LOST and FOUND with James BRODIE Music Producer and Songwriter from NEWZEALAND

Hi Harry. Thanks for having me on your platform to chat. My name’s James and I perform as BRODIE/. I live in Te Aroha, New Zealand and I’ve been a part of bands in the underground rock scene for 12 years before recording my debut solo album LOST and FOUND. I am a producer and songwriter who plays multiple instruments and tries to bring joy and hope into what I write.

LOST and FOUND comes out on September 24th and it’s about finding hope and joy in all seasons of life (even the really dark ones). Over 9 songs that are written around this theme, we go to some of those vulnerable places that are not easy to open up about and visit them with the goal of finding joy and hope in our broken pieces to turn them into something beautiful. Listening to those songs now I can look back on those moments where I was falling down and can find beauty in those moments so through the music that I’ve written I’ve gone on a journey from dark places to the lookout points where you can see the sunrise. And I hope as people listen to it, they find themselves going on a similar journey, whatever that looks like for them.

I started listening to music at a very young age as it helped me with my Autism and ADHD to connect into the world and gave me a tool to communicate with. So quite often listening to music helped me learn language and communication skills which helped me thrive a bit more than what my initial outlook from the doctor was going to be. Over time I started getting into poetry and writing things down to a point that age 16 I was in my first ‘band’ which led to me writing more poetry, putting it to music, and trying to write songs and be part of other bands on and off for 12 years before getting to the pandemic where I helped with some of the response for tertiary students as I was a student politician at the time and was doing what I could to help. My Dad was nearing the end of his life and my personal life outside of that was falling apart (especially my mental health) so I started to retreat inwards and isolate until I found faith in God and got my life together. Throughout it all, I would write poems and letters like I would back in the day and start putting them together over music. So, I started doing that during the COVID-19 pandemic and come back to them on and off for the next four years until I had the right songs in the right place at the right time ready to go. And that’s how we got to here.

For this album, I went in with a completely blank canvas compared to the previous projects I had been a part of and generally challenged myself to create with what I had and as the songs would guide me. As a result, LOST and FOUND has a variety of guitar-based songs about finding hope and joy through life and all of its seasons. Some of these songs were written in very dark periods of life (especially Captain and The Kid, which was based on the last conversation I ever had with my Dad before he passed away in 2020 right after the first lockdown and the first song I finished for the album, which was easily the toughest song I’ve ever written) but even in those darker moments I’ve been able to process those emotions and harder moments through joyful music that brought hope to me in my life at a time when I needed them to help me heal. So you’re not just hearing an indie rock album when you hear these songs, you’re hearing the sound of me healing from troubled seasons that have happened in my life over the last four years and through that we’ve ended up here.

The goal has always been to engage culture in conversation about the light and darkness in life, using words and melody to talk about some of the hardest things we feel as humans. Whether it’s navigating troubled waters, embracing joy and new beginnings, surviving chaos, or looking at life in the mirror while still bringing hope into the darkest of nights. That’s sort of where the main message of the songs come from. Once I’ve figured out how the story should be told, I’ll let the songs tell me how to tell it. On this album, I recorded the music of the album completely at my home in Te Aroha, New Zealand using guitars as the main messenger with some elements of piano and filling in the gaps from there using minimal recording gear. As I’m not the best singer in the world, I hired session vocalists to sing the songs remotely so that the songs have the chance to live and thrive. But start to end the main message is finding that hope and joy in all seasons and I hope that people will hear that in the creative process.

Some of my favorite artists as a music fan and a songwriter U2, Brooke Fraser, We Are Messengers, Georgia Lines, Robbie Williams, Taylor Swift, Passenger, Bruce Springsteen, Ed Sheeran, Bon Iver, Jon Toogood and his band Shihad, the list can go on and on and on. Truth of the matter is that as a songwriter I pull from a lot of artists and combine those musical influences (which on paper may not make sense) and combine them with the observations of things I’m seeing happen around me to lean back into the messages of the music we were just talking about with hope and joy. All of these artists have done that with their music by taking their sometimes-broken pieces and making them beautiful. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel that these artists have created. I’m just trying my best to use the wheel to share my broken pieces and make them beautiful to help other people in their own way.

I find that the music is great, but I’m not the smartest guy at social media or the business side of things. Thankfully, my little sister Ruby is all clued up on these things and tries to educate me on it. Overall, I try not to think too much about that side of things, and I work with a mentor named Mike who helps me to get on the right rack and stay on there. But if left to my own devices- my social media is a virtual ghost town that doesn’t get visited too much by the cowboys or the factory workers. It’s part of how I was raised not being too exposed to them until I was borderline in high school and part of me just not getting it too much being more creative than anything else. So, I’m thankful for the help that I do get to stay on track on that front.

