It has been quite a year for Alberta’s Country Star Brett Kissel. The Flat Lake, AB born singer has been back home in the province after living in Nashville for the last few years. A tornado damaged their house in Tennessee, so they came home while repairs were happening. Then Covid-19 happened, and the Kissel family has been home. Stemming from that is Kissel’s new album What is Life? Available now on all platforms. Kissel connected with GayCalgary.com via zoom recently to talk about the new album and a variety of other subjects.
"When you can’t go out on the road, you can’t do all of these things. I still want it to be creative. It was difficult for me to even pick up a guitar and want to be creative because I was so down, I was blue. I was frustrated and didn’t know what was going to happen in the world and my industry. Through that emotional process, I started writing some songs that really came from my heart and connecting and collaborating. In doing so I have this body of work that was really special and very timely. With Warner music in my management, and especially with my band and my producers, we said, this is a record that needs to come out. Now, these are songs that need to come out now, and I’m really grateful that they did."
It’s been just a year since his previous album Now or Never came out in February of 2020. His band would have been on the road had the pandemic not hit. Instead he gathered his band, most of which live in Calgary, and his Saskatoon based producer to OCL studios in Chestermere. Dan Owen’s studio is in a stunning house on the outskirts of the town that has been a home away from home for many artists recording in recent years.
"It’s such a beautiful house and a gorgeous studio that we were there for a week or more. It was great to be creative and collaborate with my band and have these stories where I would be like, Hey, remember when we played the Stampede opening for Brad Paisley, no one knew we were there. It was a big surprise, and the crowd went nuts and we started with this song and everybody loved it. Well, let’s bring that energy. Unlike any of my other records, I could never do that because we needed to do it within two days, record the bed tracks, get on a plane, and go fly somewhere else. We were given the gift of time. A lot of my decisions and even vocals that I did on the record I was able to do that because I wasn’t pressed for time. Before if my voice actually was a little bit too raspy, cause I did too many interviews or I talked a little bit too much, or I had a few too many cocktails the night before I would have had to go in and sing in the studio because I was against the clock. Well, not this time. So when we finally pieced this record together, we had all of these great songs with truly the best vocal take and the best performance, which now moving forward. I truly believe I’m going to make my records that way."
The first single Make a life, not a living has been a huge hit. It’s message of living one’s best life is one that resonates with many…
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