The world knows Dean Brody the country star. But what about Dean Brody the B.C. Lion?
“I dreamed of punting for the B.C. Lions when I was a kid,” Brody jokes of his alternative career path options. “Lui Passaglia was my hero.”
Fortunately for country music fans, Brody’s childhood dream of playing professional football “didn’t work out.” And, in the end, the 41-year-old was just fine with that.
“I think you end up doing what you’re good at,” he says of music. “If I was a really good javelin thrower, and I could get up on a field and strut my stuff, and throw the farthest — I would be a javelin thrower.
“I think you find the thing you’re good at and you end up loving it.”
And while the British Columbia native — Brody grew up in Jaffray, a small town in southeastern B.C. with a population of approximately 820 people — may have once dreamed of punting the pigskin professionally, music has admittedly always been his biggest passion.
“The love of music was something that my dad instilled in me, indirectly, and he doesn’t even know it,” he explains. “He was always listening to the radio on the farm. He would have it going in the truck or the garage. It was always on and so, even though he’s not a musician, he likes music, so I was exposed to it.”
Brody’s first musical outfit was a garage band with his childhood friends when he was 14. Fast forward, oh, 27 years or so, and Brody has turned that exposure into an award-winning career. And 2016 may well be the winningest of them all.
While he’s collected various accolades throughout his career, the country crooner picked up four Canadian Country Music Awards in September for his platinum-selling single Bring Down the House including: Songwriter of the Year, Single of the Year, CMT Video of the Year and Top Selling Canadian Single of the Year.
And did anyone mention Brody just released his sixth album, titled Beautiful Freakshow? Ya, there’s that too.
But the road to this point hasn’t always been a smooth one (not even with one of those 4×4 trucks name-dropped in so many a country song). Since initially signing with a major record label in 2008, Brody admits he’s had to step back and consider his career trajectory several times.
“My American record label was Broken Bow … but I had a bit of a run-in with them after my first song because of some heavy arm twisting … trying to make me go with management that they wanted but that wasn’t in my best interest,” he recalls. “I feel like, as an artist, there are so many things that are out of your control, you want to have management you can trust. They say that, you need to have somebody in your corner. And they were having none of it.”
Brody says the Broken Bow team was “really aggressive” about assigning him a new manager but he refused to agree. Instead, he asked to be removed from the label’s star-studded lineup.
“I just said, I don’t want to be a part of this,” he says. “And to their credit, they let me go. I know other songwriters who their record label just keeps them on for another five years and just destroys their lives.”
He learned a valuable lesson from that management debacle. In fact, it enabled him to see a side of the business, fairly early on in his career, that he knew he didn’t want to kowtow to.
“One of the senior guys at the label, not the president, but one of the senior guys, called me and said, ‘You know Dean, this business is not about integrity. It’s about compromise. And as soon as you learn that, you’ll figure this town out,’ ” Brody recounts. “And I was like, well, we’re just not going to get along then because I’m not going to roll over on somebody who I believe in just so that I can succeed.”
Brody is the first to admit walking away from a label that saw his name on a roster including country superstars such as Jason Aldean and Thompson Square likely cost him a modicum of fame.
“If I had gone along with it, and played by the boys’ rules or whatever, it might have been fine. And I would probably have a bigger career,” he says. “But the career I do have, I’ve been surrounded with people who are really good people.”
After leaving his U.S. label, Brody signed with Open Road Recordings in Canada. It’s a label he says is all around a better fit. Especially i
n contrast to the team Broken Bow had proposed, which Brody says included people he “wouldn’t even want to have coffee with.”
In addition to keeping Brody in good company, the move to Open Road also afforded him the opportunity to explore the parameters of his musical tastes. And the results of that exploration are exactly what fans will discover on his new album.
“There’s a part of me that would like to song write outside the box a little bit,” he says. “Every record, (producer Matt Rovey) and I love to take a little bit of a risk.”
