BRELAND Interview

Breland (Daniel Gerard Brelend) opened the C2C Country to Country festival at the O2 March 2023. His previous time in London was in October at The Garage in Highbury, so in less than six months he went from a club to one of London’s largest stages. From London he went to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, country music’s most prestigious venue, with his patented blend of country music, rap, R&B, gospel and soul. And all this just started with the release of his first hit in 2019. To learn how he got here and where he is going, The American managed to have the fast moving star sit down long enough for an interview. We met at KOKO's private members club, ’Ellen’s Jazz Club,’ in Camden where he was performing a short set a few days before his performance at the O2.

How did a nice guy from New Jersey wind up doing country music?

Yeah, it's a little bit of luck and a little bit of God. I grew up in a musical family. This is well documented; my parents say my whole family sings. But I just love music, and I think it's at its simplest form if you love writing songs, you'll probably at least appreciate country music. That appreciation led me to make a debut single, kind of half as a joke and half just seeing what would happen. And fate would have it such that that song would then go viral. That song was ‘My Truck,’ and all of a sudden, I was thrust into this world that I had only peripherally paid much attention to.

I took my first trip to Nashville right before the pandemic and did the ‘My Truck’ remix with Sam Hunt. He introduced me to a bunch of his friends; I got a chance to write a little bit. I had been writing out of Atlanta, which is primarily hip hop and R&B, and I was realizing that the way that I was writing hip hop and R&B music was with a country lens. Which is that I was writing everything linearly, relating all the lyrics to one another, which is not typically how modern R&B and hip hop is necessarily made. It's more stream of consciousness. So for me to have already been writing in that way, coming to Nashville, I felt like I was coming home. Despite being from New Jersey and having all this experience in gospel, R&B and hip hop, just the way that I write songs has a really natural fit to the way that songs are written in Nashville and in country music.

BRELAND PHOTO: JIMMY FONTAINE

What about the sounds?

The sounds are a little different, but I don't think you could listen to my music and not acknowledge the influence from other genres. So while I'm in country music, if you listen to what I'm saying on some of the songs, how I'm saying it and what some of the backing music is doing, it's very nuanced. It's a melting pot sonically, of gospel roots and hip hop, R&B and Americana but obviously with this country center that has become somewhat of a North Star, even as I drift into new places.

You went to Georgetown University? What did you study?

I was a marketing and management double major in the business school at Georgetown.

Were you thinking about music then too?

Yeah, I was thinking about music probably too much! I would say don't look at the transcripts. They're not reflective of my intellect. If anything, they are reflective of how interested in music I actually was. I was skipping classes and writing songs. I set a goal for my sophomore year of trying to write and record a song every day, then junior and senior year I was doing two songs a day. So, over the course of my Georgetown career, I had written and recorded a good 1500 songs.

Whoa!

Yeah. But it was a great place for me to be able to make music and develop without having to be a starving artist. I was a student and there were a lot of things that were taken care of for me; I made a lot of connections with people too. It's funny, most of my classmates ended up in politics or foreign affairs or Wall Street or consulting and the Big Four, but I'm pretty much the only person from my class to go on to do music at a high level. And I think that representation is important too.

Do you ever dip back into those 1500 songs?

Truth be told they all suck, and there's something great in all of them too. But it really wasn't until after college that I started writing songs that I would say were at an industry standard because up until that point, it still sounded very immature. It just wasn't all coming together quite the right way. They were missing a couple of key ingredients, like I didn't have like a real hook you know, that's like the flour of the cake. You don't have that, you're probably not gonna bake much of anything. I think I developed some of those more fundamental pieces once I moved to Atlanta, but vocally I was still developing as well. If you listen to those songs, it doesn't even sound like me. Male voices develop into their 20s and 30s. Me at 19 to 20 wasn't me at 27 or 28 as you see now, so it was a work in progress.

Is there a real craft? Or is it like people say, “Is it the Muse, or was he struck by lightning, or did that song come to him and he just wrote it down?”

