you are
Speaker 3: also a Are you a Tony winning.
Speaker 2: Broadway?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: No, we but but no, we were Tony nominated.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're Tony nominated, then you're a Hamilton.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Well that was oh my god, yeah you did really well.
Speaker 4: No No, I mean no, there was just no chance
Speaker 4: that for for any of us. Uh that yeah, that
Speaker 4: that that was so spectacular.
Speaker 3: But you did Bright Star and that so much fun.
Speaker 3: But that was writing and in that case it was
Speaker 3: writing in characters, very strong characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah did that?
Speaker 3: Did that kind of help with this kind of work?
Speaker 4: You know what? Yeah, you made me understand that it did,
Speaker 4: because I hadn't really thought about that before. But what
Speaker 4: I did recognize during that time period was how much
Speaker 4: I loved writing for a character and then hearing these
Speaker 4: these people sing, and really the people who loved perform,
Speaker 4: like Carmen and and everyone everybody who loves to perform,
Speaker 4: to getting to hear them, seeing those character songs felt
Speaker 4: really good. So you're right, and it takes you, It
Speaker 4: does take you out of yourself and my feelings, so
Speaker 4: and that and that feels better because again it's just colorful.
Speaker 3: But also they seemed like not all of them, but
Speaker 3: this seems like New York stories to me. And I
Speaker 3: think people can tell from your accent that you're not
Speaker 3: from New York.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I often think about Dorman because I
Speaker 4: love all the Doorman and our building in New York.
Speaker 4: We I and I lived there for a while, you know,
Speaker 4: And I see that they see births and people coming
Speaker 4: in with new babies, and then they see people leaving
Speaker 4: covered under sheets, and anyway, they entered into that song
Speaker 4: in a playful way, I think, And there was a
Speaker 4: lot of funny characters in elevators too.
Speaker 3: I think what you're saying is you lived in a
Speaker 3: nicer building that I lived in when I lived in,
Speaker 3: not the sixth floor WALKA.
Speaker 1: After this last break, we'll be back with the rest
Speaker 1: of Bruce Hellim's conversation with Heavy Makeup. We're back with
Speaker 1: the rest of Bruce's conversation with Edie Brokel, CJ. Cameri,
Speaker 1: and Trevor Hagen of Heavy Makeup.
Speaker 3: I want to ask all of you how you all
Speaker 3: got to this point, and I will start with you, Edie,
Speaker 3: which is I know you grew up in Dallas. Was
Speaker 3: your family musical?
Speaker 4: They weren't professional musicians, but they sang all the time,
Speaker 4: both my mom and my dad. And my dad had
Speaker 4: a very sweet, soft voice, and my mother just sang
Speaker 4: all the time. She was a working woman who sang
Speaker 4: to bring joy into her life every morning, getting ready
Speaker 4: for work, in the car on the way to work,
Speaker 4: taking us to school. She just sang all the time.
Speaker 3: And what did she sing?
Speaker 4: Everything? Everything that she loved. She was crazy about BB
Speaker 4: King and she used to sort of imitate BB King.
Speaker 4: She could make that face that he makes. It was
Speaker 4: really fun. She sang oh boy, and she looked and
Speaker 4: sang a lot like Aretha Franklin when she danced, and
Speaker 4: then she would flip it to a country sensation and
Speaker 4: she would sing one of her favorite songs is uh
Speaker 4: he Stopped loving her today? She would play that over
Speaker 4: and over, so.
Speaker 1: You know it was.
Speaker 4: It was varied, but mostly R and B or dance
Speaker 4: for her.
Speaker 3: Interesting and was there a song either when your mom
Speaker 3: sang or when you heard on the radio that just
Speaker 3: made a really early impact on you that said, no,
Speaker 3: no music's for me.
Speaker 4: Oh, Nothing from Nothing? I loved that song. That was
Speaker 4: one of my first and superstition those I bought. Those
Speaker 4: were my first singles that I ever bought. But I
Speaker 4: love that piano part and Nothing from Nothing Billy Preston.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh amazing. Back back when you could buy forty fives.
Speaker 3: That was so great, wasn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that, Trevor. Can I ask you the
Speaker 3: same question, is there was there an early song an
Speaker 3: impression of music that that just grabbed you?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 6: My real I think love for music came through through
Speaker 6: jazz and through people like Loneus Monk Charles Mingus, Miles Davis.
