Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin RichmondTrue to her Texas roots, Edie Brickell can seemingly find a song anywhere—including out of thin air. Here It Comes is the new album from Edie and her collaborators, CJ Camerieri and Trever Hagen who are known as Heavy MakeUp.
Heavy MakeUp is, of course, only the latest musical iteration for Edie who’s found herself ever evolving over her career. From her first hit with the New Bohemians, co-writing their massive 1988 single “What I Am,” she’s never stopped looking for songs. She even spent the better part of a decade writing and performing with Steve Martin on their very own musical—Bright Star—that ran on Broadway in 2016.
On today’s episode, Bruce Headlam talks with Edie, CJ and Trever about the origins of Heavy MakeUp and the recording of their new album. We'll also hear a short performance demonstrating the unique improvisational nature of their work.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Heavy MakeUp & Edie Brickell songs HERE.
Pushkin. True to her Texas roots, Edie Burkel can seemingly find a song anywhere, including out of thin Air. Here it comes as the new album from Edie and her collaborators CJ, Camereri and Trevor Hagen, known as Heavy Makeup. Together, huddled with Edie and her Texas studio, they improvised over one hundred songs before selecting the eleven that make up their new album. Heavy Makeup is, of course, only the latest musical iteration for Edie, who's found herself ever evolving over her career. From her first hit with the New Bohemians co writing their massive nineteen eighty eight single What I Am, She's never stopped looking for songs. She even spent the better part of last decade writing and performing with Steve Martin, including their verial musical Bright Star, that ran on Broadway in twenty sixteen. On today's episode, Edie, CJ, and Trevor discussed the origins of Heavy Makeup, the making of the new album, and finish with a short performance demonstrating the unique improvisational nature of their work. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
I'm justin Mitchman.
Here's Bruce Hedlam's conversation with Edie Brikel, CJ. Camereri and Trevor Hagen, who has heavy makeup, released the new album Here It Comes.
It's a wonderful album. Tell me the idea behind this album. Tell me your idea is going into it.
You guys go ahead, please please.
Well, this record, much like the first record, kind of happened before without us knowing we were doing it. We came to Texas to visit Edie like maybe like exactly a year ago, right, yes, and the idea was that we were going to work on this musical. So we set up all our equipment and we just started jamming and revising together and it was so much fun that we did it again the next day and we realized by the thirteenth day we hadn't actually worked on the musical at all, So we started working on the musical vigorously. And yeah, I think we left Trevor can answer this, but we left with like, well over one hundred songs and.
Right, yeah, it was about one hundred.
Yeah, different song ideas or different improvisations that we kind of started, and yeah, different ideas that we're kind of trying out.
So tell me what it's like when the three of you are improvising. What instruments are you playing, What are you working from? Do you just lay out a few chords or is it much more free form than that?
What I kind of think is interesting is that it's not really that free form, Like we're improvising in song form. And so I think that that as a starting point is like an interesting building block, right, because a lot of when you think about improvisation, you immediately go to jazz, and jazz is in song for him, but you know it isn't in pop song for.
Him, let's say.
And so we create an A section and Edie goes and then she gives us a look, and then we know we're going to a chorus or a bridge, and we go to a chorus, and we go back to the A section. Or're creating loops and where I'm usually doing a bunch of synthesizers, and then I also play trumpet, french horn. Trevor's got a whole big bag of tricks over on his side of the desk.
He can tell you about.
We're immediately trying to inspire Edie to start telling the story and start singing.
A song and they do that and it feels effortless. I feel like they just roll out the red carpet just for any melody. It's so open and so much fun. It's just it's it's playful, which is what I love, and it's welcoming and it's just wide open to just listened to the magic thread. Whatever sort of falls down in your thoughts, you just grab a hold and trust and start climbing up until it weaves into something that makes sense somehow.
I'm a little shocked because the idea that you're improvising lyrics as you go, I think that would terrify most people. What is it in your background or makeup that makes that possible?
Just walking through nature singing as a little kid, just singing all the time. And then, you know, really breaking through that one fear of joining a band when I was in college and I looked at all the majors and I thought I wouldn't be good at any of this stuff, and it's not what's in my heart. So breaking through and joining a band was, you know, taking the biggest risk of my life to try to live that dream. And then everything worked out for us. But when I first joined the band. We would be booked at little clubs, and we were brand new bands, so we didn't have enough songs, so we would improvise there and I tried to make it sound like a song.
And.
People ended up feeling it and liking that, and they would come and see us again in our crowd snowballed and so it became a part of our shows, and it was always ended up being my favorite part.
So we didn't really know this when we got together with Di. She did.
Trevor and I were touring with a project called karm and we had collaborated with Edie on a song and we were making a music video for it, and she was like, guys, you should come over and we could jam one weekend. We were like, sure, let's do it. So Trevor and I got together. We didn't really know what we were doing. We were like, you know, we didn't have a set purpose for being there. We were trying to start a new band or trying to make a record or whatever. So we just kind of set up our gear that we were using on on stage, and Trevor got a cool thing going on a drum machine and OPI one. We had a little Yamaha refaced keyboard and I got a little French worn texture going with a line six pedal and I remember this incredible moment where Edie said, do you mind if I sing something? We're like, of course not, and she just sang a whole song right, metaphors, stories versus choruses, and we were like, well, that was funny. And she did this like four or five times, and then she left the room for a minute and Trevor looked at me.
And says, like, what are these I was like, oh, I'm sure she's like just.
