The thing about a diary is that it’s private. But when that diary is also the music you make, it begins to morph into a different relationship and responsibility. For Nashville-based singer-songwriter, Bren Joy, the autobiographical admissions that his music allows him is what brought him to the art form to begin with, and what has kept him there working diligently ever since. In fact, that the music he makes will have a life after he departs the earth is crucial to Joy’s appreciation for the work he does. He wants each song and each record to mark his thoughts cleanly and clearly in a given moment in time. He responds to and respects other artists like Taylor Swift who manage their work in this way, too. It’s this impulse that inspired Joy to write and release his 2019 album, Twenties, and why he decided to release the deluxe version of the album last week. In short, he had more to say about this time in his life before it grows and shifts into a new era of creativity.
“When you sing a sad song,” Joy says, “no one questions it. They just say, ‘That was beautiful.’ But when you speak your emotions into the world, there are so many questions. I didn’t want the questions. I wanted to say what I wanted to say and get it off of my mind.”
Growing up, Joy’s family listened to and enjoyed music often despite the fact that there weren’t any formal musicians in his family tree. As a senior in high school, Joy joined the choir and realized he liked it a great deal. At the same time, he realized music could be the conduit for his personal expressions, a way to give voice to the various anxieties bubbling in his mind at the time by singing other people’s songs. Joy dug singing so much that he went and studied it at Belmont University. But life wasn’t a bed of roses there, either. Rigorous studying led to burnout. Thankfully, for Joy, that’s when a new revelation hit.
“I wasn’t really getting a chance to sing stuff I cared about,” he says. “So, one of my professors said, ‘Why don’t you write?’ That changed my life. I said, ‘Okay, let’s go for it.’ No we’re here.”
It’s important to learn the fundamentals of an art form before you dive in. In a way, it’s just as important to know how you can harm your voice as it is how you can help it. But human beings cannot survive on academics alone. It wasn’t until Joy found his own balance that he began to soar. Growing up, he’d predominantly listened to R&B acts, including The Gap Band and Earth, Wind & Fire. But in college, Joy was introduced to groups like Queen and The Beach Boys. These too were important discoveries for the burgeoning artist.
“My mind was blown,” Joy says. “Their voices were just so different than what I was used to.”
He began both imitating his favorite formative groups and these new discoveries. But he also began adapting those imitations to his own style. Joy quickly became a sonic alchemist. In one way, he knew how a shift of a throat muscle or the placement of his tongue could shift a sound and, at the same time, he knew how big a range rock, blues and R&B could offer him.
“It takes practice,” Joy says. “I also read lyrics a lot, which is something I love. I would sit down and read a lot of rap lyrics, studying the wittiness, the zingers. Nicki Minaj has zingers that are out of this world!”
At some point along the way, Joy realized he was more than a singer. He realized he was an artist. As the songs kept coming and as they got more and more refined, he began to embrace his creative self further. Early songs like the playful single, “Henny in the Hamptons,” made a mark but then his next releases like the intricate track, “Scottie Pippen,” helped him to embrace the truly expressive side of himself. At the same time, he began to investigate himself and his family lineage. He wanted to know more, so he could share more with his audience.
“I was talking with my grandma,” Joy says. “I had never talked to somebody that lived when Martin Luther King Jr. was alive and who had gone to the marches and the speeches. Getting a chance to talk to her, I just hit record while she was talking. That sparked the song, ‘When Martin Died.’”
After releasing the first version of Twenties about a year-and-a-half ago, Joy wrote more music and realized it needed to be dropped publicly as part of a deluxe version of the earlier album. He had more to say, more diary entries to make before putting the proverbial notebook on the shelf for future reads. As a songwriter, Joy makes dreamy, even intimate songs with a voice that sounds like he’s speaking directly into your ear. It was a fine line to walk between being overly jazzy with some of the instrumentation and insufficiently interesting. In the end, he nailed it.
“It took a lot of finessing to get that middle ground,” Joy says.
Today, the artist, who was born and raised in Nashville, says he’s seen it change dramatically over the years. Yet, he loves it just the same. In many ways, it has a pure relationship to music. It’s about the poetry of music, the beauty of songs. It’s also a city where it’s likely harder to find someone who doesn’t play a six-string than to find folks who do. As such, Joy collaborates with friends on the music he makes and afterwards, they hang out and chat about the songs. It’s all part of building for the future while maintain accuracy with one’s self in the moment. If this is achieved, innovation and freshness is always right around the corner.
“I’m 24 years old,” Joy says. “I’m exploring a lot of new things. When I look to the future, I see so much genre bending, so much weird quirkiness. There’s something so special about that. Music gives everyone a voice and the beauty of that is when you leave earth, it’s still here.”
Photo by Lamont Roberson
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