He comes from Alberta in Canada, based in Los Angeles, model Braeden Wright is in the exact point of his artistic career and as a model. He has released an alternative independent album called: “What Was Once Gold (The Demo Sessions)” and recently he was signed by famous agency LA Models. Everything is settling to perfection in the life of Braeden, and it demonstrates it in the following photos taken by Henry Wu in Los Angeles.
On May 2017, Braeden puts on every streaming service and online retailers the song title “Hold on to your Love” as first single, a rain of guitars, that softens the voice of Braeden, but when he’s raising his voice in the choirs, takes you there, where you can go back to several places when you close your eyes.
FM: At what point in your career are you? Is that where you really want to be?
BW: I think that’s always a hard question… because the further along you get in your career, you always find new goals to strive for along the way. I’m really happy with everything I’ve done so far, but I don’t think you can ever be successful without having a part of you that still wants to push even after you’ve reached your last goal… you know? It’s the only way to keep growing and improving, and that’s something I always want to do. I will say that I am definitely grateful and excited for where I am in this moment, absolutely— even though I think there is still a lot of road left.
FM: Congratulations on being signed by LA Models, will you divide your time between castings and the album promo?
BW: Thank you. Yes, I am incredibly excited to be working with them; and I will be doing both at once. It all works together in my mind, absolutely. I love fashion as well as music— and I think that they are incredibly intertwined with one another. Rock n roll has always been part fashion, part music… that’s what makes it exciting. At the end of the day though, it’s all art— and art, emotion, creativity… connecting to people… that is what I love.
FM: When I hear your album— I get this particular feeling and I go back years… It takes me to the time of the late ‘90s and the sounds of a young Beck, Morrisey, Coldplay… and then I feel Keith Urban has taken your voice and your body…
BW: That’s a huge compliment… Wow 😂. Those are all big influences of mine in one way or another— so I love hearing that. I’m not sure what else to say… but I love that.
FM: Have you written all the songs on the album?
BW: Yes. Everything you hear was written and performed entirely by me… The lyrics, the songs, the music, all of the instruments… Its all me recording on top of myself to create it. I didn’t have another producer or much outside influence so it was a bit difficult at times to be able to step back and try to really know what was right or not, or have a second opinion in the process— but at the same time, I can look back on it and feel proud that everything there is authentically and totally me. It all came from a very real place and I had absolute control to do everything I wanted— at least to the best of my ability… and budget (laughs)… There was no one telling me to do anything a particular way except for myself. So I’m quite proud of that. I had a vision and a feeling on almost everything you see that I felt compelled and honestly pretty stubborn to make a certain way, and I feel like I got pretty close to getting it all out the way I saw it in my mind… Even if someone doesn’t like it, that’s fine. Not everybody is going to like your music— that’s the nature of it. But when someone does, and they really connect to it… it’s just that much more rewarding because you know that it is you directly connecting to them and not someone else. And for me, I think that connection is really one of the most precious and special things about making music in the first place.
FM: What inspired you to make a record full of passion and alternative rock, full of guitars and acoustic sounds— when the new generation is hearing a lot of musical noise?
BW: Really, that is just the type of music that I love and that I connect to. This record is just me trying to be who I am at the time that it was made— and really trying to make sense of everything I was going through and feeling… I wasn’t necessarily trying to make this for anyone to market to whatever is cool or not at the moment— so it’s going to be a bit different than what is on trend in the charts, for sure… But I just had these songs that kept appearing in my head and I had to get them out one way or another, or else I felt like I was going to go a bit mad, you know? Writing the whole album was this unbelievable form of catharsis for me. It was so necessary for me to do. It all just got to a point where I couldn’t do anything else but make this… Many of the songs were born from these remnant feelings of loneliness and regret from broken relationships I’ve had, especially one in particular that had me in a really heartbroken place for what felt like a very long time… When I was at my lowest point with all of that was when I finally started work on the songs that would eventually turn into this album— And once I started, I couldn’t stop. But, there is a lot of hope in this album too. It’s a bit like life… you get a mix of everything. Some songs are much more adventurous and optimistic than others— but in general it is a journey on love— discovered, lost, and hopefully— still able to be found once again. What once was gold— and if you can somehow find it again.
FM: What does the track title “Lover, Your Texas Blood Was Spilled but I Am Here to Heal You Now” mean? Is it a personal experience? Tell me about it.