Been writing lyrics on the side, and you know, it's just like things she's been working on. And that was we asked her though, and they were all just really improvisations and it was perplexing and amazing to be in the room for that. And and as a musician, it's a big challenge, right, so you're going to follow, you know, she says, we're going to a chorus. You got to play improvised chorus chords right and keep the keep the energy of the music flowing and follow where her melodies are going. So it's it was It was a it was a lot of fun and a fascinating musical challenge. Yeah, I think and once we kind of started realizing like CG and I are both I think, you know, we both in res and jazz before and different environments and and it is well with many different like not jamming but long form solos and like things emerge and and uh, it wasn't It was a little different kind of improvisation than that. But I think once we figured out, okay, we're kind of making a painting here, and we just kind of kind of sit in this chords or in a beat or in a groove and just kind of let Edy kind of stare out the window and see a picture in her head. And then when she starts say, we can kind of just slowly follow her.
And then and we.
Just would do that over and over again. We just do it for ten minutes, stop, start a new BPM, started a new progression, and just go I mean for this album, we did that for every day for yeah, CJA mentioned for about two weeks, and then we just had all of these song ideas and it's very exciting and then we go back through all of them and we're finding all of these great tunes and then we have to decide which ones do we keep and which ones do we let go or come back to or you know, what fit together in a certain way, the songs fit together, so really it's it all kind of emerges in a very natural, intuitive way, and so we're just trying to We kind of stumbled upon that whole process really the first time we went and jammed with Eadie, and so with this album we kind of knew a little bit more like, Okay, how can we set the environment correctly?
More or less Eadie?
Were you improvising the melody as well over the chords?
Yes, yes, that's it's really my favorite thing to do as I As I said before that I discovered with playing with my first band, with New Bohemians, because the energy of it is so of the moment you're it's and you know how everybody says living in the moment is your is your is the healthiest way to live and it and that's what I love about inviting these players to come and jam, because we're all right there in the moment, and it does make you feel so alive and so good, and it also makes you trust the strange first thing that may come, you know, and and when you allow that to unfold and you hear the rhymes and you just go with it. Then later when you listen back, it's it's like a Sometimes it's a gift to yourself, say oh, look what's Look what it's, Look what it's whatever. That's what it's saying. Look what's happening there. And and as a writer, sitting down with an instrument playing a chord progression with piano, I wouldn't flow in that same way. That's why I really like to flow as a singer making melodies and lyrics as a band plays, because it completely frees me up. All we're engaging in a conversation together. We're really listening to each other, and it's like writing on the best roller coaster and or doing just something really super fun together, and we're you're really just connected with other people in a musical conversation, and that musical conversation involves unpredictable energy and unpredictable emotions and imagery that just flow out.
So you weren't playing at all during this, you were just singing.
I'm just singing.
So I'm interested if you sat down with one of these songs and I want to talk through some of the songs later and you were playing the guitar chords along with it. You don't think you would have the same experience as a singer and writer.
I wouldn't. I would know, I would be mindful of the structure, whereas with this, I can play with phrasing, I can play with the energy of it a lot better. And as CJ pointed out, I mean I can just give the guys a look that says, Okay, I'm finished with this partner, let's move on and we But they feel it too. It's it's really not It's not a lot that I'm directing at all. I'm not. I can just glance over. It's almost like a courtesy look where they won't change until I offered it. Okay.
You know, it's a shame this is a podcast because you just gave be that look, and you know, I thought I should wrap things up. It was like, well, onto the B section, you know, the look of the interview.
Yeah, no, I'm not going to mess with that.
We'll be right back with more from Heavy Makeup. After the break, we're back with Edie Brokel, c J Camery and Trevor Hagen of Heavy Makeup.
The fact that you were doing this mainly with electronic instruments. I mean, there were a couple things in this that really interested me on is you did very little treatment of Edie's voice, And there was something about the different temperatures of the sounds coming out the electronic sounds and you know, I'm going to deal in cliches here, but we tend to think of them as technological and quite cold, but then her voice was very, very warm. It was really something in the album. Was that something you want to preserve or.
Not not not?
Maybe intuitively, I think.
Eatie's voice is so centering I think to of course, to every song, so it's kind of leading that just front and center, and you know, we we experiment a few different times, maybe trying to like bring the voice down to the mix a little different, and there's some affecting, but really it's just that was just like it just flowed so nicely within already the mix of what we've been doing and all the treatments we've been doing, and it just didn't need it.
It just just spoke for itself.
Not that other things needed it either way, but this is just kind of, like it said, it's a different flavor, a different texture and it seems like it almost comes out in a very unexpected way sometimes, So yeah, we just kind of let that flow and we never really looked back. I don't think, you know, we've I mean there's a few times maybe we try something, but it was pretty good otherwise.
Yeah, and I think, I mean, it's it's a really great question and something I definitely noticed and thought about from an arrangement perspective. Yeah, I think a lot of times, I mean, there might be horns on every song, which, as I say, that is like a little bit embarrassing, but I think sometimes the horn texture and character kind of bridges that like purity of the vocal sound with the electronic instrument, So it's sort of like in between. Trevor would treat the horns in a certain way a lot of times, so it kind of characterized, you know, both sort of you played with both characters.
Yeah, I think I misspoke because there's times I'm particularly thinking of the first song, Shoe in the Air, that there's a nice but trumpet duet. I think it's both trumpets, but I might be wrong. Trumpet duet that kind of starts before the vocals come in. It's very very warm and it's really lovely pace.
