“Ah, this is America,” Brett Dennen says on a late-summer day as he checks in from a Midwest stop on his extended “Good Vibes” tour with fellow organic-pop singer-songwriter Jason Mraz. “Real America, I’ve been told.” The 38-year-old, California-bred musician is touring behind his new EPs, Let’s… and Here’s Looking At You Kid, which he released in succession earlier this year in lieu of a proper, full-length LP. But, at the moment, he has the classic Simon & Garfunkel Bookends track “America” on his mind. “I just had a recent revelation about that song. I grew up listening to it and didn’t really know what it was about—sometimes you grow up with something and don’t really understand it, and then you figure it out later on. My interpretation is that it’s about how Simon & Garfunkel first had success in the U.K. instead of over here, because Paul Simon was living there. And then they came back to America to try to release their music and tour, and it’s about trying to break into America. There’s sarcasm in that song.” Dennen is no stranger to the realities of the music business. He first made his name through a series of low-key folk albums, before being swept up with a wave of indie-leaning pop songwriters crossing over into the mainstream. Despite a few label changes and moments of self-discovery, Dennen has always followed his own path, veering away from the norm to explore jamband collaborations, more upbeat festival music and, on his new album, even modern hip-hop influences. For his EPs, he teamed with current tastemaker Dan Wilson and aimed to capture the immediacy and instant impact of the streaming generation. “I wanted something more immediate that fit the way people consume music now,” he admits. “That’s the main thing.”
Let’s start with your new releases. Instead of a new album, you decided to drop two EPs this year, Let’s… and Here’s Looking At You Kid. What was the impetus for your new approach?How close did you come to releasing four EPs this year?Had you already started working on these songs when you entered the studio for these quick recording sessions?You’ve touched on the energy one needs to go in and create a piece of work like an album or an EP. Before some of your past albums, you purposefully took some time to escape the realities of being a working musician and decompress before trying to stoke your creative fire. Did you find that jumping right back into recording between EPs directly changed your lyrical and creative process?It will be interesting to look back on your headspace at the time you wrote those tunes with some distance when you are able to finally record them.