BW: That one is definitely a personal track. I try not to get too specific because when I write, it’s to process emotions— they may come from a specific idea or event that is personal but the feelings themselves are more universal and abstract than just that… and sometimes maybe even are a fictional version of how I dreamt something could have turned out instead, you know? Many of the songs actually came to me in a dream… so like dreams, they are tied to what is going on in the mind, but they are also only just a reflection. So they are all still very open to the listener to be whatever they identify in it… A lot of my lyrics can be quite literal at times, so you’ll hear what I’m feeling with honesty if you do start looking. But I mostly like to write about feelings themselves— and just try to get them out or make sense of them… no matter what the subject matter is. I write based on feeling— and I have a very strong connection to them. I write solely based on that— I was never classically trained or had anyone to teach me how to play or how to write… I can only write by closing my eyes and feeling and listening to the colors of the sounds and how they make me feel… and if they make me feel like the emotion I am trying to get out. And when I feel, I want the song to feel too, not just tell something plainly. It’s a strange thing. But that song in particular… that song arrived after I met this one girl in Los Angeles. We were both feeling very wounded from past relationships, though both in our own ways. Through each other we were able to start healing the wounds together… and at first I made this decision that I wanted to try to really be there for her, and very consciously try to heal her and show her not to be afraid anymore. I really cared about her a lot. I wanted to try and neutralize all of the bad that she had gone through with her last lover, who was not a good person, and did not treat her how she deserved… but then I realized that really, she was actually the one healing me through all of this. So the title is reference to her. She’s from Texas. I sent her the song after it was finished before anyone else. So… she knows. Its very much dedicated to her.
FM: Did you dedicate “Piece of You” to anyone in particular?
BW: This one is definitely to a specific past love, yes— as are many them. If they feel real to you, like there’s a real story there… that’s because they are. This wasn’t an album where I had to pretend or watch movies to draw from or write fiction. Almost every single song on here came from a very personal place. A lot of it was pretty confessional and all of it means a lot to me… So much of it is simply me trying to vocalize exactly what I was feeling. Sitting down and writing when I can’t stop feeling something… that is medicine to me in those times… I know that might be cliché, but I think that’s because it’s true for so many of the great songwriters. They just can’t help but write sometimes, and I experience songwriting the same way. This song though is actually one of a few that came to me in a dream. This one night in particular I just couldn’t sleep. I kept having these short anxious dreams but never really able to fall asleep. You’re in that strange delirious state. At the time, I was pretty broken up over losing someone, and I was in that sort of denial stage where I was second guessing everything all the time, over analyzing. Wondering what was. Questioning myself so constantly. I almost couldn’t stop thinking about it and not much else. I think very deeply about things and when I care, I care an enormous amount. Sometimes that can be really hard to shut off. To just not care. I don’t know how people do it, I’m working on that (laughs)… But then, in the middle of the night this entire chorus just came into my head— melody, instruments, lyrics and all. In my mind, when songs appear I can hear them so fully fleshed out that it’s like listening to them on the radio… and often that is just how I write. I don’t think much, I just listen. I just feel. It’s like little muses in your head and you just are there to listen and connect to whatever is coming through. Your mind is making sense of whatever it is you feel, and out it comes… but with some people, it just happens to come out as sound. So I woke up, wrote them down into my voice notes on my iPhone… then the verse melodies arrived as well. The whole thing took about 10 minutes to write out with my voice what would become the final song… But once I got it out, I could finally sleep again.
FM: I feel that I really identify with “Jupiter”— I love it, it is my favorite song. How did it happen?
BW: ‘Jupiter’ is very much about longing, on both sides but in different ways. It’s about that past love that you wish could have turned out differently… That you wish you could have fixed what was broken, especially now that its already over, and you feel like you see things now from another perspective… It’s just that there was so much fighting against you. It’s very confessional— definitely a love song, but one that is fighting for that love to hold on. You believe in it that much— even though it’s just both of you against the world.
I was alone in my old apartment in New York, and I had all of this running through my head. One night I came home from a party somewhere… I had spent the whole night pretending to be happy and fine but on the inside, I was breaking. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. So when I finally got home I just grabbed my acoustic guitar, and out came those first three chords. It must have been 2am. I was completely alone at the time, so I just started playing and humming. I played almost the entire song and melody in one take into my phone, and it just arrived totally improvised, many of the lyrics as well. It was just me staring at the moon, alone in Brooklyn. The lyrics I wrote all through the night and the morning— and there it was. I knew at the time it was much more than just an acoustic guitar song, I could hear the other parts in my head— but I didn’t have the instruments to write the rest until I got out to Los Angeles a few months later, where I finally got to make ‘Jupiter’ as it now stands on the album.
FM: Will you do any promotional video?
BW: I absolutely love music videos. I think they are an underrated and under appreciated art form— but now with YouTube, they are starting to come back. I do have some planned for the future and I’m really excited about trying my hand at them. I think they can be so special if you actually really care about what you are doing with it.
FM: Do you have any dates in Los Angeles where we can see you?
BW: I definitely want to start playing live, yes… So hopefully very soon x.
You can now listened and get this on Apple Music, Braeden Wright’s What Once Was Gold (The Demo Sessions).
Also is streaming in everywhere: fanlink.to/bWgLd
Back in April, PnV Network mentioned Braeden and did an article with pictures by David Wagner, don’t forget to visit this:
Today’s Dish: Hot Canadian Abs – Braeden Wright by David Wagner / PnV Network