Right, So it's a little bit of like you know, sonic foreshadowing.
Yeah, kind of bridges those two worlds, but there, you know, it's it's the world we're interested in. So it's what we with the instruments we had when we showed up, you know, and so and yeah, it just kind of happened naturally.
This is going to sound like a naive question, but I think I would know how someone would compose at a piano. I think I might know how they would compose at a guitar with a guitar part in me. But when you sit down with electric electronic instruments, you generally, you guys use like small MIDI controller.
Is that what you're using? Yeah, I mean, well, like there's a bunch of keyboards.
I mean I think CG and I have like a setup like a table together, and I think that kind of kind of came out of working in karm together. And so we're kind of connected with keyboards, drum machine, MIDI controllers and other small instruments to kind of we're kind of playing a set up together in some way. And and and that allows us to i mean c JO to have you know, agnored to reface and he'll be playing those. So we have you know, uh, synthesizers, and it's not just midti, but we have that to control you know, loops and to control different parameters of stuff when we're playing live more but essentially when we're improvising, we have these. We're all connected, you know, kind of to it's some kind of breathing breathing heart or beating heart, I guess Trevor would. Trevor kind of makes the initial decision with picking a BPM, you know, and so like okay, you know, and so what is that where you know, and then I sort of pick a synthesizer sound you know, we have you have four or five different keyboards or all create a front shorn texture, the line six pedal or harming you trumpet thing which you know pushes here there. The thing we really learned was one of the fun lessons of that time in Texas, was we'd immediately try to make the most interesting thing we could make, right, So Trevor would get a beat going, and I'd create a synth texture and then I'd add a little harm in you trumpet with a delay, and Edie would get the light bulb and she want to start singing, but then I would add a move base part.
She'd be like, oh, no, now I'm thinking about another thing.
And then Trevor would ad to you know, because we created the thing that we thought was really good, but like we weren't paying attention to like her initial moment of inspiration that she needed to like follow and trust right away.
And so she say, hey, it's.
Really cool, you did a cool thing, but we need to like, you know, but now I'm got three stories going in my head and I got to just pick the one and focus on it.
So it's it's just like this, this whole project is such a.
Fascinating music musical journey and like exploring your skill sets. You know, Trevor and I both been professional musicians for twenty years, and this just really draws upon everything we've ever had to do.
Because it's chamber music, but it's jazz.
But these are you know, what end up being sort of like pop songs, and you know, it's you're using all of these skills and it's and it's you have to trust them.
You know, you can't say, but maybe this one will be better. No, you can't. You can't do that, because then near you missed it.
You know.
So once you had the songs that the eleven songs you wanted on the album, did you then redo them?
Did you re record them?
Did you add elements? How did how did that happen? How did the actual recording happen?
So?
Yeah, so after I mean, we recorded everything down in Texas that time, and then we kind of peered down those we'll say, one hundred ideas down to twenty and then from there we're like, okay, these we actually I think we maybe had fifteen that we really worked on, and there's there's four that didn't three or four that we really worked on a lot afterwards that didn't make it on to the album that just didn't fit with the other tunes in the flow of the whole things. We kind of had to pick these eleven songs and how they spoke to each other.
But okay, was that an argument?
Were we uh no, really, I don't think so. No, We're yeah, no, no, it was it was there. They're great.
I think Edi has a great you have a great way to say, how you like to choose these songs?
I do?
Yeah, well, puppies.
Oh, it's like choosing puppies. Yeah, it's impossible for me. So I love them all. So I trust. I like these musicians. I like these guys there. I trust their ears. And that's a big element of this whole kind of band is trust across the board. I trust that they're great musicians. I trust their ears. I trust that they can help me as a songwriter find that song that's more interesting. And I think they've done that, and they'll show them to me, because I haven't heard all those hundreds of songs that we've done. They curate them and then they give them to me, and so many of them I've just completely forgotten about. And the last time we got together, they said, oh, you got to check this out, you and the air and and I love that they chose that and that they pointed out that that was good and so and then they they'll edit them. And so from those edits, I'll take that initial subconscious song and write a second or third verse if it needs it. But the one song on this album that most excites me is Let Them Lie, because it was just a complete improv. It's one that we didn't touch the only thing that they touched is that Trevor had to change the vocal tone because we recorded it in this room in this barn that I'm in here, and when these lads are on, they had a little buzz and they and since we didn't know that they were going to make an album, we didn't eliminate the buzz and he what did you do?
You just fixed that was just to just put a filter on it, because there was this budget buzz that you know, I don't know, ten thousand.
Killer hurts, and so it was.
Maybe like just had to put little filter on it, and then it gave this really nice dark quality to Edie's voice. And then then there's a little treatment on that too, with every voice is a little treatment, but it's trying not.
To like mask the tone of her voice at all. So just just a little bit gave it a nice.
Sound to even what Edie is singing about too, which is a very kind of internal monologue.
That that song has.
So there's definitely editing and things that happen in the songs, but there are like these beautiful passages, like you know, songs like let Them Lie or they have It all improvised, the lyrics at the choruses, solos, beats, whatever, whatever we got on there. So it's very exciting to see that process and even things like showing there like those are I believe all the original lyrics, and maybe there's a lot of original it takes on the album that we kept from those recordings from me here, its just one word, and you just changed one word from Merovs.
He changed it from like him to his or something something like right, I.
Don't even remember. I think it's it's I don't know.
But so I think in almost every song you're hearing you know, you're in the room, and I think that that is hopefully what makes it special, and you're hearing just these really honest like this sound makes me feel this, those words make me want to do this musically, like you know, you're really you're really hearing you know, a chamber music exercise.
Yeah, yeah, the kernel the idea of every song that feeling like that. Every song was improvised and happened in the room to three of us together, and then there's some shaping that happened afterwards and things like that, but the spirit of it is all from us just sitting around looking at each other and smiling and nodding and playing music in a very in a very great way. It's really it's a special in some way, especially after coming from the pandemic of years of being locked away and doing remote things. This is great to be in the room together.
Yeah, And what I wanted to say this about let them lie too it. I do love that he changed that sound and then it ended up happening that way because it is, as he mentioned, this internal kind of thought process within the song. But the other thing I like about it is I think that at one point CJ wanted to change the tone of a chorus and suggested that I re sing that so that we could have this bigger tone. And we went into a recording studio and what I recognized immediately is I couldn't get the same phrasing. I couldn't match it. And because it was improvised, it has a different movements. It almost has a delay where I can hear that I'm thinking, I'm looking for the next rhyme, And so it's a little a little past a moment. You can see, you could you could feel like just the energy of it is a little slower and a little more relaxed because it's and then all of a sudden it speeds up because once I realize what it wants to say, then it just flows out quickly. But it lands a little funny. And I could never get that landing correctly. And see J kept trying trying to say, no, it's a little it's a little cooler than that, it's a little past that, and I couldn't do it.
M h I was.
I would love when they kept it, I said, I just and and also the way it feels is what I was telling you before. If I were playing an instrument and writing a song, I wouldn't write it in that way. But when other people are playing and that magic happens, you do flow in this other way that then you can't even imitate later mm hmm.
The other interesting thing about that song, too, is is that you know a lot of these songs, you know, we'll go back and we'll add a bass element, or we'll add you know, an arrangement, a horn arrangement, or you know, Trevor will find the drums or add a you know, a counter melody, or and in this song, I was just like, oh, we got to add bass. Obviously nobody was playing bass on the song, and it just didn't work. I kept trying to do it, and we'd listen to it and be like, that's not the song. That wasn't what was in the room, you know, And yeah, it's just a really amazing exercise to trust the what happens in the room is.
Is the kernel of inspiration that you have to go with and you really have to believe in it.
You had a lovely phrase for this, which is you said that it was like they were creating a soundtrack to a movie and then you had to write the movie.
Yes, yeah, that's right. You hear the music and then the images come as opposed to that opposite way of creating, And that's what would happen. You would you just listen and you pay attention to what what are the images in the in the music, and then and then if it if it's articulated in a thought, I'll hear it, and then I'll just go hm. Because if you edit something like I thought I saw a flying saucer, but it was just only issue in the air. If you edit that, you don't get to find out what that means.
Did you know what it meant when you said it?
No, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I'm saying you you say, well, I remember saying many times, especially the very first time we ever played together, I say, Okay, I'm hearing something really odd, but I'm just gonna say it okay, And they were like okay, and then I don't I can't even remember what that one. Oh, I think it was. I don't remember.
I think I know what we were talking about. It maybe could be, Yeah, that was something, those lines.
I mean, you never know. I think it's really important not to edit the moment of inspiration. I think you just allow it and let it show you something. Is it going to show you you're really goofy playful side or is it going to sound like it's goofy and then turn into something far more meaningful, which often happens for me.
Is there a particular song you have in mind when you say that, well, Shoe in the Air, Shoe in the Air.
Yeah, And even again, I love the idea of let them Lie because there was just a lot of truth in that for me.
Now, I love a lot of these songs. But I've wanted to ask you about Under Construction for this reason, which is and I think it's all through the album, but it's not as though your improvisations.
Are just.
What people might worry they're going to hear, which is just like, oh, it's her feelings. You actually really establish characters in these songs, and I think that's one of the strongest songs for that. But all the songs have like I don't think, oh, this is the innermost thoughts of Edie Brukel. I think, wow, she's she's made a character here while you're improvising, which I found really impressive.
Do you put.
Yourself Are you putting yourself in a different role? Are you thinking consciously of that?
I'm not thinking consciously of of any of it. I'm just trusting what comes and letting it lead me.
Okay, I'll put it another way, which is you are also a Are you a Tony winning.
Broadway?
No?
No, we but but no, we were Tony nominated.
Okay, you're Tony nominated, then you're a Hamilton.
Thank you.
Well that was oh my god, yeah you did really well.
No No, I mean no, there was just no chance that for for any of us. Uh that yeah, that that that was so spectacular.
But you did Bright Star and that so much fun. But that was writing and in that case it was writing in characters, very strong characters.
Yeah did that?
Did that kind of help with this kind of work?
You know what? Yeah, you made me understand that it did, because I hadn't really thought about that before. But what I did recognize during that time period was how much I loved writing for a character and then hearing these these people sing, and really the people who loved perform, like Carmen and and everyone everybody who loves to perform, to getting to hear them, seeing those character songs felt really good. So you're right, and it takes you, It does take you out of yourself and my feelings, so and that and that feels better because again it's just colorful.
But also they seemed like not all of them, but this seems like New York stories to me. And I think people can tell from your accent that you're not from New York.
Yeah, you know, I often think about Dorman because I love all the Doorman and our building in New York. We I and I lived there for a while, you know, And I see that they see births and people coming in with new babies, and then they see people leaving covered under sheets, and anyway, they entered into that song in a playful way, I think, And there was a lot of funny characters in elevators too.
I think what you're saying is you lived in a nicer building that I lived in when I lived in, not the sixth floor WALKA.
After this last break, we'll be back with the rest of Bruce Hellim's conversation with Heavy Makeup. We're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation with Edie Brokel, CJ. Cameri, and Trevor Hagen of Heavy Makeup.
I want to ask all of you how you all got to this point, and I will start with you, Edie, which is I know you grew up in Dallas. Was your family musical?
They weren't professional musicians, but they sang all the time, both my mom and my dad. And my dad had a very sweet, soft voice, and my mother just sang all the time. She was a working woman who sang to bring joy into her life every morning, getting ready for work, in the car on the way to work, taking us to school. She just sang all the time.
And what did she sing?
Everything? Everything that she loved. She was crazy about BB King and she used to sort of imitate BB King. She could make that face that he makes. It was really fun. She sang oh boy, and she looked and sang a lot like Aretha Franklin when she danced, and then she would flip it to a country sensation and she would sing one of her favorite songs is uh he Stopped loving her today? She would play that over and over, so.
You know it was.
It was varied, but mostly R and B or dance for her.
Interesting and was there a song either when your mom sang or when you heard on the radio that just made a really early impact on you that said, no, no music's for me.
Oh, Nothing from Nothing? I loved that song. That was one of my first and superstition those I bought. Those were my first singles that I ever bought. But I love that piano part and Nothing from Nothing Billy Preston.
Yeah, oh amazing. Back back when you could buy forty fives. That was so great, wasn't it.
Yeah?
Yeah, I love that, Trevor. Can I ask you the same question, is there was there an early song an impression of music that that just grabbed you?
You know?
My real I think love for music came through through jazz and through people like Loneus Monk Charles Mingus, Miles Davis. I think those and that's probably the case for a lot of you know, jazz heads out there. But I think jazz also introduced me to whole, you know, two different social relations in the South, to like a whole different set of histories of people and sounds. So but of course Monk is I mean, I'm not sure if I can say a particular a song, but it was always Monk, Miles and Mingus, and then then later Luy Armstrong and Ellington. But uh, I think jazz for me was also a way to really find a sense of belonging as like a kid you're just you know, I had I could played in jazz band, I had friends really into jazz, We learned about jazz, so really it was kind of an opportunity to also, you know, make friends because I wasn't playing sports. I wasn't on a basketball team or football tea or something. So I really had a strong social connection with music growing up, where it was also a way of like how I was even you know, spending time with my friends.
It's funny you mentioned Mingus because particularly his stuff is not it seems close in spirit a little bit to what you guys are doing, which is it's a group improvisation and his group is so solid that way, it's not it's not the you take a solo, then I take a solo. Then it's much more ensemble based.
Absolutely, and even playing a lot of I know in CJ also play a lot of big band stuff. I mean you're from a player at some point you're always playing big band stuff. But I got to experience a lot of chance to play a lot of Ellington as well. And so Ellington and mingus you are going these very beautifully composed pieces with timbres of you know, a jazz band, but then having solos coming out and telling a story through composition but also improvisation. So yeah, all of really those I think that energy was always it still is very important to me.
I still have a lot of puts a lot of value in music in that way.
CJ.
Can I ask you the same you what was like, was there an early song, early memory on the radio, something that said, oh yeah, that's for me, you know for me?
It happened later.
I started playing piano when I was four years old because my dad, my dad was as a musician. He was a middle school band director, and so I heard him teaching piano lessons at the house all the time, and from the time I could talk, just begging him to let me start doing it. You know, like I music was inside me, and you know, you know, from a super young age, and I started playing trumpet when I was seven or eight, and I was obsessed with him. I was a kid that was like twelve years old, practice in six hours a day of the trumpet, and like, you know, I knew I wanted to be a professional trumpet player, and I just didn't know what that meant and what music that would be. And all the way through college, I went to Juilliard and I got to do a classical trumpet, even though when I was when I got there, I wanted to be a jazz musician. And the first gig I played out of college was totally a free jazz gig, and I just really didn't know what kind of music I wanted to make until I was in a fan I'll never forget it. On my way to Buffalo, New York to play a totally free gig with this great trumpet player named Peter Evans and a bass player named Mapa Elliott Trumbone player named David Taylor, and they put on SOUPI Young Stevens come on Fell the Illinois record, and it was there's so many awesome trumpet parts and woodwind parts and string parts on that, but it was in the context of these songs. I just had so much life and spirit to them, and I was like, that's what I want to do. That's how I want to like use these skills I've been working at with no real idea on how where to apply them. So I was just I became obsessed with like finding my way into again Steven's band, and that became sort of like the catalyst for my whole career. But I mean just I'll never forget that moment of like going to play a totally free jazz gig and hearing these like, you know, simple poppy folk songs. Not simple, but like it was really catchy, beautiful songs that I had these trumpet melodies on them, and it was just really.
That was it for me.
Yeah, it's like the the it's not the outro, but the end of and Andrew Jackson songs got that great trumpet bit. And but it's interesting, were you not interested in pop music at all before that.
No, I uh, it never never really connected to me. I was I was raised like pretty conservative Christian when I was young, so we didn't listen to a lot of popular music.
But I was jazz. I was obsessed with like like operating the instrument.