Speaker 6: I think those and that's probably the case for a
Speaker 6: lot of you know, jazz heads out there. But I
Speaker 6: think jazz also introduced me to whole, you know, two
Speaker 6: different social relations in the South, to like a whole
Speaker 6: different set of histories of people and sounds. So but
Speaker 6: of course Monk is I mean, I'm not sure if
Speaker 6: I can say a particular a song, but it was
Speaker 6: always Monk, Miles and Mingus, and then then later Luy
Speaker 6: Armstrong and Ellington. But uh, I think jazz for me
Speaker 6: was also a way to really find a sense of
Speaker 6: belonging as like a kid you're just you know, I
Speaker 6: had I could played in jazz band, I had friends
Speaker 6: really into jazz, We learned about jazz, so really it
Speaker 6: was kind of an opportunity to also, you know, make
Speaker 6: friends because I wasn't playing sports. I wasn't on a
Speaker 6: basketball team or football tea or something. So I really
Speaker 6: had a strong social connection with music growing up, where
Speaker 6: it was also a way of like how I was
Speaker 6: even you know, spending time with my friends.
Speaker 3: It's funny you mentioned Mingus because particularly his stuff is
Speaker 3: not it seems close in spirit a little bit to
Speaker 3: what you guys are doing, which is it's a group
Speaker 3: improvisation and his group is so solid that way, it's
Speaker 3: not it's not the you take a solo, then I
Speaker 3: take a solo. Then it's much more ensemble based.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, and even playing a lot of I know in
Speaker 6: CJ also play a lot of big band stuff. I
Speaker 6: mean you're from a player at some point you're always
Speaker 6: playing big band stuff. But I got to experience a
Speaker 6: lot of chance to play a lot of Ellington as well.
Speaker 6: And so Ellington and mingus you are going these very
Speaker 6: beautifully composed pieces with timbres of you know, a jazz band,
Speaker 6: but then having solos coming out and telling a story
Speaker 6: through composition but also improvisation. So yeah, all of really
Speaker 6: those I think that energy was always it still is
Speaker 6: very important to me.
Speaker 2: I still have a lot of puts a lot of
Speaker 2: value in music in that way.
Speaker 4: CJ.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you the same you what was like,
Speaker 3: was there an early song, early memory on the radio,
Speaker 3: something that said, oh yeah, that's for me, you know
Speaker 3: for me?
Speaker 2: It happened later.
Speaker 5: I started playing piano when I was four years old
Speaker 5: because my dad, my dad was as a musician. He
Speaker 5: was a middle school band director, and so I heard
Speaker 5: him teaching piano lessons at the house all the time,
Speaker 5: and from the time I could talk, just begging him
Speaker 5: to let me start doing it. You know, like I
Speaker 5: music was inside me, and you know, you know, from
Speaker 5: a super young age, and I started playing trumpet when
Speaker 5: I was seven or eight, and I was obsessed with him.
Speaker 5: I was a kid that was like twelve years old,
Speaker 5: practice in six hours a day of the trumpet, and like,
Speaker 5: you know, I knew I wanted to be a professional
Speaker 5: trumpet player, and I just didn't know what that meant
Speaker 5: and what music that would be. And all the way
Speaker 5: through college, I went to Juilliard and I got to
Speaker 5: do a classical trumpet, even though when I was when
Speaker 5: I got there, I wanted to be a jazz musician.
Speaker 5: And the first gig I played out of college was
Speaker 5: totally a free jazz gig, and I just really didn't
Speaker 5: know what kind of music I wanted to make until
Speaker 5: I was in a fan I'll never forget it. On
Speaker 5: my way to Buffalo, New York to play a totally
Speaker 5: free gig with this great trumpet player named Peter Evans
Speaker 5: and a bass player named Mapa Elliott Trumbone player named
Speaker 5: David Taylor, and they put on SOUPI Young Stevens come
Speaker 5: on Fell the Illinois record, and it was there's so
Speaker 5: many awesome trumpet parts and woodwind parts and string parts
Speaker 5: on that, but it was in the context of these songs.
Speaker 5: I just had so much life and spirit to them,
Speaker 5: and I was like, that's what I want to do.
