Bre Kennedy | Live From Relix

0:00 Well, hello.

0:01 My name is Bree Kennedy.

0:03 And I'm coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee.

0:06 Um actually from Odessa, Texas.

0:08 I was just telling everybody that I came from singing with Need to Breathe.

0:12 Um and I've been on tour with them for the last 3 weeks.

0:15 Um and now I'm getting into a season of putting out this record.

0:21 And I just made an album called The Alchemist.

0:24 I put it out January 30th and um

0:28 this whole record has actually been really life-changing for me.

0:32 Um the same week that I put my record out, my my grandmother passed away.

0:38 And she is my favorite person in the whole world.

0:41 And so I've kind of in real time been

0:43 navigating um what these songs mean to me now.

0:47 And so I'm going to play you some songs

0:49 from the record that are changing me in real time.

0:54 This song is called Good Grief and I wrote it about

0:59 the seemingly mundane moments um in our everyday life that we look over,

1:03 especially when we're on a journey to like the next accolade.

1:08 And so for me it's like when I'm going through waves of grief,

1:11 watching my dog sunbathe outside and if I

1:16 have like a really horrible work Zoom meeting

1:20 and then I get to like dance in the kitchen with my friend and make dinner.

1:25 Just the little things in life that really

1:27 matter when we're going through our waves of grief.

1:30 This is called Good Grief.

4:34 Thank you.

4:36 We have that good morning airport voice.

4:40 Uh this next song is a song that I

4:43 wrote with um my songwriting hero, Lori McKenna.

4:47 Um I believe she might be in Mass right up the road,

4:51 but I wrote this with her probably 6 years ago,

4:56 maybe 7 years ago now, right right before 2020.

5:01 When everybody was kind of feeling like they needed to reframe their life.

5:07 And I remember we were on a Zoom session and having small talk

5:11 and like meeting my hero for the first time and she said like,

5:16 you know, are you married?

5:17 Do you have kids?

5:18 And I answered before I have a daughter, I want to learn how to do my taxes.

5:23 I think that's what I said.

5:26 And she like read right through the BS and she was like,

5:29 why'd you say before I have a daughter?

5:30 Most people say before I have kids.

5:33 And I was like, oh no.

5:36 So I I joke that I hope this song

5:37 pays for the therapy session that Lori gave me.

5:41 Because um it's always really hard to condense this down in one story,

5:46 but basically I reached out to my mother

5:48 for the first time after writing this song.

5:51 And my mother struggled with addiction my whole life and her whole life.

5:56 And it was just right on time.

5:58 Like we wrote this song and I reached out to my mom

6:01 and I just wanted to have like a Coca-Cola with her.

6:05 And I got to do that at my grandma's house and I got to ask

6:08 her what it was like to be a mom for the first time when she had me.

6:14 And I remember, you know, thinking she would give me all of her life story,

6:18 but all she said was like, I was just doing my best.

6:23 And I I hit me and I was like, yeah, me too.

6:25 And we're not that different.

6:27 And um my mother and I have a beautiful and complex relationship now

6:32 and my mom helps me tend to my grandmother's garden at her house.

6:37 And um this song is just for really anybody who has the audacity

6:41 to wake up and try to be better than they were the day before.

6:44 It's called Before I Have a Daughter.

7:05 Before I have a daughter, I want to build myself a garden.

7:14 Got to have to water on the good days and bad ones, too.

7:24 Then I'll try college.

7:28 Realize it's not for me.

7:34 And the takeaway is a heartbreak.

7:37 The time it takes to make lemonade of my family tree.

7:45 Then I'll go make mistakes and find a way to find something to love.

7:54 Then I'll start believing life is a merry-go-round holding me down until

8:04 I start to see that the spiral was only building me up.

8:11 Look at me now, I'm complete, making up for all that I lost time.

8:16 Learning how to see myself through my mother's eyes.

8:22 Before I have a daughter I've always been a daughter.

8:36 Got it by my feeling ability to dream.

8:40 I stop and I stop crying.

8:46 I'm terrified one day she'll get that from me.

8:51 I have to watch her go out make mistakes the way I did when I was like she was.

9:01 And I started believing life is a merry-go-round holding me down until

9:11 I start to see that the spiral was only building me up.

9:17 Look at me now, I'm complete, making up for all that I lost time.

9:23 Learning how to see myself through my mother's eyes.

9:29 Before I have a daughter and now I'm going up.

9:58 I'm making mistakes, breaking the chains before I break any more hearts.

10:06 Fathers, be good to your daughters.

