Brendan Sapp on His First Album, Cardinal, Family, and Living In The Live Experience

So you've been living in Westminster and making music here for so long? How do you feel like the actual songs that you make interact with where you come from and who you are?

I would say some of the songs are, you know. It talks about the rural area we live in… but I don't think that location itself really drives the music. It's more of just, you know, personal experiences and shared experiences with other people. With friends and family and stuff like that.

So bring me a little more into that… is there kind of like a heart or like a concept where this album comes from?

Yeah, there's not really a central theme of the album. Really it's just the seven songs that I felt best about through five or six years of writing a lot of songs. To me, the cohesiveness comes naturally, but also through the way that the project was recorded. To me, cohesion is more so the same people, in the same room, using the same mics, with the same engineer, the same mixer, and the same mastering engineer. And the songs just naturally sound cohesive that way, rather than just writing about a certain theme.

So I guess describe some of the recording process, I mean I know you live tracked it with your band?

Yeah, we live tracked as much as we possibly could, given some constraints. So basically everything was live tracked but vocals and piano. Piano was live tracked, but with a keyboard and then overdubbed with an actual grand piano that was in the studio. We couldn't use it for the actual recording just because, you know, logistical.

Yeah.

Mic placement reasons…

I was big on the fact that I wanted the songs to sound really cohesive in a production sense. Live tracking is basically non-negotiable for me… I think it's hard to explain the feeling that live tracking evokes, but it's the feeling that I'm going for.

I want it to feel like someone just walked into the room and listened… you know? Like they're just sitting in the room with us, listening to us play the songs. I think we definitely captured that. And that's exactly what I was intending.

I think live tracking also just brings through a very strong sense of chemistry.

Mhm… If you're independently tracking each instrument, you are so hyper-fixated on that instrument, and you're so hyper-fixated on your specific parts. With live tracking, you're so much more fixated on the entire product of the band.

I guess let's talk about Cardinal a little bit… It's very obviously inspired by your grandfather, you know? It comes from a place of intense emotion. It feels like an outlet. So like… how did it construct itself?

Uh, that song was probably one of the oldest ones that we recorded. So I wrote that probably three years ago. I mean, it started out how basically every song that I write starts out, acoustic. Um, and I kind of just show it to the band, and, you know, we workshop a little bit…

But that song's been pretty locked down for three years. We didn't change much. The addition of bass player Anthony Alletag and piano player Ian Hoke definitely drives the song a little bit more, makes it a little bit, you know, more interesting. But me, Carter (guitar), and Braeden (drums), have been playing that song for three years, basically the same way that it was recorded.

So like, where does a lot of the emotional pull come from? If you don't mind bringing us there.

For a couple of years, I wrote probably three or four different songs about my grandfather. And I just felt like none of them were really clicking the way I wanted them to, and capturing the emotion that I was going for.

Once Cardinal was written, that's when I stopped writing songs about my grandfather. That was the one.

That felt like a resolution?

Yeah. That was definitely the one. That was it. I mean, I guess you could say that song has taken three or four different iterations because of that.

How did he inspire you? And like, you know, were you guys close? Is that like where a lot of that drive comes from?

Yeah. I mean, we were pretty close. He passed away when I was about twelve years old. Um, but yeah, we still talk about him all the time in the house. Just the funny things he did and, you know, all the memories of him. I think he's always there every time.

Every time we see a cardinal around the house, he's always mentioned. It just comes from memory and, you know, a lot of emotion… A lot of love in that song for sure.

Do you think there's a lot of like… I don't know, this is kind of a weird existential question; but do you think there's a lot of sadness in loss, or do you think it's more of like… a celebration almost?

Isn't there some sort of like, twisted beauty in the fact that there's so much love that goes into that, and so much love that comes out of that?

Sometimes you can just kind of feel, feel that sadness. It just kind of hits you. And then, you know, you think about it for the day. Then you realize that the sadness comes from a place of loving him so much and thinking of him. So, I think it's not really a super sad song. It's just sad in nature because, you know, a lot of the stuff is in his memory.

Last question on Cardinal, did you throw a niche Pine Grove reference in that opening line?

No, I realized though.

Totally unintentional?

I realized that way after. People are gonna think I'm lying here, but his favorite tree was a dogwood and his favorite bird was a cardinal. So we put a dogwood tree in our backyard, just kind of in his memory. And there was a cardinal in that tree. So that is literal.

So there's lots of themes of growing up and loss, what else can we expect from the album?

A lot of inner self-reflection, personal experiences and a little bit more sadness. But there's some upbeat driving songs too.

Do you feel like there's any big things that should be included about the album that we didn't really go over?

I guess just highlighting the band that played on the album. Carter on guitar, Braeden on drums, those have been my main guys for as long as I've been playing in a band.

Then Anthony Alletag on bass and Ian Hoke on keys and piano. Yeah, I definitely don't think this album would be a thing without them. If anybody else had played on it, it would sound a lot different. I'm really grateful, I wouldn't have changed anything about it.

We've just grown to be really close after recording it together. They believed in it so much and they were all-in on it. Yeah, couldn't be more grateful to them.

How does it feel to translate that dynamic to a live setting?

It feels great. I mean, especially playing with this band. I think I'll never not be nervous before a show. But as soon as we start, I'm so locked in and like, just having the best time.

I mean, what more could you want? Playing with your best friends. It's an amazing, amazing feeling.

Brendan's debut album "My Old Car" releases June 12th. 

You can catch him play it in full at 1623 Brewing Co in Eldersburg, MD on June 19th.

Listen to Cardinal here.

Keep up with Brendan here.