Speaker 5: That's how I want to like use these skills I've
Speaker 5: been working at with no real idea on how where
Speaker 5: to apply them. So I was just I became obsessed
Speaker 5: with like finding my way into again Steven's band, and
Speaker 5: that became sort of like the catalyst for my whole career.
Speaker 5: But I mean just I'll never forget that moment of
Speaker 5: like going to play a totally free jazz gig and
Speaker 5: hearing these like, you know, simple poppy folk songs. Not simple,
Speaker 5: but like it was really catchy, beautiful songs that I
Speaker 5: had these trumpet melodies on them, and it was just really.
Speaker 2: That was it for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the the it's not the outro, but
Speaker 3: the end of and Andrew Jackson songs got that great
Speaker 3: trumpet bit. And but it's interesting, were you not interested
Speaker 3: in pop music at all before that.
Speaker 5: No, I uh, it never never really connected to me.
Speaker 5: I was I was raised like pretty conservative Christian when
Speaker 5: I was young, so we didn't listen to a lot
Speaker 5: of popular music.
Speaker 2: But I was jazz. I was obsessed with like like
Speaker 2: operating the instrument.
Speaker 5: So I was really obsessed with jazz from a like
Speaker 5: learn every Clipper Ground solo and the Louis Armstrong solo
Speaker 5: and just with classical music from it, like learned the parts,
Speaker 5: you know, learn this, like expand your skill set. But
Speaker 5: I knew, I yeah, like I said, I want to
Speaker 5: be I didn't sort of know that the trumpet could
Speaker 5: have this life outside of those two really kind of
Speaker 5: you know, institutionalized genres.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. Did did anything at Juilliard prepare you for
Speaker 3: this experience?
Speaker 2: No, that's not true.
Speaker 5: Chamber of music, I really, I always, I always was
Speaker 5: involved in chamber of music. And this is like chamber
Speaker 5: music on the like highest, highest, highest level because you're
Speaker 5: improvised that you're improvising as a group, trying to make
Speaker 5: these songs and trusting each other and communicating with your
Speaker 5: eyes and you know a lot of like you know
Speaker 5: the cues that you use in chamber music, and yeah,
Speaker 5: and trusting each other. You know, I know that they're
Speaker 5: going to start this at the right tempo and then
Speaker 5: I'm gonna be able to add my part into that,
Speaker 5: and they're not going to play too soft because then
Speaker 5: I'll sound too loud. And yeah, all these like chamber
Speaker 5: music skills you learned in college. So definitely, definitely. And
Speaker 5: I also had an amazing teacher when I was at
Speaker 5: Juilliard kind of like made sure I was prepared for
Speaker 5: anything that came my way.
Speaker 3: I was like, that wasn't a shot at Juilliard, I
Speaker 3: want to be clear.
Speaker 2: I mean I could take a shot at Juliard. No.
Speaker 3: No, although my brother's at Eastman, so you just have
Speaker 3: to you know, it's a little competitive ya.
Speaker 4: You know what, though, when you said when you discovered
Speaker 4: your music, I think I listening to them. I realized
Speaker 4: what you meant when I got older. When I was young,
Speaker 4: what I wrote on the radio were those two first
Speaker 4: favorite songs, Superstition and Nothing from Nothing. They were my
Speaker 4: first favorite songs. But when I went out and started
Speaker 4: looking for music, when I found Duke Ellington and Bob
Speaker 4: Wills and the Texas Playboys, I thought, this is I
Speaker 4: love this music and I would often put it on
Speaker 4: to bring sunshine into my kitchen when I was raising
Speaker 4: the kids. That's the music that made me happiest.
Speaker 3: Okay, Trevor. I was really interested in something you once
Speaker 3: wrote about the trumpet, which was I hope you don't
Speaker 3: regret writing this, but I'm going to say it anyway,
Speaker 3: which is, and I don't remember your phrase, but essentially
Speaker 3: that the martial element of the trumpet, the role of
Speaker 3: trumpet in war is something I don't I think I'm
Speaker 3: actually mixing it up with phrase from one of the songs,
Speaker 3: but it's in the trumpets DNA essentially, I.
