Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Good to have you with us here on the Sunday Session.
This is All I Need. This is the first release
from Brett McKenzie's upcoming album, Freak Out City. Brett McKenzie,
of course, Oscar and Grammy winner, one half of the
Mighty Flight of the Concords Due He is releasing this
new album this coming Friday. It's a second solo album,
following on from twenty twenty two's debut Songs Without Jokes,
(00:39):
and Brett mackenzie joins me, now.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Good morning, lovely to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Talk to me about the first single, because it's a
rather romantic gesture. All I need a lovely song, and
it is a love song to your wife, Hannah.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
It's a love song for Hannah. And we've been together
a long time. We got together and we're in our
twenties and well twenty I think, and exactly, and so
you do the math. But I'm forty nine, and yeah,
it's funny when you've been in a relationship that long.
You've got to be honest. There are some days you
(01:13):
love each other more than other days and this song
one of the you know, one of those days when
things are going great. I sat down the piano and
came up with this song. So it's a sweet love song.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Can you tell me how some advice from the Beatles?
How would you write the verse?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yes, yeah, good question. I wrote the chorus. And sometimes
songs they pop into your head and you get a
piece of them and then parts of them are left
and you're not sure what to do with them. And
around the time when I was writing the song, I
watched that Peter Jackson made that documentary about the Beatles,
and I don't know if you've seen that, about eight
hours eighty hours of hanging out with the Beatles, and
(01:51):
there's one scene where George Harrison is working on a
song and it's actually the chords to something in the Waysis,
you know, but he didn't have the lyrics and he
said to John, you know, I just don't know what
the lyrics should be in. John goes just sing pomegranate
and the lyrics will come. And I was like, that's
so good, because like being a songwriter, watching the Beatles
(02:14):
write songs is like a masterclass. And so it was like, oh,
my God, that's so great. So for a whole tour
we toured. I toured the first first album and I
sang the song live and I just sang pomegranate in
the verse, just sort of made up blurre and I
had a few lines and then just rhymed them with pomegranate.
And Yeah, eventually it took me a couple of years,
but I replaced those.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
It was worth spending all those hours watching that documentary
just for that little chestnut. It's a song writing wasn't absolutely.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I don't know if you saw it. There was another
one where you watch Paul McCartney and you see the
desperation that he's got to They've got to come up
with some songs. They've promised an album and you see
him just hitting the bass, rocking out this beat and
just forcing lyrics out of his mouth. That's great to watch.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Other than Hannah, what's the inspiration behind this album?
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I think the inspiration behind the album is kind of
a seventies live energy. I wanted a record that felt
like a group of people in a room playing together.
I've got this amazing band of New Zealand musicians and
when we play there's a lot of There's a lot
of life and musical conversation going on, and I wanted
(03:23):
to capture some of that in a record in the
way that I think nineteen seventies records really did beautifully.
And then lyrically, the songs a collection of songs that
I wrote over about a year, and at the time,
you don't have a theme, and I didn't have a
real mission about what the album was going to be.
I just collected my favorite songs that came together. But
(03:45):
then when you in retrospect, you look back and you
see there are some threads of optimism and hope in
a kind of modern world of fairly disastrous global news
and events. And there's one song in particular, eyes on
the Sun, which I think really captures that, which is
(04:07):
it's about I had a friend who was just getting
so down about social division and climate change, and I
could see that it was breaking her, and I thought, gee,
you've also got to You've got to bring it's not
helping you thinking about these things, and you're not changing
them by thinking about them, so it's bringing their optimism
(04:27):
in amongst it.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It is a wonderful time to be releasing this album.
I do feel like we needed. It's just warm, It's upbeat,
but lyrically pertinent. You know, I think what you've just
said there makes a huge amount of sense from the
experience that I had listening to it. Eh piece band
worked on this album with you. That's quite big. Is
that quite a bit of coordinating.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
The eight piece band is not something I would advise
your start. Like the amount of texts and emails to
coordinate a very simple like practice is pretty hilarious.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, this album has been in the work for a while.
It was delayed somewhat as you looked after your father
and twenty twenty three and he sadly passed away. And
I know he was a huge fan of your work
and an inspiration to you, Breet, wasn't he?
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, very much so, big fan, big supporter. Really loved songs,
and he really loved melodies that kind of that. He
loves a lot of nineteen sixties music and the melodies
are really strong and a lot of that music. He
loved it. When you could understand the lyrics. He got
(05:34):
very angry with rock music or you couldn't hear the lyrics.
But yeah, big fan, and yeah, I sort of lost
a year there he got brain cancer and it was
quite fast actually, and so it was in some ways
it was pretty lucky. But we lost about there was
I feel like twenty twenty three is a bit of
(05:56):
a blur.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, is it true? When he passed you inherited fifty
race horses.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yeah, good research. Yeah, so my dad it's a horse
train and my mum is a ballet teacher, dance dance company.
Really mixed, mixed bag and yeah, when dad passed away,
me and my two brothers inherited his farm, which had
fifty race horses, twenty cattle, and about fifty forty sheep.
(06:26):
And none of us are farm people. My brother's work
in hospitality and it and I do show business. And
so we found ourselves on the farm trying to fix troughs.
And I was trying to get the four wheel drive
and not even a four whee drive. This is how
much farming knowledge I have. The quad bike, that's what
you call it. I was trying to get the quad
(06:47):
bike going and I had to YouTube a video how
to get it into reverse because I couldn't get it
out of the shed. So yeah, yeah, one of interesting times. Yeah,
my dad's friend said to him in hospital. He's like,
don't you like your children? Don't you like your sons?