10:11 Daughters will love like you do.

10:15 Girls become lovers.

10:18 They turn their hands to mothers.

10:23 So, mothers, be good to your daughters, too.

10:37 Before I have a daughter, I want to build myself a garden.

10:46 The kind I have to water on the good days and bad ones, too.

10:58 Thank you very much.

11:03 Well, I'll tell you what.

11:05 They got me a little emotional this morning.

11:08 All before my first coffee.

11:13 Let's see.

11:16 Let's tune this guy up a little bit.

11:18 We're going to be brave.

11:20 And we're going to try the highest song on the record.

11:25 Well, here, what time is it right now?

11:26 It's like 3:00.

11:27 3:27.

11:29 I'm talking like it's the morning.

11:32 I got like 3 hours of sleep last night.

11:34 We stayed at a I think it's called like a Town Suite by Marriott in Odessa,

11:39 Texas last night on tour.

11:41 You know those air vents that are just like

11:45 and you wake up feeling like SpongeBob without water.

11:51 Okay.

11:54 This is the title track to my album, The Alchemist.

11:57 Um have you any of you read The Alchemist, the book?

12:01 Yeah, me too.

12:02 It was one of those books that just sat on my shelf and my friends were like,

12:04 "You have to read this." You're like, "Yeah,

12:06 okay." And I read it and um I remember I was in the valley low of my life,

12:13 which is going to happen again and again and again.

12:16 We all go through them.

12:18 And I wish somebody would have told me that life

12:20 is just peaks and valleys and that's the whole ride.

12:24 And I remember I read the book and I was like,

12:25 "Man, I have spent my whole life trying to hit accolades.

12:31 That's all I've been doing my whole life.

12:33 And then when I hit the accolade, I'm like at another little valley low of like,

12:38 "Okay, what's next?" And going back to good grief,

12:43 like just realizing that it sounds so cheesy, but it genuinely is how we show up

12:50 in the valley lows of our life that really matter.

12:53 And so, I wrote this song with Melissa Fuller and Jon Stark.

12:57 And I remember we were writing with the perspective of like,

13:01 "Here's to the alchemist.

13:02 Here's to the person who takes what they have and makes something

13:05 beautiful." And I remember Melissa Fuller looking at me and being like,

13:10 "Cool, you can tell other people as much as you want,

13:14 you know, here here's to you.

13:16 But like, why are you the alchemist of your own

13:18 life and what made you look for the light in really dark spaces?" And I grew up

13:25 in a home where you had to look for the light.

13:29 And so, I wrote a story about it.

13:32 And um I think if I were to tell people the story

13:35 of why I am the alchemist in my own life, it would be this.

13:50 My mother cut on chill in her eyes.

13:54 She was born in a fire, so she lived in the rain.

13:59 And I got a sky that was whipped open wide and it moved like a river.

14:07 It washed me away.

14:11 So, I light a candle, carry faith.

14:21 I find a little faith when all that's left to make

14:25 is friends with a girl who's just doing her best.

14:31 Here's to the alchemist.

14:38 My broken pieces are my tapestry.

14:43 Every stitch holds together the story of me.

14:48 I fell asleep at the wheel of my life and I felt upside down.

14:55 Lost everything.

14:59 So, I light a candle, carry faith.

15:09 I find a little faith when all that's left to make is beautiful mess with this.

15:16 Nothing left to give.

15:19 Here's to the alchemist.

15:26 I am.

15:30 I am.

15:40 Every song, every scar, every line, every word that I say can't take back,

15:48 but I'm finding I'm finding the strength on the other side.

15:54 Always always dying to find.

15:58 Yeah.

16:01 Light a candle, carry faith.

16:08 I find a little faith when all that's left to make is beautiful mess,

16:16 no matter what the outcome is.

16:21 So, here's to the alchemist.

16:36 Thank you.

16:41 That's really sweet cuz at the very end of the album

16:44 is this voice note from my grandma and she was so funny.

16:47 Like if you could imagine her, she had like a red

16:49 robe that she was holding onto it all the time, Palmolive and Coca-Cola.

16:54 Um and she's just telling me at the very end of the record like

16:57 a storm's going to come and she was talking about the 2020 tornado at the time.

17:03 And I remember her just saying at the end of the record,

17:06 you know, "You're going to be okay.

17:07 Just follow the light.

17:08 Come home to me and Mom and the door is always open for you." And it

17:12 led to a whole chapter that is on the record if you want to listen.

17:18 Thank you guys for having me.

17:20 Thank you.

17:22 Yes, coffee.