Speaker 6: Mean absolutely, I remember this very very well. I mean
Speaker 6: I got my first flugelhorn. I was playing it and
Speaker 6: it was like this French maker called couinone, and somehow
Speaker 6: I figure out that this by like you can see
Speaker 6: how the design of the writing and everything like this
Speaker 6: you could trace it back to like maybe late eighteen
Speaker 6: nineties France, and you're like, wow, this flugelhorn was probably
Speaker 6: used in the French Algerian War, and this is like
Speaker 6: a standard issue for the French military.
Speaker 2: And here I am with this piece of metal on
Speaker 2: my face, and.
Speaker 6: Somehow that whole connection to what this instrument was made
Speaker 6: for in society in the world really hit me very hard,
Speaker 6: where I'm like, I'm playing this military instrument, this is
Speaker 6: was used to communicate and battlefields across long distances and
Speaker 6: this is and all of a sudden, this whole other
Speaker 6: energy of the instrument kind of like started to show
Speaker 6: his face to me, and and and and I think
Speaker 6: I just kind of took that and ran with a
Speaker 6: little bit with with how I was even playing the
Speaker 6: instrument or approaching it, and how to think about discourse
Speaker 6: and appropriate or not appropriate ways of playing it, and
Speaker 6: what what this instrument has been throughout history. And and
Speaker 6: it's still is kind of crazy when you know CGI
Speaker 6: will won't be playing trumpet or these two military instruments
Speaker 6: you know inside, but you can play them very softly
Speaker 6: and beautifully. But there's still that element where this is
Speaker 6: like a caged beast or something like this, but you
Speaker 6: can really open it up if you want to. And
Speaker 6: and the other kinds of not unknown territories, but one
Speaker 6: that's it's uh, it's not as seen as much anymore
Speaker 6: with the trumpet, I think, and we see, we hear
Speaker 6: a lot of is their association of like the more
Speaker 6: biblical heralding aspect of it the beauty aspect of it.
Speaker 6: And so there's these two sides to it that are
Speaker 6: both kind of it's fun and play with.
Speaker 3: Conceptually, I'm interested because I came to this album with
Speaker 3: certain expectations of electronic music. And it's not that I
Speaker 3: don't like electronic music. Certainly, when I was growing up
Speaker 3: in the eighties, there was a lot of like the
Speaker 3: early electropop, and some of it I thought was terrific.
Speaker 3: But to me it's DNA is kind of cold and
Speaker 3: technological and a little bit scary. I guess it doesn't
Speaker 3: feel that way in this record, but I'm just wondering
Speaker 3: how you felt about using these instruments with this.
Speaker 2: In this way. I mean, I think for me, I
Speaker 2: know exactly what you're what you mean, that's.
Speaker 3: Good, because I said it terribly.
Speaker 2: Completely, no is good.
Speaker 5: I think that I don't want to speak for Driver,
Speaker 5: but I think that both of us coming from this instrument,
Speaker 5: that's you know, you're thinking melodies and you're thinking textures.
Speaker 5: When when we're approaching these other instruments, these electronic instruments
Speaker 5: and drum machines, and you're we're the same musicians. Our
Speaker 5: formative time was spent playing melodies and finding these melodic
Speaker 5: paths through musical challenges, and uh, when we improvise, be
Speaker 5: improvised searching for melodies. And so I think that that's
Speaker 5: one thing that hopefully has made it so seamless working
Speaker 5: with Edie, who's literally searching for a melody. Is you know,
Speaker 5: when I play chords, I'm thinking melodically, I'm not really feeling,
Speaker 5: you know, harmonic movement like a guitar player or like
Speaker 5: someone who only plays piano. And I feel the same
Speaker 5: way about the way Trevor uses beats. It's musical, it's
Speaker 5: from you know, it's from the song first. Right, We
Speaker 5: try to initially inspire an idea by putting out a
Speaker 5: fresh new sound for Edie, and we see your imagination go,
Speaker 5: We see the light bulb go off, and then we're there.
Speaker 5: You were using these instruments that we're using them to
Speaker 5: support a song, right, We're not using them to urt anyone, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Although the album starts with a really great drum sound
Speaker 3: and I on on a shoe in the air and
Speaker 3: I was I was hoping those were real drums, but
Speaker 3: they're not.
Speaker 6: No, there's they're they're all no those I mean, the
Speaker 6: texture sounds real, but those are all different sounds and
Speaker 6: different kits that that I kind of prepare or I
Speaker 6: don't know, like you know, just finding sounds that all
Speaker 6: kind of.