So I was really obsessed with jazz from a like learn every Clipper Ground solo and the Louis Armstrong solo and just with classical music from it, like learned the parts, you know, learn this, like expand your skill set. But I knew, I yeah, like I said, I want to be I didn't sort of know that the trumpet could have this life outside of those two really kind of you know, institutionalized genres.
That's amazing. Did did anything at Juilliard prepare you for this experience?
No, that's not true.
Chamber of music, I really, I always, I always was involved in chamber of music. And this is like chamber music on the like highest, highest, highest level because you're improvised that you're improvising as a group, trying to make these songs and trusting each other and communicating with your eyes and you know a lot of like you know the cues that you use in chamber music, and yeah, and trusting each other. You know, I know that they're going to start this at the right tempo and then I'm gonna be able to add my part into that, and they're not going to play too soft because then I'll sound too loud. And yeah, all these like chamber music skills you learned in college. So definitely, definitely. And I also had an amazing teacher when I was at Juilliard kind of like made sure I was prepared for anything that came my way.
I was like, that wasn't a shot at Juilliard, I want to be clear.
I mean I could take a shot at Juliard. No.
No, although my brother's at Eastman, so you just have to you know, it's a little competitive ya.
You know what, though, when you said when you discovered your music, I think I listening to them. I realized what you meant when I got older. When I was young, what I wrote on the radio were those two first favorite songs, Superstition and Nothing from Nothing. They were my first favorite songs. But when I went out and started looking for music, when I found Duke Ellington and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, I thought, this is I love this music and I would often put it on to bring sunshine into my kitchen when I was raising the kids. That's the music that made me happiest.
Okay, Trevor. I was really interested in something you once wrote about the trumpet, which was I hope you don't regret writing this, but I'm going to say it anyway, which is, and I don't remember your phrase, but essentially that the martial element of the trumpet, the role of trumpet in war is something I don't I think I'm actually mixing it up with phrase from one of the songs, but it's in the trumpets DNA essentially, I.
Mean absolutely, I remember this very very well. I mean I got my first flugelhorn. I was playing it and it was like this French maker called couinone, and somehow I figure out that this by like you can see how the design of the writing and everything like this you could trace it back to like maybe late eighteen nineties France, and you're like, wow, this flugelhorn was probably used in the French Algerian War, and this is like a standard issue for the French military.
And here I am with this piece of metal on my face, and.
Somehow that whole connection to what this instrument was made for in society in the world really hit me very hard, where I'm like, I'm playing this military instrument, this is was used to communicate and battlefields across long distances and this is and all of a sudden, this whole other energy of the instrument kind of like started to show his face to me, and and and and I think I just kind of took that and ran with a little bit with with how I was even playing the instrument or approaching it, and how to think about discourse and appropriate or not appropriate ways of playing it, and what what this instrument has been throughout history. And and it's still is kind of crazy when you know CGI will won't be playing trumpet or these two military instruments you know inside, but you can play them very softly and beautifully. But there's still that element where this is like a caged beast or something like this, but you can really open it up if you want to. And and the other kinds of not unknown territories, but one that's it's uh, it's not as seen as much anymore with the trumpet, I think, and we see, we hear a lot of is their association of like the more biblical heralding aspect of it the beauty aspect of it. And so there's these two sides to it that are both kind of it's fun and play with.
Conceptually, I'm interested because I came to this album with certain expectations of electronic music. And it's not that I don't like electronic music. Certainly, when I was growing up in the eighties, there was a lot of like the early electropop, and some of it I thought was terrific. But to me it's DNA is kind of cold and technological and a little bit scary. I guess it doesn't feel that way in this record, but I'm just wondering how you felt about using these instruments with this.
In this way. I mean, I think for me, I know exactly what you're what you mean, that's.
Good, because I said it terribly.
Completely, no is good.
I think that I don't want to speak for Driver, but I think that both of us coming from this instrument, that's you know, you're thinking melodies and you're thinking textures. When when we're approaching these other instruments, these electronic instruments and drum machines, and you're we're the same musicians. Our formative time was spent playing melodies and finding these melodic paths through musical challenges, and uh, when we improvise, be improvised searching for melodies. And so I think that that's one thing that hopefully has made it so seamless working with Edie, who's literally searching for a melody. Is you know, when I play chords, I'm thinking melodically, I'm not really feeling, you know, harmonic movement like a guitar player or like someone who only plays piano. And I feel the same way about the way Trevor uses beats. It's musical, it's from you know, it's from the song first. Right, We try to initially inspire an idea by putting out a fresh new sound for Edie, and we see your imagination go, We see the light bulb go off, and then we're there. You were using these instruments that we're using them to support a song, right, We're not using them to urt anyone, Yeah, exactly.
Although the album starts with a really great drum sound and I on on a shoe in the air and I was I was hoping those were real drums, but they're not.
No, there's they're they're all no those I mean, the texture sounds real, but those are all different sounds and different kits that that I kind of prepare or I don't know, like you know, just finding sounds that all kind of.
Go together and they kind of play off each other.
And and it's fun to think about a drum kit because you don't have to on a drum machine, but you do, so you're making sounds that kind of help each other.
I guess.
So I think even just just you know, and for some reason that those more that and also enough running around, they just needed that kind of low tome. They just needed that that sound that's kind of hard to find and like let's say electronic drum sounds, No.