The most rewarding part of being a musician to me is being able to see people connect with the songs and find their own memories and moments of hope within them. While I haven’t performed live with this album yet and am coming into this album off the back of other underground projects that didn’t really go too far (save for maybe one that was very mediocre but was thrown a bone or two here and there), that moment where someone connects with one of your songs and what you’re trying to say is one of the most beautiful things in the world (especially when for so many musicians this is how we connect with people and try to process what we want to say- especially those who have Autism and ADHD like me).

My personal life really blends into these songs in ways that are harder to understand, but still able to be relatable. As I mentioned earlier on, these songs started in very dark places (such as my Dad coming to the end of his life, navigating my grief, and the rest of my personal life falling apart). These songs that were born from very dark and horrible things were the songs that I needed to hear and write in those moments so my personal life’s influence on the album is immeasurable and even though what I had to go through to get to these songs was beyond rock bottom and would ordinarily break someone to the point of no return, I’ve got these postcards to show me how far I’ve come and while it did hurt the growth that has come from that I wouldn’t exchange for anything (even though I still really miss my Dad and the things that came before).

Like I was saying a little earlier on in the conversation, the goal with this music has always been to engage culture in conversation about the light and darkness in life, using words and melody to talk about some of the hardest things we feel as humans. We are human and we all feel things that aren’t OK but the hope and joy that you can find even in those darkest moments we go through as humans is very special and filled with a type of magic that can only be found within those moments. Hope and Joy is what I want people to take away from the music I write and if that music and its messages can help even one person then going to those vulnerable places and placing emphasis on the message of the music is worthwhile to me.

In the underground world I’ve had a few ups and downs but the biggest highlight on the journey of BRODIE/ is getting to put LOST and FOUND out into the world. Because it’s not only a musical journey that I’ve been on coming out of that underground world and putting myself and the music I want to put out there more, but it’s also a healing journey for me and a postcard for where I am on my walk of life right now. Coming into beginning the recording and writing of LOST and FOUND I was a very broken man who had a lot of pieces that on his own he couldn’t put back together but God through me has made those broken parts beautiful again by writing this music and to me that’s the biggest accomplishment of my artistic career by using music to put my pieces back together again and still find a way to live on the other side of it.

I’ve just finished the album last week so I’m not long removed from it, but I’ve got some additional songs from those sessions I might look at doing something with down the line. For right now though, I’m promoting the album by engaging in these very thoughtful conversations and spotlighting the album in little bits and pieces in Australia and corners of Asia with a couple of dates in New Zealand. As I’m still recovering from a car crash in June these will be relatively short performances that will more showcase the hidden moments of the album rather than be a definitive tour for the album. At some point next year, I’m planning on doing a more extensive tour for LOST and FOUND that will play around New Zealand with hopefully some more international shows if the right opportunities come around. But this is where I’m at right now and I’m proud of just getting here and where we’re going next.

Growing up in a very rural part of New Zealand and perhaps not being as exposed to the industry as I would like to have been, I used to think that the industry is very isolating where you sell your soul and lose yourself in it. But as I’ve grown up a bit from being 17 and spent some time in it, I’ve learned that the industry can be a welcoming place (even if vulnerable in places). Just like faith, being a part of the music industry is best done in community and I’m looking forward to continuing that exploration and connection in that community as time goes on.

I’m generally one of the worst guys at following trends. To me I just don’t understand what’s in and what’s out or what’s hip or anything like that. My little sister is usually able to tell me and just like social media I have a friend named Mike who keeps an eye on things for me in that department and will advise on the best strategies to use to make the best of those things. The one thing I do know is that the river moves forward and so do we. I’m not exactly looking at the Top 40 for what music I should make (although as a music listener I’ll always take a curious ear to it and cheer on artists and the art we make a musicians and songwriters). But for me and my own music, I just let the songs tell me what they should sound like and write in my own lane. Music is not a competition for the charts like a lot of people think and while it’s nice to get a spotlight on the songs- I still play my own game in the studio and let the river take me where the music needs to go.

The world of LOST and FOUND is a place where I’ve learned to find hope and joy during difficult times in life. In a world that is going through so much negativity, this seems like the right time to bring these songs to you. Whether you’re listening to it on a road trip with friends or in isolation trying to navigate a difficult season, I hope these songs will help spread a bit of hope and joy in a world that needs it. However you find these songs, I hope that these songs will serve you well wherever you find them helpful as we continue to love and grow, wherever we are on our journeys in life. And somewhere down the line I hope to see you in a town near you to share these songs with you.