Speaker 2: Go together and they kind of play off each other.
Speaker 6: And and it's fun to think about a drum kit
Speaker 6: because you don't have to on a drum machine, but
Speaker 6: you do, so you're making sounds that kind of help
Speaker 6: each other.
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 6: So I think even just just you know, and for
Speaker 6: some reason that those more that and also enough running around,
Speaker 6: they just needed that kind of low tome. They just
Speaker 6: needed that that sound that's kind of hard to find
Speaker 6: and like let's say electronic drum sounds, No.
Speaker 3: I thought it was really and there's something there's something
Speaker 3: very effective about when electric sounds approximate instruments but don't
Speaker 3: quite get there. I'm thinking of like those early you know,
Speaker 3: if you think of those David Bowie songs that had
Speaker 3: a lot of melotron on it, I always find that
Speaker 3: sound just heartbreaking because it's not strings instead, it's this
Speaker 3: it's this weird tape machine, which I gather was impossible
Speaker 3: to use, but.
Speaker 2: It's got this.
Speaker 3: It has this different effect than strings totally.
Speaker 6: And there'll be times, I mean just going through and
Speaker 6: finding sounds that maybe appeal to you and you know,
Speaker 6: and as CJ said to finding different sounds on a
Speaker 6: on a keyboard and those are you know, it's just
Speaker 6: one of the fun parts of playing electronic music is
Speaker 6: just you can really dig into different sounds and shape
Speaker 6: them in a way that's really kind of this what
Speaker 6: we want to call it a self reflexive aesthetic technique.
Speaker 6: We're like, oh, this this, this sound really appeals to me.
Speaker 6: Like it and find it, and you know, I really
Speaker 6: locked in. I think we just kind of really spent
Speaker 6: a lot of time finding nice palettes of sounds we'd
Speaker 6: like to hear together. And those did come away from
Speaker 6: I think a more dark electronic sound and with eats,
Speaker 6: melodies and lyrics, they kind of all helped shape the
Speaker 6: sound together where it's not hopefully cold or distressing or
Speaker 6: which sometimes aboutronic music can.
Speaker 2: Fall into m I.
Speaker 5: Mean, Trevor, Trevor makes it in a certain way with it,
Speaker 5: and that really helped all of these sounds, you know,
Speaker 5: not not be painful and you know, serve these songs.
Speaker 2: And we also ran it through an old soundboard, which
Speaker 2: gave it a lot of.
Speaker 5: Depth, and some of the some of the tracks we
Speaker 5: put through a tape machine, and so we really tried
Speaker 5: to kind of balance balance all these different elements.
Speaker 3: A song, and I gather it's the single is wait
Speaker 3: for It, which I really love. And what I mentioned
Speaker 3: earlier about the the contrast between the electronic instruments and
Speaker 3: Edie's voice, I think that's a that's one of the
Speaker 3: best examples on the record. Can you talk about making that, Eadie.
Speaker 4: It's basically the same thing that happened before. They just
Speaker 4: play it, just played this very inspiring piece of music
Speaker 4: and I just started singing, you know, wait for It.
Speaker 5: Just just.
Speaker 4: I just started having fun and then it it just
Speaker 4: flowed out. And all I can say is it They're
Speaker 4: very very inspiring.
Speaker 2: M h.
Speaker 4: And so I sing when I'm inspired.
Speaker 3: Are you one of those singers? Do you have a
Speaker 3: picture in your head when you're singing?
Speaker 2: Or is it just.
Speaker 4: Sometimes I do? But but sometimes just it's it's just
Speaker 4: a musical phrase like that one does start with wait
Speaker 4: for It. So then it's it's just the sense of
Speaker 4: that melody that dud Duda just playing you know, and
Speaker 4: just noticing, Okay, that's what the phrase wants to be
Speaker 4: and it wants to be repeated. It just happened so
Speaker 4: fast it's hard to explain. You just go with it,
Speaker 4: and then after you say that a couple of times,
Speaker 4: you realize, well, I can't just say this over and
Speaker 4: over and over, so now what do I do? And
Speaker 4: then if you're waiting for something, oh, here it comes,
Speaker 4: and you just like I said, but that wasn't even
Speaker 4: a conscious decision.
Speaker 1: It's just.
