I think we can all agree that the first couple of months of 2020 would have it that we all owe 2019 a massive apology for all the bitching and moaning we did then.
One person who really quite nailed 2019, however, is Jules Terea, front man for alternative soul-rock band Brynn, who had just come off a wildly successful run as an actor in Marc Lottering’s “Aunty Merle, It’s A Girl” musical theatre production at The Baxter Theatre in Cape Town, and had been forced into lockdown with less than no time to stock up on alcohol or smokes.
The show had already been confirmed for another couple of runs in Joburg and Cape Town, when COVID-19, in one fell swoop, put an end to those plans, and we went into lockdown.
Highlights from Terea’s lockdown include an exclusive acoustic balcony performance for the tenants of his apartment block, a will-sing-for-wine situation that turned out to be quite a magical experience, and a digital collaboration called #OurHomes.
Terea elaborates on the latter, “Shortly after that, a really amazing dude called Ethan Storm contacted me about the #OurHomes project which was a really cool initiative with myself, Chantel Von T and Jak Thomas, where we basically sent interview clips and sang some of our favourite songs from our apartments,” he recalls fondly.
Having grown up in both South Africa (his mother) and New Zealand (his father), Terea explains (in a perfectly blended Saffa-meets-Kiwi accent, I might add) his decision to pursue his music career in South Africa, “I came back to South Africa (in 2017) for a holiday and I sent Gavin Minter — musician, event-organizer, and founder of production house Real Wired Music — a message asking if there were any gigs I could be part of and Gavin said, ‘You know actually I just launched this mini version of the Cape Town Folk & Acoustic Music Festival which I’m calling Nu Breed and it’s happening at the City Hall and if you’d be keen I’d love to have you on the lineup.’
Excitedly he continues, “And for me it was like, ‘What the fuck is happening? I’d only played at like Armchair and at open mics so it was fucking crazy. I was on stage and it felt like the whole scene was there. It was quite a big game-changing moment for me, and I was like, ‘Fuck it I’m not going anywhere I’m not staying right here.’”
Inspired by Nu Breed, Terea curated his own couple of shows that he called Duende — a Spanish term for a heightened state of emotion and expression — Sessions, curating lineups with some of his favourite musicians on the scene, two of whom he would shortly after start Brynn with: David van Vuuren, vocalist and guitarist of Southern Wild and Hezron Chetty, violinist and composer.
Terea talks me through the Brynn inception process and how, in no time they were in studio to track their debut album, Querencia. In just over two years, Brynn had gone from an idea to a rehearsal room to studio to every single festival lineup in South Africa. Anyone who has seen Brynn perform can attest to their powerful energy, this magnificent wall of sound that they created together, and I attribute this, to an extent, to having had three front men in the band.
Jules speaks of his ex band mates with respect and admiration, “Dave is in my eyes one of the best front men I’ve ever seen in my life, and Hez had mastered so many styles from rock to classical… Having three front men in a band, the challenges do come in a sense, but [with Brynn] everyone wanted to give everyone the opportunity to shine. I feel like it ran its course really beautifully and it came to a natural close at a really good time ‘cause we had accomplished a really beautiful synergy between us.”
Terea is to the brim with excitement when he talks about the future of Brynn, “Having Tristan Bell (guitarist) in the band, what’s really interesting is that he comes with a sort of modern alternative rock sound, this Nothing But Thieves sound. And I feel like we’re at the point, the four of us now, where there’s an almost spiritual musical understanding between us, like every decision we make, every suggestion, is for the song.”
The songs now are deeply moving and very emotional and very honest, a lot more personal than they’ve ever been, and basically what we’re going for now, we want this big, sort of massive gig sound, a dynamic modern soul-rock sound. Really the main goal for us that we want our music to be impactful, emotionally.
And that’s exactly what they have achieved with their first single, “In This Life”, as the new 4-piece iteration of Brynn: Jules Terea on vocals and guitar, Alex Smilie on bass, Tristan Bell on lead guitar, and Eddy Kriel on drums. The song starts vulnerably low, and they spend time building it up. Terea’s vocal performance is as powerful as I’ve heard it. And by the time the music crescendos, you’re wrapped up in a blanket of sound and emotion.
Terea talks about the feeling behind the lyrics and the music and concludes, “This song is about love and devotion and it’s about that sort of other-worldy sort of absolutely fucking ginormous love that we expeirence in life for so many different things. I just want people to feel that amount of love. When we perform it, I always feel hopeful, so that’s the main thing I want people to take away from it.”
