Matt Bjorke: What have you learned by being able to tour with artists like Taylor Swift?
Brett Eldredge: Well everything she does is thought out. From the way she hits the stage, the way she looks at the crowd, the way she turns her head, they follow her. She connects with that crowd unlike any artist I've ever seen. It's incredible. She's very honest with her songs and says it on stage what she's going to be talking about. People feel that honesty and they connect with it and that's what I love, the honesty. She brands everything from her lipstick to the trucks to the busses to the tour. She's a very smart entertainer but also knows when to break it down with just her banjo or guitar to sing with the crowd to. So someone great to learn from.
Matt: It's the Garth Brooks school of entertainment…
Brett: Yeah, he was great at doing that too…
Matt: He caught so much flack from people for having a marketing degree. I mean so what, he went to college and got a degree which he could use in his music career…
Brett: Yeah, he knew who he was and how to sell himself and that's the most important thing any artist can do. Be yourself and know who you are and how to get that across to the fans…
Matt: Was that a reason for the new direction of Bring You Back compared to the other tracks you cut previously with Byron Gallimore around the time "Raymond" was on the charts?
Brett: Yeah. I got to revamp a little bit and what I learned through this process of working with all of the producers is that I want to chase the songs from the inspiration that they came. (With) "Don't Ya" it was recorded the day I wrote it in that room. But it was so real and fresh at that moment. I was like, "I want to do it when I'm excited about these songs so much and they wanna jump out on the recording." I can't wait to record it. I wanna sing my heart out then. I don't want to worry about waiting a bunch of weeks to record them in the studio. So when I have the song, I wanna go and cut them. So I cut a lot of these songs when they were fresh. Like with Luke Laird who I have been writing with for a long time so he knows what I do as an artist.
Matt: The beat master…
Brett: Yeah…Well, Luke actually produced a couple songs he didn't write too but he just knew what I wanted to do and I wanted to do that with people who really knew what I wanted to do as an artist. It didn't really matter that it wasn't one producer for the whole record, I just wanted to make something from the inspiration of the song, something that reflected me. I was going to be singing it and I wanted to form those around myself so that's the connection of the songs…
Matt: And that's how Pop, Hip Hop and Rock have been doing it for years…
Brett: And there's nothing that says you have to use just one. And that's what happened with "One Mississippi." That song, I chased that song to get it right. I remember herding that Springsteen recorded "Glory Days" like 40 times and I did this song three or whatever it was and Scott Hendricks was my A&R guy at the label and he'd lived with these songs for a long time so I was like, shoot, he's one of the best producers out there, why don't we chase it down with you…
Matt: And writing it with Tom Douglas, It feels like the way you recorded it is similar to the way he'd sing it in a writer's round…
Brett: Yeah, the way we recorded it was pretty broken down. But the song is about the vocal and telling that story. And Tom was there with us in the studio for the whole time and that's just another cool element to the creation of that song. To have him there was really cool as he's one of the greatest songwriters in the world.
Matt: How exciting is it for you to be able to say you have a Top 5 song?
Brett: Yes! It's crazy. I've been through the journey of signing my record deal in 2010 and then to have my first song ("Raymond") do what it did but once that was done, I had to go into the studio and really record the stuff that I thought was me. Then we came across the song "Don't Ya" and it just had a groove…
Matt: I've always found them the Hardest ones to write…
Brett: You can write a bunch of uptempo songs but the ones that really have that thing that pulls you into the song, that it factor, that has you grooving to it, it's more than just an uptempo song. It pulls you.
Matt: I'm sure it helps having Chris DeStefano as a co-writer on the song…
Brett: Yeah, Chris DeStefano, the guy who produced this, and Ashley Gorley, we wrote that song together and the day we were recording that, Chris had a fiddle in the room. He's a guy who plays a ton of instruments and I asked him if he played fiddle. He said, 'I've been learning it this week, watching youtube videos.' I expected him to squeak out a few notes and he starts rip pin' this symphony type of thing and I was like, "God, I wish I could do that." So he played most of the instruments on the song and I sang the vocal right there in that studio. And now it's Top 5 and the crowd sings it live and here it is, people are singing it back in the crowd. Man, it's been a journey to get there and it's taken its but it's even sweeter because of that.