Speaker 4: One thing leads to another and you just you just go.
Speaker 4: And then when those guys listen back to it later,
Speaker 4: I guess you know, he Trevor will edit it and
Speaker 4: send it back and you hear that that idea was realized.
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 3: Was that a song you had to add additional lyrics
Speaker 3: to or it all came from the first session.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that that all came out and and I think
Speaker 4: the phrasing on that is kind of weird too. It's
Speaker 4: not like something I would consciously write. And so yeah,
Speaker 4: you just just go in and try to get a
Speaker 4: good vocal take of it. If it was if there
Speaker 4: was an edit in there, and if there were or
Speaker 4: if there if there was one, yeah, or if it was,
Speaker 4: if it was not articulated. Well, I like, I remember
Speaker 4: on the first record, I couldn't tell what I was
Speaker 4: saying in one of the things. I said, what what
Speaker 4: what is that? It's just a sound and Trevor said,
Speaker 4: I think you're saying pivot. I was like, oh, I
Speaker 4: like it. Okay, So that kind of thing can happen
Speaker 4: where it's not there's it's you don't have clarity, so
Speaker 4: you have to listen to the context, context of the
Speaker 4: song and the content and then go in and plug
Speaker 4: something in. Mm hmm, but I don't. I don't know
Speaker 4: if we did on that or not.
Speaker 2: No, that's that's the song.
Speaker 5: We kept every lyric from the yeah improv And then
Speaker 5: I think, but I think you had you re sang it,
Speaker 5: but I think you changed, like yeah, just like one
Speaker 5: where like him to his or something something that was
Speaker 5: like oh right, yeah, I guess it is pastance or
Speaker 5: you know, it was some kind of little like the
Speaker 5: tiniest edit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean what you're hearing is what happened.
Speaker 3: So CJ, you said you don't think harmonically when you
Speaker 3: were writing for this album particularly, or you're not that
Speaker 3: kind of Plaire. A lot of the uh, because these
Speaker 3: were pop songs and a lot of the sort of
Speaker 3: the harmony seems like like pop music. I mean that
Speaker 3: in a nice way, of course, But two songs to
Speaker 3: me sounded and I could be totally wrong, they almost
Speaker 3: sounded like R and B songs how many times and
Speaker 3: so emotional? Can you tell me about those songs because
Speaker 3: they to me, I can't take a lot of these
Speaker 3: songs out of the context of how you guys created them,
Speaker 3: But those are songs I think, wow, wow, Like Al
Speaker 3: Green could do a great job with this. They're different
Speaker 3: kinds of songs were they Can you anybody describe just
Speaker 3: writing those?
Speaker 5: Both of those were kind of reactions to the beats
Speaker 5: Trevor started with, you know, so like he'll start, you know,
Speaker 5: be with all this various tools, and you know, something
Speaker 5: will feel like yeah, feel mo towny. I mean, I
Speaker 5: do think harmonically, but I'm not thinking like, oh, wouldn't
Speaker 5: it be cool to go to a four chord here.
Speaker 5: I'm usually thinking like, like, you know, the voice leading,
Speaker 5: you know, thinking about the voice leading in a melodic
Speaker 5: sense because I know I can trust that, rather than
Speaker 5: just sort of like only thinking functionality you know, of course,
Speaker 5: but yeah, I mean, like for me, I think that
Speaker 5: you know, due to the due to the reality of
Speaker 5: how we make these songs, and that it starts from
Speaker 5: a BPM. If I start an idea before Trevor's started
Speaker 5: to beat, he then has to like tap with the
Speaker 5: tempo and figure out what tempo I'm playing a thing at,
Speaker 5: and it's super clunky, So it usually starts with him.
Speaker 5: So I'm usually reacting to what Trevor's done, and then
Speaker 5: Edie's you know, sort of like reacting to the sum
Speaker 5: of the parts that we create.
Speaker 6: Again, that's just kind of how how we've done our
Speaker 6: setup and how we're kind of all connected and just
Speaker 6: kind of how, yeah, how it has to happen. But like, yeah,
Speaker 6: we're working with you know, things kind of connected through
Speaker 6: MIDI and so just having a little bit of a yeah,
Speaker 6: a little bit of process it helps just get it going.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: I wish we could do it for you now, I
Speaker 4: really do. It would be so much fun.