It's all of the above. I think writing songs can be as scheduled. Like I could write at 11 o'clock every day and get up and be in that routine, and just create because it's the time to create. Or an idea could strike me for a title or a hook or a melody anywhere. I don't limit myself. What I usually do if I'm not in a position to fully write a song down but an idea comes to me I'll just make a voice memo on my phone of the title or how I think the song might go, then attack it when I have the time to sit down and do it. But there's a method to the madness for me. I'm very much a hook first writer. Verses then lyrics tend to come a little bit after, I'm definitely a 'melody first' person. I do have like a PIM-DAS, if you will, you know, this goes first then I'll probably fill in this and I'll fill in that.

Where were you with your songwriting when you tried country?

Up until 2019 I had zero major label releases as a writer, then I had started getting a few cuts, I think 14 or 15. That was a breakout year for me, I was definitely starting to figure out how to make a good song. That was around the time that I started listening to a little bit more country. But as a writer, I had this idea long before I ever made a country song, of having a number one in every genre, at every format of radio. I'm still working on that!

I had other artists recording my stuff but at the time I was working with a producer that was pretty adamant that I didn't have what it takes to be an artist. I'm fine writing songs for other people but I kept getting the artist bug and I didn't see why I couldn't do it. And the first song I put out was confirmation of that, because there were instantly millions of people listening to this song. A lot of people have these 'struggling artists' years, playing shows for empty crowds and trying to get someone to listen to them. I had those years, but privately as a writer, and it was a little less public.

By the time ‘My Truck’ came out I had written at least 3000 songs, and of the last 500, I think the majority someone would cut. They were R&B, hip hop, gospel, pop, but they were well written songs so if you changed the production a little bit and gave it to a different type of artist, I think a lot of them probably could have been country songs. It's just some of the ancillary sounds that would make it country or not. I think there's a fine line between an R&B record and a country record, If you change who's singing it and what some of the production is, you can't tell me that some of these Chris Stapleton songs aren't soul records at their core. It's about the intentionality of who you're shooting for and how they would talk. When I started putting out music myself, the challenge became, well, what do I want to say? I think that's the journey that I'm on now. Figuring out how serious does it need to be? How fun does it need to be? How country does it need to be?

Where do you see yourself headed now?

My goal is to continue doing what I'm doing at a higher level, moving into new spaces. I could see myself playing in arenas and stadiums one day for sure. As an opener, I have opportunities to do that with Walker Hayes and Shania Twain this summer and I'm really pumped for those opportunities. But I also see myself as a music executive. I see myself as a multifaceted entrepreneur. I see myself moving into TV and film and journalism even, and moving into the sports world as a commentator and analyst. I'm someone with so many different passions, and I'm really proficient at a lot of different things. Music is one of them, but who's to say what I could be doing five years from now. Music will always be a part of that equation and it's a part of how I communicate. I'm always going to make music but don't be surprised to find me in spaces that you wouldn't expect over the next few years, and I'm looking to discover myself in different ventures as well.

Can you keep a balance in the midst of this rocket ride?

I have a different focus every year and make real concrete plans around how to effectively implement new strategies. Last year it was gratitude and that was a great pillar to have. This year my main focus is balance; wanting to be more present, wanting to make sure that I'm resting, wanting to make sure that I am able to spend time with family and friends. I've got a baby nephew, I want to be able to see a lot of these moments, he’s coming up on seven months now. Last year, things moved so fast, and it was my first year really bearing the weight of what being an artist can look like, because 2020-2021 there was no touring. I said yes to a lot of things, almost out of necessity, and as a result, didn't have a lot of time to rest and recover and I found myself being really tired and exhausted on these runs; going overseas and dropping my debut album. Not to say that I'm not going to tour this year but I learned a lot from my experiences last year. I’m recognizing how I can better value my time, I've started saying no to a lot of things, taking more time for myself, being more intentional about what I'm doing and when and why and what it should represent, philosophically even. But I think I have more time now to put on a better show and I'm writing much better material because I'm not coming at it from a deficit. I'm coming at it from a surplus.

In August and September, Breland will be in the UK and Europe for a festival and headline tour. For details and tickets go to www.brelandmusic.com/tour/