Matt: And then to hear hundreds of thousands of people liked the song enough to go buy it….
Brett: Yeah, when I heard it went Gold, I didn't know how to redact. I don't even know what silver would be…
Matt: You didn't even know what a plywood one was…
Brett: Yeah, I've never had Plywood, never had anything happen like that. (both laugh) It's a great feeling to know that people liked the song enough to buy it after hearing it. Whatver that song is, they wanna go to their computer and buy it or buy it on their phone. They gotta get it to put on a summer playlist, or to play on their way to work. Whatever it is. They've bought it and bought into my music and it's lead them to the rest of my album and it's been a great way to get them interested into the rest of my music.
Matt: It reminds me of "Gotta Get There"…
Brett: That's one I wrote with Barry Dean and I don't know if you've heard him sing but he's an awesome singer too…
Matt: Yeah, I've been fortunate to see him in a songwriter's round with Tom Douglas before…
Brett: That's my kind of round!
Matt: So when you're playing the album live, which songs have gotten great reactions with fans?
Brett: There are several but the title song "Bring You Back," It's a very emotional song. Everyone falls in and out of love but it's this song that finds you wanting the guy to find a way to get her back into his life.
Matt: Bring You Back has a wide variety of sounds on it. How important is it for you to have diversity of the music on the album?
Brett: It's important to me to have diversity on an album because I grew up listening to Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles. From the Dooble Brothers to Vince Gill and Brooks and Dunn and all this different stuff. The main thing I wanted to do was get my voice out there to the forefront. So something I found was, before I started to chase the album with different producers, my voice wasn't really getting out there the way I wanted it to. I wanted to really focus around my voice and so the album has different vibes, different feelings. I felt like as long as my voice was there, you could kinda go different places throughout the album so it wasn't the same all of the way through…
Matt: And I think it's important because sometimes you hear an artist and it sounds like they're copying somebody or something and you may not know who they're copying exactly but you can feel it…
Brett: Yeah, it's crazy because the amount of singers I've listened to, I'm not going to go out and make a Frank Sinatra record but I might phrase some lines how he sang 'em or put a feeling of a big note that Ray Charles might've put there or the way Michael McDonald might hold a note -- well maybe not exactly like them -- But it's just fun to be able to make a record where you can go a bunch of different places but it's still me at the same time.
Matt: If you had complete control over which song would be singles, which ones would you think would be contenders to follow "Don't Ya?"
Brett: Oh man, that's the hardest thing to do is to pick the songs that go to radio because I love so many of these. I love "Bring You Back." I love "Mean To Me" and I've noticed the girls really connect to that one and when singing it's very personal and when I'm on stage it feels like it's for one person. I love songs like that. "One Mississippi" might be a harder one to get out there but…
Matt: It might be worth trying to get it out there…
Brett: Yeah, it's one that might get out there at some point. There are so many…"Tell Me Where To Park" it's a really fun song that has a ton of energy. (laughs) If I keep going I might keep naming the entire album…
Matt: Fortunately you don't have to name "Don't Ya" or "Raymond"…
Brett: Yeah, so I've got it narrowed down to 10 (laughs)…
Matt: Then you look at the sticker on the CD…
Brett: Yeah, "Bring You Back" and "One Mississippi"…
Matt: So chances are, one of those two will be a single…
Brett: Yep (all laugh)…
Matt: Record companies can often tip their hands (about future radio singles from albums) with stickers like that….
Brett: And "Bring You Back" is such an important song on this record. I didn't write "Bring You Back," It was the one song I didn't write. But it was so real to me as if I did write it…
Matt: Ross Copperman wrote that, right?
Brett: Yeah, with Heather Morgan.
Matt: What one word best describes country music to you?
Brett: It's definitely honesty, heart, soul, honesty. Truth. It's the foundations of life. Other genres you couldn't put out songs like "One Mississippi," real stories like that. Or even songs like "Raymond." That's one of the great things about Country music, regardless of how music changes, how it evolves over time, Country music still remains about the stories and life.
Bill Anderson once told me, "Waylon and Willie were doing stuff that wasn't like the Country music before them but it was." So, I hope it stays real for a long long time. I know I will. I don't plan on leaving.
0 Comments