Speaker 3: That might be tricky over zoom though, right, Yeah, the
Speaker 3: latency of zoom it's just brutal. Yeah, well, the next
Speaker 3: time I see you, we'll do it. It's an amazing project.
Speaker 3: What is next for it?
Speaker 2: I think it's some very question. Is fame and fortune
Speaker 2: in most Yeah, No, we're gonna you know where.
Speaker 5: The record comes out June twenty eighth, and we're really
Speaker 5: excited about that with a beautiful colored final like different colors,
Speaker 5: and it really looks great and we're super proud of it.
Speaker 5: We're going to play some shows opening for Bruce Hornsby
Speaker 5: in the fall. It was a long time supporter of
Speaker 5: various projects we've all done, and we did this past fall.
Speaker 5: We did some shows where we just improud showed well.
Speaker 5: We did two sets, the first set with songs and
Speaker 5: the second set was just fully improvised songs, and it
Speaker 5: was pretty thrilling to do that in front of the
Speaker 5: live audience. And so we're gonna hopefully do a lot
Speaker 5: more of that.
Speaker 3: What's what's what's an audience's reaction to that?
Speaker 4: I think I think it's weird and it's hard to
Speaker 4: unless people can feel it. It's hard to help people
Speaker 4: understand that it's happening right now. Because although somebody pointed
Speaker 4: out that people do that in hip hop, right, they
Speaker 4: have those style, Yeah, they'll do that, and so people
Speaker 4: do this all the time. That that's the tricky part
Speaker 4: is having people understand that it's it's right here, it's
Speaker 4: right now, and it's and if it's sometimes people can think,
Speaker 4: I don't, who knows it's it's it's just hard to
Speaker 4: to convey that. Or you could do the trick of
Speaker 4: it and say, okay, if you want to be sure
Speaker 4: that you're involved in this or it's happening now, we
Speaker 4: write down an idea or a song suggestion and you
Speaker 4: can pull that out of the hat and and you
Speaker 4: can do that. It makes you feel like you're proving
Speaker 4: something though, and it has less to do with inspiration.
Speaker 4: But it can be done, and we have done that.
Speaker 4: But I always feel a little silly doing that just
Speaker 4: to show that, yes, that's what it is.
Speaker 5: That way feels a little bit like a year. You're
Speaker 5: doing a trick, right, you do it? You know it's
Speaker 5: a little gimmicky.
Speaker 3: That's a it's a comedy, improv you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's funny.
Speaker 5: We'll we'll say to a crowd like this, these are
Speaker 5: like the first that were songs we wrote, you know,
Speaker 5: and it's the way we write. And now we're going
Speaker 5: to do this completely improvised whatever and somebody will just say, like,
Speaker 5: was the first one?
Speaker 2: Is that one from your record? You know, We're like, no, no,
Speaker 2: we do. But I think it's just so uncommon.
Speaker 5: Right, even when you go and you see jazz jazz
Speaker 5: group improvise, right, they start with a song that they
Speaker 5: know that's usually a standard or something that they want
Speaker 5: the main artists wrote. Right, they start with something, and
Speaker 5: so I think you're not You're really not used to
Speaker 5: seeing people start with zero.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: We don't talk about any aspect that we don't talk about,
Speaker 5: like bpms or that we're going to get, you know,
Speaker 5: the arc of the speed of the songs, or the tonality.
Speaker 2: We don't talk about anything, And so I think it's
Speaker 2: just so uncommon in this.
Speaker 5: You know, the hip is a different context, but even that,
Speaker 5: like the music behind the improvisations, the improvising lyrics is
Speaker 5: pre planned. You know, this is really just so I
Speaker 5: think it's it's it's just you know, you and there's
Speaker 5: a you train an audience, right, you like, you get
Speaker 5: people on board just by talking about it and just
Speaker 5: got to keep doing it, you know.
Speaker 3: But you know, pop music works in part because of repetition,
Speaker 3: you know, that's what that's what gives people that satisfying
Speaker 3: sense that you're coming back to the theme at the end.
Speaker 3: And we might be scaring people off this album of
Speaker 3: the way we're talking about it.
Speaker 2: I hope not.
Speaker 3: But these feel like realized pop songs.
Speaker 4: They have a.