On his latest 10-track release, that “risk” comes in the form of the single called Beautiful Freakshow, a track that sees Brody incorporate several non-traditional elements into a country song — including a rap vocal contribution by Halifax’s own Shevy Price.
“It’s a freak, that song,” Brody says with a laugh. “It’s a mash-up of a lot of different things.”
Brody says the song reminds him of old Western films with a touch of harmonica in the background, combined with mentions of Old Hollywood. It’s an interesting contrast, to say the least.
“The whole idea of the song is two different people who are in love, coming from two different cultures or two different backgrounds. And it shouldn’t work, but they do,” he explains. “So, you have this country song, but then you have this rap come in. You couldn’t have two more different worlds colliding.”
The peculiar composition may be the first of many surprises in the country star’s future projects.
“As an artist, you’re kind of limited because you have to stick to the country genre, which I love,” he says. “But it would be fun to do something crazy on the side.”
Brody says he would love to work with artists in other genres such as singer/songwriter Rihanna. While a Dean Brody-Rihanna collaboration may sound like a stretch, it may not be too far afield given the current state of country music.
“If you think of ‘Love on the Brain,’ that could have been a country song,” Brody reasons of the superstar’s single. “If Carrie Underwood would have done it, it would have been a straight-up hit.”
The genre-bending exploration of music, in general, and country music, specifically, has been a long time coming, according to Brody.
“The diversification of country happened with the iTunes world and streaming. All of a sudden, it was OK to download a Taylor Swift song and a Beyonce song on your same playlist,” he says. “Now, we have a generation of people, and even the parents of this generation, who have all different genres on their playlist.”
Brody points to the popularity of fellow country artist Sam Hunt as an example of the growing reach of the genre beyond the cow polk and honky-tonk crowd.
“Country folks love him, but people that are more urban also really love Sam,” he says.
As a result, the genre’s new fans have ushered in a new sound, allowing country music artists and songwriters to venture beyond slide guitars and boot-tapping ballads about heartbreak. Although, there still is a fair bit of that, too.
“It’s an exciting time to be a writer, and also a producer because you don’t have to stick with a steel guitar, fiddle, bass, piano and drums,” he says.
But while Brody’s sound may have broadened, his inspiration has stayed very much the same.
“I’m fascinated by people,” he says. “That’s where I draw most of my inspiration from.”
Brody says he largely pulls from the backwoods recollections gleaned from his upbringing in rural B.C. and later, Nashville, Tenn., that inspire him when he sits down to write.
“Also, movies. I love movies and I love stories,” he says. “When we tell a story, we are celebrating something like somebody’s life or how somebody dealt with something.”
And if you’re wondering, he says his list of favourite movies includes (unsurprisingly) the 2000 Ridley Scott film, Gladiator starring Russell Crowe, and (somewhat shockingly) the 2015 film Age of Adaline.
“Age of Adaline, that movie killed me,” he says of the Vancouver-filmed movie starring Blake Lively, Michiel Huisman and Harrison Ford. “That move was unreal. When Harrison Ford first sees her again, the look on his face kind of breaks your heart. But in a good way.”
It’s tidbits like this, coupled with the love-centric topic material found in many of Brody’s songs, that would easily lead a listener to believe the country superstar is a big softy at heart. But if Brody’s material makes him seem particularly taken with the idea of love, it’s more coincidental than intentional.
“Do I write a lot about love?” he asks when questioned about the emotional theme that routinely pops up in his work. “Love fascinates me. It’s the ideal. It’s the greatest virtue, I guess. But I’ve never really thought about it that much.
“Maybe I’m providing an escape for people by writing about a beautiful love story.”
Well, that or he just refuses to give in to the antiquated expectations that country music be solely about heartbreak.
“It’s funny because country music has always been known for heartbreak and drinking. Like, ‘Oh, she left me!’, but I don’t think I sing about that much. And, if I do, it’s a bittersweet kind of thing,” he says. “The whole tear in my beer thing — I never really got into it.”