He's like, why, because you're leaving them fifty horses. Yeah. Anyway,
we've given away a lot of horses and I've got
(07:09):
a few left. If anyone wants a race horse, let
me know.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Oh my goodness, what a story, Brett. Songwriting is your
main gig now, not just for your own albums, but
of course you've been writing for movies for a while. Now,
what's the balance.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
I spend most of my time now, particularly the last
few years, writing songs for films. That's my main job.
I'd say I wrote a few songs for the Minecraft
movie that you cannot recently, and they come along. I
kind of love them because they're not They don't take
too long, so you focus on them for a few
(07:44):
weeks and then you kind of move on. They don't
whereas film scripts. I've written some film scripts and they
really take a year or eighteen months. And there's something
quite fun about songs is that I can you can
do one and then I can go to my kids'
school camp and I can and then I can do
another song and then do other things around them. It's
(08:06):
much more yeah, a much more balanced kind of life.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, this might be an odd question for someone who
does this for a living, but are there only so
many songs to go around?
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Like?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Is it quite hard to find this space as well
to work on your own music while trying to also
create for other people and then needs.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yes, it's funny you said that. The other day, I
was working on a song, a demo for a new
animated movie, and I've done quite a lot of work
on it. I've got the demo ap I was recording
it and doing some vocals. Then I was playing to
keep a player from my band, Leo. He was doing
some keys on it, and then I pause, I went, oh,
this is the same as as a song called herd Feelings,
(08:52):
like a concord song that a just go. So sometimes
you accidentally fall into your own patterns because you kind
of I think songwriters tend to use similar patterns. Yeah,
that was quite funny, and I was like, oh, it's
the same as them. Oh there's a different card be fine. Yeah,
so that's yeah, maybe there are as. I think they
(09:12):
tend to have similar shapes underneath them, but then the
lyric material shifts them around.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
How much freedom do you get when you're creating a
song for a movie or a soundtrack and things. Do
you get a very specific brief or are you just
sort of allowed to be quite creative.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
It depends. Often for a film, I get given a
script and it has a little line, you know, Unicorn
sings a song about wanting to move to the city,
and so then I write a song about that. But
then the Minecraft movie was was very specific. That's the
most specific song I've had where they needed a song
(09:51):
for a fight scene at a certain tempo to match
holding out for a hero. That song that originally cut in,
but they didn't want to use They wanted sixteenth note
high hats, that kind of you know, ergy sound, and
they didn't want too many sounds that were in the
frequency of punches and swords clashing because it was a
(10:12):
battle sequence. So yeah, and with a theme about being
a hero. That was the brief for that song. And
then they said it was Friday, and they said could
you do it by Monday? So yeah, I write the
song and it ended up being used and we got
Benny to sing it, and yeah, it came out. I
actually didn't think it came out really great, but that
was very very specific parameters.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
So when it comes to writing your own album like
freak Out City, is that a bit of a relief
that you've got the ability to kind of have creative
freedom and be in control and do exactly what you want.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah. I think that's what I find attractive about it,
to be honest, is having done so many jobs songs
to prescription, I think I was enjoying writing songs that
are much more open and free and anything can happen
in them. So yeah, that's definitely part of why I'm
sort of this new music britt.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I know that you go between LA and Wellington quite
a lot, but you're mostly based in Wellington these days,
you can you can do the job from.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
There post COVID. A lot of work is on zoom anyway.
A couple of times I've flown to Los Angeles and
gone to the meeting and it's the meetings on zoom.
It's quite frustrating, uh the way, Yeah, and it's pretty ridiculous.
But yeah, I do travel quite a bit. You can
tell you travel quite a bit when the staff on
(11:36):
the airplane no you.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
There might be other reasons though, but they're like, hey,
I go to see you again.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, more like all like the people on the bus
that you know, you know from just commuting with those
that many times.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
I heard you say recently that you thought of a
flight of the Concord's reunion with Jermaine, but you sort
of see the two of you as old men.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Is that, well, I was. I think it's something in
that I was thinking that. You know, stand up is
a really glorious like comedy is a really fun activity,
not actually a fun gig. When you're in your twenties
and thirties, you travel around the world, you get to
be out in comedy clubs, and you get to meet
(12:25):
lots of people, and it's really fun. But as you
hit when you have kids and you get a little
bit older, it gets a bit weird because you're not
really going out in the same way. And I've got
friends who still tour doing stand up and suddenly it,
for some ready it clicks over into like a traveling
salesman type gig at some point, and it's a bit awkward,
(12:47):
I think, having forty year olds fifty year old singing
about too many dicks on the dance floor. But I
have a feeling it's going to be really great when
we're like in our sixties, a couple of old gray
dudes singing about singing about us shit, the loves I reckon.
That's going to be much funnier. I love it. Now.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Look, just before you go, tell me that there's a
tour coming.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to tour this record. We're just
booking dates. I think it's going to be late summer,
just Friday. It some time the schedule to get around
the country. I love touring around New Zealand. It's so fun.
We went to when we toured the last record was
with the New Zealand band the Whole Band on the Road,
and we went through Murchison and we found this little
junk shop there and bought lots of trinkets, some egg
(13:37):
cup holders and salt and pepper shakers and sold them
as merch around the country. Super fun.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I love it. Thank you so much for the album.
Absolutely loving freak Out City. Good luck with the horses,
and look forward to seeing you on tour at some point.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Yeah, once I get rid of the horses, I'll be
on the road. I'll get back on the road.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
That was musician Brett McKenzie his new album freak Out
City is out this coming Friday, and keep an eye
out for those tour dates.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin and
Live to Use Talks, it be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio