Brett Dennen
A Dreamer And Lover All In One
Sep 14, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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World Keeps Turning
original version appears on Hope For The Hopeless
Two years ago, while on the rod in Santa Fe, NM, I got a call from a friend of mine who was putting music together for the second "Shrek" film. He told me that he needed a song of mine, because it would be perfect for a climactic scene. At the moment, he was using a song of mine called "Ain't No Reason" as a musical place holder for the scene, but he didn't feel like the song was age appropriate for a cartoon animation movie. So he asked me if I had a song or could write a song that was along the lines of "Ain't No Reason", but more suitable for children. That morning I wrote and made a rough recording of "World Keeps Turning" and sent it off hoping that my friend would flip out over it and tell me that the song made the film. I didn't hear back for a long time, and the song did not make the film, but it ended up on my album, and I thought it would be nice to hear a stripped down version of it for Daytrotter.....
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So Far From Me
original version appears on Hope For The Hopeless
I never wanted to write a song about being a musician who is always on the road, far away from his girlfriend. Too many bands have songs like that. But, what can I say? That was my reality. I figured at least, if I didn't make any references to the "road" or even traveling, and just kept it about being far apart from your lover, then maybe it would feel more universal....at least I'd have more fun singing it. The craziest thing is....soon after the album came out I went out on tour and over the course of time, everything I knew about love had changed. My girlfriend and I broke up, mostly due to the pressure of being apart and the reality of leading separate lives. I wrote the song as a testament to love. To tell my lover that even though we are far apart, our love can grow stronger. Now the song has a different meaning, and it brings up a whole different set of emotions for me when I sing it. Now it is about letting go....and growing apart, and understanding that sometimes even if you love each other, it is okay to go your separate ways.
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Heaven
original version appears on Hope For The Hopeless
I wrote this entire song on an airplane. I write a lot of lyrics on airplanes. Something about leaving the world really puts things into perspective. It also helps me to tap into my subconscious when there is a lot of stuff going on around me like babies crying, people talking, and flight attendants servicing the flight. This song is not about heaven, or the afterlife, it is about life here on earth.
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Make You Crazy
original version appears on Hope For The Hopeless
This is a song I struggled over for a while. I wrote most of the lyrics in one sitting, but didn't complete the song til months later. I was contemplating the psychological effects that injustice has on a person. I never knew what sort of music to put it to. I didn't want it to sound like a folk song, or a slow and serious protest song. I knew I wanted it to sound like an upbeat danceable groove. I didn't want anybody to dismiss it as protest song. While in the studio, making the album, a melody jumped into my brain on the second to last day of recording. That night I went home and flushed it out and put the lyrics I had already written to it, and the next morning I taught it to the band and we recorded it.
It's probably the cute and boyish face that Brett Dennen has that makes you think of him as a younger man than he actually is. You think he might just be of that age where video games are worshipped. It's the freckles and the adorably doughy cheeks that they're on - they throw you for tumbles. It's the mischievous, but sweet glint in his eyes and that orange hair of his that make him look the part of a teenager. It's his tender voice that lulls you into misconceptions of youth, but then the words start billowing from his mouth - that voice forming his ideas into proportions and dimensions - and he no longer is a young fellow any more, but one of those learned old souls. Dennen, a California boy in his early 30s, has developed a worldview that belies those freckles and that boyish demeanor, albeit one that comes in a tall and sturdy 6-foot-lots frame. He comes across on "Hope For The Hopeless," as a guy who tosses and turns at night thinking about and caring so badly for his friends, his family, and complete strangers out there who are facing personal difficulties or are subjugated by other people, who are getting stamped out emotionally, dashed of their spirit. He probably gets those cold sweats, the ones that leave his head making millions of revolutions per minute, concerned that he's not doing enough good in the world or is completely unable to do anything more to help his fellow man and woman, child and senior citizen. For many people, graciousness and benevolence is a forced makeover that is shown when it's most needed, when that look will benefit them, and then it's dialed back almost completely, as if it's being saved for the most opportune times, but Dennen sounds as if he, or the characters he writes in his songs don't have those selfish bones. The great thing about this whole situation is that it never comes off as goodie-goodie, but more like someone wanting to write songs from the perspective of and as a decent human being. It's warming and it's surprisingly unique. It affects you. You feel like going out and finding a child that just fell and scraped up their knees on the playground and pull them back up, console them and very innocently give them a couple bucks for and ice cream cone, whenever the truck comes around the block. You want to be better yourself, damn it. As Dennen sings in "Follow Your Heart," "Follow your heart and you won't get lost," it's as if he's taken those words by themselves and applied them or screen-printed them directly onto his heart, where they can fade away and they can influence. He seems to do that with his folkie-via-the-California-waves vibes that he gives off, a sound that is comparable to Jack Johnson doing something along the lines of Sondre Lerche - just effervescent and pure, holding the baloney and the posturing from the art. Earlier in "Follow Your Heart," the very first lines of what may be his most autobiographical song, he sings or admits, "I am a dreamer/And I'm a lover/I've been let down and I've been loved and lost," and without having said it until this late in the album, it doesn't matter all that much. It's how we'd already been hearing him and attempting to understand the inner monologue that he feels he needs to express. It's a gorgeous exchange, the one that Dennen makes between his wishes and dreams and his listeners and it seems that he refuses to believe that there will ever come a time when beautiful things cannot have themselves begat from the lonesomeness, the thorn bushes or the black clouds.
Brett Dennen Official Site
Downtown Records
Dualtone Records
