 Photo credit: Dan Plasman
Hailing from Michigan, singer-songwriter Brandon Grafius will release his new album, Highways and Backroads, in May. The all original collection projects the sense of movement and finding the right place for oneself, a sentiment which can be found on the recently released track, "Things Get Right," a tune about hard-won joy and what it means to feel things falling into place. Ahead of the album's release, Grafius kindly took the time to answer his Essential 8 and discuss the album in depth as well as exploring personal experience in songwriting, what he's listening to, and more .
With any particular song, was there “a-ha” moment when you knew the song was completed and perfect? This album’s first single, “Things Get Right,” was one of those rare songs that popped into my head almost fully formed. I had to massage some of the lyrics a bit; I went through a few drafts to make sure I had the right balance of concrete images and emotional resonance. The song’s all about finding reaching a place of personal resolution, but describes that experience through places and images, so it was important to keep sticking close to the concrete. I was writing the song alone, with just a guitar, but I heard the instrumentation really clearly in my head. I heard the banjo part that I’d end up overdubbing, I heard the second guitar, I heard the drums playing a locomotive shuffle beat, and most importantly I heard the fiddle. In the studio, we’d laid down most of the tracks piecemeal, and I was trying to work around Erin Zindle’s busy touring schedule to get her into the studio. So the real “a-ha” moment was when I heard her lay down that awesome fiddle track, and everything locked into place. What’s the story behind your album’s title? The album title happened about mid-way through the process of putting the album together. As I was sorting through the recent songs I’d written, I began to notice that a handful of them were centered on a place, and often had travelling to or from that place as a main motif. The song “Things Get Right” is about a weekend in Traverse City, but also about the journey from a difficult time in life to a more settled place. “Roll Away” uses the image of a river (in my mind, the Manistee in northern Michigan) as a way to think through what it means to leave behind the parts of ourselves that are causing us pain. And “Two Hundred Miles” is about a late night drive from Chicago back home to Lansing, but also about the journey towards coming to terms with the parts of ourselves that we need to work on, and finding strength in the desire to become a better person. There are lots of journeys in this album. So I started thinking more intentionally about what it means to travel, and the kinds of destinations we seek out. I really like “Highways and Backroads” because it encapsulates two kinds of travel. The Highway is usually more direct, more focused, and gets us to where we want to go more quickly. Sometimes, it means we lose out on the scenery along the way. But there are some places where the highways don’t reach, journeys for which we have to take the less-travelled backroads. And sometimes, we’re more concerned with the travel with the destination, and we’d rather take our time on a backroad than move in a straight line along the highway. For me, this album is about both types of travel. When/where do you do your best writing? A lot of these songs are about the road, likely because that’s where the idea started out. I’m an academic by trade; I finished my PhD at Chicago Theological Seminary a few years ago, which meant lots of driving back and forth from Lansing to Chicago. And now I teach two days a week in Detroit, which is about 90 miles from where I live. So I’m still on the road. I find that the time on the freeway is when my mind starts to turn in on itself, when I start working through all of the hopes and anxieties that have been tugging at me quietly. Sometimes it’s an image – “Midwestern Sky,” for example, started from looking at the rich, rolling clouds along I-96 on a late spring morning. I’m always listening to music in the car, so sometimes a word or an image in a song will also spark something. “My Father’s Boat” started, oddly enough, from a Fort Frances song called “Ghosts of California.” There’s a line in that song: “Build us a home made for heroes/build us a boat to find the stars.” I started thinking about the craft of boat building, and how rich of a metaphor it could be – my first thought was to look up whether there’s a specific term for a boat-builder, and I was very disappointed to find that there isn’t! But then I started tracking back to a story my dad told, about being in a young man (high school or college, I think?) and building a boat with his father. It was the boat we used to go fishing on when I was young. All of those connections started pouring out from that simple line about “build us a boat” – all that was left was for me to shape it into something like a song! 