Speaker 3: What would I say, like the sort of topography of
Speaker 3: a top of a song. They build up A couple
Speaker 3: of them sort of start in a little bit of chaos,
Speaker 3: and then there's this huge build and they end in
Speaker 3: a little bit of chaos.
Speaker 2: But it's all.
Speaker 3: This isn't like free form jazz that your friend is doing.
Speaker 3: That is just torture to listen to. It's improvised pop songs.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what's so hard. Maybe I found
Speaker 3: so hard to get my head around. As much as
Speaker 3: I was enjoying it, I was like, well, how is
Speaker 3: this improvised?
Speaker 2: I don't get this.
Speaker 3: This feels like a pop song.
Speaker 4: If you give me maybe I could try it. If
Speaker 4: you want to give me any any the first image
Speaker 4: or thought, a thought, or a theme or some anything.
Speaker 3: I don't have to get This is not a party trick.
Speaker 3: If you guys want to start something, you.
Speaker 4: Have, but just so you'll you'll get a sense that
Speaker 4: that's what happens. Maybe maybe as of you, the other
Speaker 4: person in the room. Maybe now it's a four four
Speaker 4: member band because you're inspiring the song.
Speaker 3: Okay, what what what kind of notion? What kind of
Speaker 3: notion would you like?
Speaker 4: I see that's that's I don't want that. I want
Speaker 4: you to feel what you're feeling, or what image came
Speaker 4: to you, or what anything, anything at all, to be
Speaker 4: a part of it. Let's do it all right, sailboat, Hey,
Speaker 4: cast the sail and hope though and blows. Let's get
Speaker 4: on your little silver ride the waves. Ride the waves
Speaker 4: with me. Mm hmm, cas the sail and hope though
Speaker 4: and blows. Let's get on yoll little silboat, ride the waves,
Speaker 4: ride the waves with me. Hey, Brucy, don't you want
Speaker 4: to go in the sylble that you told me to
Speaker 4: sing about?
Speaker 2: Woo yeah wooyah wooiah.
Speaker 4: Don't you want to roll in the sylble that's your
Speaker 4: tomato sing about? Ooh yeah, wooiah, Oohiah, here comes the wind.
Speaker 4: Let's do it again. How about that?
Speaker 2: That was fantastic? That was great.
Speaker 3: You also saying that you had backup singers that were
Speaker 3: also youble.
Speaker 2: That was fantastic.
Speaker 4: It's fun. You see how fun it is.
Speaker 1: I am so in awe of that.
Speaker 2: I cannot tell you.
Speaker 3: That is so completely different than anything I could ever
Speaker 3: imagine doing.
Speaker 4: Oh well, well, I'm glad, thank you. I love it,
Speaker 4: and I love playing with these guys because they're so
Speaker 4: they're geniuses. They make it so much fun, and we
Speaker 4: just play off each other in the same way that
Speaker 4: you and I just played off of your idea.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm getting a sense of how much they must
Speaker 3: love playing with you, because that was fantastic, just amazing.
Speaker 2: Thank you all so much.
Speaker 3: What a great thrill to meet all of you and
Speaker 3: do this well to re meet you. But it was
Speaker 3: really great and great album. I hope everybody listens to it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Just not Taylor Swift right off the top of the charts.
Speaker 2: That'd be all right.
Speaker 4: You don't want to do that. She she, she touches
Speaker 4: so many people.
Speaker 2: Oh I didn't.
Speaker 3: I don't mean that against.
Speaker 2: At all.
Speaker 4: Well, my niece is my in particular my niece, just
Speaker 4: my niece. My niece got to go for her thirteenth birthday.
Speaker 4: It was a big They sent videos and I kind
Speaker 4: of got choked up because it was a stadium, and
Speaker 4: you know, of all these girls her age just singing
Speaker 4: their hearts out, and I thought that's worth something. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much to Edie Brokel for sharing so much
Speaker 1: of her creative process, and also to her band members
Speaker 1: c J. Camery and Trevor Hagen for also sharing how
Speaker 1: they collaborate with Edie. To hear a playlist of all
Speaker 1: of our favorite have You Makeup in Edie Brokel songs,
Speaker 1: you can find a playlist at Brokenrecord podcast dot com
Speaker 1: or in the episode description. Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Speaker 1: at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you
Speaker 1: can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric
Speaker 1: Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolliney. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love
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Speaker 1: Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.