I thought it was really and there's something there's something very effective about when electric sounds approximate instruments but don't quite get there. I'm thinking of like those early you know, if you think of those David Bowie songs that had a lot of melotron on it, I always find that sound just heartbreaking because it's not strings instead, it's this it's this weird tape machine, which I gather was impossible to use, but.
It's got this.
It has this different effect than strings totally.
And there'll be times, I mean just going through and finding sounds that maybe appeal to you and you know, and as CJ said to finding different sounds on a on a keyboard and those are you know, it's just one of the fun parts of playing electronic music is just you can really dig into different sounds and shape them in a way that's really kind of this what we want to call it a self reflexive aesthetic technique. We're like, oh, this this, this sound really appeals to me. Like it and find it, and you know, I really locked in. I think we just kind of really spent a lot of time finding nice palettes of sounds we'd like to hear together. And those did come away from I think a more dark electronic sound and with eats, melodies and lyrics, they kind of all helped shape the sound together where it's not hopefully cold or distressing or which sometimes aboutronic music can.
Fall into m I.
Mean, Trevor, Trevor makes it in a certain way with it, and that really helped all of these sounds, you know, not not be painful and you know, serve these songs.
And we also ran it through an old soundboard, which gave it a lot of.
Depth, and some of the some of the tracks we put through a tape machine, and so we really tried to kind of balance balance all these different elements.
A song, and I gather it's the single is wait for It, which I really love. And what I mentioned earlier about the the contrast between the electronic instruments and Edie's voice, I think that's a that's one of the best examples on the record. Can you talk about making that, Eadie.
It's basically the same thing that happened before. They just play it, just played this very inspiring piece of music and I just started singing, you know, wait for It.
Just just.
I just started having fun and then it it just flowed out. And all I can say is it They're very very inspiring.
M h.
And so I sing when I'm inspired.
Are you one of those singers? Do you have a picture in your head when you're singing?
Or is it just.
Sometimes I do? But but sometimes just it's it's just a musical phrase like that one does start with wait for It. So then it's it's just the sense of that melody that dud Duda just playing you know, and just noticing, Okay, that's what the phrase wants to be and it wants to be repeated. It just happened so fast it's hard to explain. You just go with it, and then after you say that a couple of times, you realize, well, I can't just say this over and over and over, so now what do I do? And then if you're waiting for something, oh, here it comes, and you just like I said, but that wasn't even a conscious decision.
It's just.
One thing leads to another and you just you just go. And then when those guys listen back to it later, I guess you know, he Trevor will edit it and send it back and you hear that that idea was realized.
M hm.
Was that a song you had to add additional lyrics to or it all came from the first session.
Yeah, that that all came out and and I think the phrasing on that is kind of weird too. It's not like something I would consciously write. And so yeah, you just just go in and try to get a good vocal take of it. If it was if there was an edit in there, and if there were or if there if there was one, yeah, or if it was, if it was not articulated. Well, I like, I remember on the first record, I couldn't tell what I was saying in one of the things. I said, what what what is that? It's just a sound and Trevor said, I think you're saying pivot. I was like, oh, I like it. Okay, So that kind of thing can happen where it's not there's it's you don't have clarity, so you have to listen to the context, context of the song and the content and then go in and plug something in. Mm hmm, but I don't. I don't know if we did on that or not.
No, that's that's the song.
We kept every lyric from the yeah improv And then I think, but I think you had you re sang it, but I think you changed, like yeah, just like one where like him to his or something something that was like oh right, yeah, I guess it is pastance or you know, it was some kind of little like the tiniest edit.
Yeah, yeah, I mean what you're hearing is what happened.
So CJ, you said you don't think harmonically when you were writing for this album particularly, or you're not that kind of Plaire. A lot of the uh, because these were pop songs and a lot of the sort of the harmony seems like like pop music. I mean that in a nice way, of course, But two songs to me sounded and I could be totally wrong, they almost sounded like R and B songs how many times and so emotional? Can you tell me about those songs because they to me, I can't take a lot of these songs out of the context of how you guys created them, But those are songs I think, wow, wow, Like Al Green could do a great job with this. They're different kinds of songs were they Can you anybody describe just writing those?
Both of those were kind of reactions to the beats Trevor started with, you know, so like he'll start, you know, be with all this various tools, and you know, something will feel like yeah, feel mo towny. I mean, I do think harmonically, but I'm not thinking like, oh, wouldn't it be cool to go to a four chord here. I'm usually thinking like, like, you know, the voice leading, you know, thinking about the voice leading in a melodic sense because I know I can trust that, rather than just sort of like only thinking functionality you know, of course, but yeah, I mean, like for me, I think that you know, due to the due to the reality of how we make these songs, and that it starts from a BPM. If I start an idea before Trevor's started to beat, he then has to like tap with the tempo and figure out what tempo I'm playing a thing at, and it's super clunky, So it usually starts with him. So I'm usually reacting to what Trevor's done, and then Edie's you know, sort of like reacting to the sum of the parts that we create.
Again, that's just kind of how how we've done our setup and how we're kind of all connected and just kind of how, yeah, how it has to happen. But like, yeah, we're working with you know, things kind of connected through MIDI and so just having a little bit of a yeah, a little bit of process it helps just get it going.
Mm hmm.
I wish we could do it for you now, I really do. It would be so much fun.
That might be tricky over zoom though, right, Yeah, the latency of zoom it's just brutal. Yeah, well, the next time I see you, we'll do it. It's an amazing project. What is next for it?
I think it's some very question. Is fame and fortune in most Yeah, No, we're gonna you know where.