Do you write about personal experience, the experience of others, observations, made-up stories, something else or a combination? I’ve tried to write songs about the experience of others, but they’ve never come out very well! I’ve thought of myself as a writer since I was very young, but I’ve always been drawn to poetry over prose – “Sacramento” references the time I spent in California working on an MA in poetry. (“So thank you for all that you’ve given me, the poems, the friends and the wine.”) While some people write poetry about the experience of others, it seems to me that it’s a more natural fit for exploring personal experience. I also think that, in most cases, it’s not enough to only write about personal experience – there needs to be some imagery drawn from the world, and some degree of removed reflection for the song to work. I think we’ve all seen performers who get on stage with songs that sound like they’re just reading from their diary. It’s not anything that an audience can connect to, because it’s personal experience without reflection or observation attached to it. Writing a song about personal experience requires a lot more than simply sharing what you’re feeling. It requires an honest, thoughtful reflection on those experiences so that the listener can find something that connects with their own experience, and hopefully helps them understand it a little better. What’s the best advice to give to a musician just starting out? Most important, of course, is to work on your craft – that means not only your writing, but also your playing. I’ve found my songwriting has improved in lock-step with my guitar-playing abilities. As a beginner, my songwriting was limited by what I could play. As my playing has improved, the possibilities for writing have opened up, and new ideas come all the time as I’m just exploring what I can do with my guitar. Don’t underestimate the importance of skill in your chosen instrument. Aside from that, opportunities always come from relationships – opportunities to grow your audience, opportunities to perform, and opportunities to collaborate with other musicians. This last part is really important. No matter how skilled you are, you’re going to need lots of people to help you put together your demo or album. The more musicians that are in your community, the better your chances of pulling together the musicians you need to make your album happen. When I was just starting out, I found that getting involved in my church’s contemporary worship service was a great way to make connections. Being a part of as many open mic nights as you can is another great way to connect with other musicians; make sure to stick around for the entire show, and identify people to introduce yourself to. Keep making connections within the music community! These connections are how shows happen, how followings get built, and how music happens. Favorite (or first) concert you have ever attended? When I was in eighth grade, I went to see They Might Be Giants on their “Flood” tour. I remember trying to start a mosh pit to “Particle Man.” As you might imagine, the attempt met with limited success. But it was a great first experience with live music. A couple of years later, I managed to get tickets to a Red Hot Chili Peppers show, with these two opening acts that none of us had ever heard of before: Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam. By the time the Chili Peppers came on stage, you could feel that most of the crowd was underwhelmed, after the two bands we’d just seen. Is there a recent release you cannot stop listening to? It’s been a good year for music so far! Last year, I felt like every album I was excited about ended up being a disappointment, from the Arcade Fire to the National to Ray Wylie Hubbard. Even Jason Isbell’s “Nashville Sound” strikes me as wildly inconsistent. I love some of the songs, but the overwrought strings and electric guitar on “Anxiety” make it sound, to my ear, like an outtake from “Operation: Mindcrime.” A handful of other songs on the record don’t work for me either. Lately, I’ve been listening to a Cornish group called “Red River Dialect.” Their new album, “Broken Stay Open Sky,” has the feel of a band who’s put it all together and really hit their stride. It’s warm and lush, but never drags or mopes; it’s thoughtful without being self-absorbed. The interplay between the percussion, acoustic guitar, and fiddle is really wonderful. I love Phoebe Bridgers album, for the stark loneliness of it, and the maturing sound of Alela Diane’s “Cusp.” And Jesse Marchant’s new album may not be a major step forward for him, but it’s another beautifully haunting album that doesn’t sound like anything else. Song (of yours) you wish you would have released as a single and why? We haven’t decided on the second single yet, so there’s still time! But there are a handful of obvious singles on the album. The first one we chose, “Things Get Right,” is upbeat, catchy, and (hopefully!) infectious; it was an easy choice for a first single. There are a couple other songs that check off the boxes for what you’d like in a radio song – “Sacramento” is grand, singable, and has a strong chorus and some really memorable hooks. “Midwestern Sky” is the kind of ballad that often finds a home on radio, with a vocal performance that might be the best of the album and a really great french horn part from David Cooper. (He’s my cousin, who also happens to be the premier horn player for the Berlin Philharmonic.) But I think that “Company Store” might be the best song on the album. Releasing it as a single would be a risky choice – it’s dark, the lyrics are dense, and it works through slowly building tension rather than big dramatic moments. It could really find an audience, or it could be a song that listeners don’t really get. It’s hard for me to judge as the writer! But there’s part of me that feels like we should take a chance a release this one as the second single, even though it doesn’t have the hallmarks of a radio hit. Bandcamp/Facebook
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