The record comes out June twenty eighth, and we're really excited about that with a beautiful colored final like different colors, and it really looks great and we're super proud of it. We're going to play some shows opening for Bruce Hornsby in the fall. It was a long time supporter of various projects we've all done, and we did this past fall. We did some shows where we just improud showed well. We did two sets, the first set with songs and the second set was just fully improvised songs, and it was pretty thrilling to do that in front of the live audience. And so we're gonna hopefully do a lot more of that.
What's what's what's an audience's reaction to that?
I think I think it's weird and it's hard to unless people can feel it. It's hard to help people understand that it's happening right now. Because although somebody pointed out that people do that in hip hop, right, they have those style, Yeah, they'll do that, and so people do this all the time. That that's the tricky part is having people understand that it's it's right here, it's right now, and it's and if it's sometimes people can think, I don't, who knows it's it's it's just hard to to convey that. Or you could do the trick of it and say, okay, if you want to be sure that you're involved in this or it's happening now, we write down an idea or a song suggestion and you can pull that out of the hat and and you can do that. It makes you feel like you're proving something though, and it has less to do with inspiration. But it can be done, and we have done that. But I always feel a little silly doing that just to show that, yes, that's what it is.
That way feels a little bit like a year. You're doing a trick, right, you do it? You know it's a little gimmicky.
That's a it's a comedy, improv you.
Know, it's funny.
We'll we'll say to a crowd like this, these are like the first that were songs we wrote, you know, and it's the way we write. And now we're going to do this completely improvised whatever and somebody will just say, like, was the first one?
Is that one from your record? You know, We're like, no, no, we do. But I think it's just so uncommon.
Right, even when you go and you see jazz jazz group improvise, right, they start with a song that they know that's usually a standard or something that they want the main artists wrote. Right, they start with something, and so I think you're not You're really not used to seeing people start with zero.
Right.
We don't talk about any aspect that we don't talk about, like bpms or that we're going to get, you know, the arc of the speed of the songs, or the tonality.
We don't talk about anything, And so I think it's just so uncommon in this.
You know, the hip is a different context, but even that, like the music behind the improvisations, the improvising lyrics is pre planned. You know, this is really just so I think it's it's it's just you know, you and there's a you train an audience, right, you like, you get people on board just by talking about it and just got to keep doing it, you know.
But you know, pop music works in part because of repetition, you know, that's what that's what gives people that satisfying sense that you're coming back to the theme at the end. And we might be scaring people off this album of the way we're talking about it.
I hope not.
But these feel like realized pop songs.
They have a.
What would I say, like the sort of topography of a top of a song. They build up A couple of them sort of start in a little bit of chaos, and then there's this huge build and they end in a little bit of chaos.
But it's all.
This isn't like free form jazz that your friend is doing. That is just torture to listen to. It's improvised pop songs. And I think that's what's so hard. Maybe I found so hard to get my head around. As much as I was enjoying it, I was like, well, how is this improvised?
I don't get this.
This feels like a pop song.
If you give me maybe I could try it. If you want to give me any any the first image or thought, a thought, or a theme or some anything.
I don't have to get This is not a party trick. If you guys want to start something, you.
Have, but just so you'll you'll get a sense that that's what happens. Maybe maybe as of you, the other person in the room. Maybe now it's a four four member band because you're inspiring the song.
Okay, what what what kind of notion? What kind of notion would you like?
I see that's that's I don't want that. I want you to feel what you're feeling, or what image came to you, or what anything, anything at all, to be a part of it. Let's do it all right, sailboat, Hey, cast the sail and hope though and blows. Let's get on your little silver ride the waves. Ride the waves with me. Mm hmm, cas the sail and hope though and blows. Let's get on yoll little silboat, ride the waves, ride the waves with me. Hey, Brucy, don't you want to go in the sylble that you told me to sing about?
Woo yeah wooyah wooiah.
Don't you want to roll in the sylble that's your tomato sing about? Ooh yeah, wooiah, Oohiah, here comes the wind. Let's do it again. How about that?
That was fantastic? That was great.
You also saying that you had backup singers that were also youble.
That was fantastic.
It's fun. You see how fun it is.
I am so in awe of that.
I cannot tell you.
That is so completely different than anything I could ever imagine doing.
Oh well, well, I'm glad, thank you. I love it, and I love playing with these guys because they're so they're geniuses. They make it so much fun, and we just play off each other in the same way that you and I just played off of your idea.
Well, I'm getting a sense of how much they must love playing with you, because that was fantastic, just amazing.
Thank you all so much.
What a great thrill to meet all of you and do this well to re meet you. But it was really great and great album. I hope everybody listens to it.
Thank you so much.
Just not Taylor Swift right off the top of the charts.
That'd be all right.
You don't want to do that. She she, she touches so many people.
Oh I didn't.
I don't mean that against.
At all.
Well, my niece is my in particular my niece, just my niece. My niece got to go for her thirteenth birthday. It was a big They sent videos and I kind of got choked up because it was a stadium, and you know, of all these girls her age just singing their hearts out, and I thought that's worth something. Yeah, that's a beautiful thing.
Thanks so much to Edie Brokel for sharing so much of her creative process, and also to her band members c J. Camery and Trevor Hagen for also sharing how they collaborate with Edie. To hear a playlist of all of our favorite have You Makeup in Edie Brokel songs, you can find a playlist at Brokenrecord podcast dot com or in the episode description. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolliney. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts, subscriptions and.
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