Chris Brown and Kate Fenner have been playing music together for over half their lives. Starting out 18 years ago as high school students at Lawrence Park Collegiate in Toronto, they fronted beloved local funk-popsters the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir before relocating to New York in 1996. They’ve made three full-lengths since then, the lush, literate albums showcasing Brown’s keyboard wizardry and Fenner’s remarkable red wine-and-smoke voice.
But the true hallmark of the Brown and Fenner sound has always been the ineffable bond between the two-whether it’s Kate bringing Chris’ lyrics to life on the records, or the two harmonizing live like they were born to sing together, their personal and musical simpatico is remarkable. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that they’re releasing their first solo albums this month.
“I’d never really written by myself before, and suddenly I realized that when some of the songs started coming together that they were different in spirit than what Chris and I do,” says Fenner from their home in Brooklyn. “I talked to Chris about how he felt about that, and he was completely encouraging, and in the meantime, I said, ‘Well, there’s a bunch of stuff that you’ve probably haven’t found a home for…'”
“Kate just had all these songs that she had written and they all kind of belonged together,” Brown chimes in. “I have lots of stuff that I don’t bring in to what Kate and I do, so it was well-timed. It just made sense writing-wise.”
Over the years, Brown had written most of the duo’s material, drawing on their activist roots (Brown spearheaded the GasCD project in 1999 to raise funds for protesters arrested at the Summit of the Americas, and more recently their song “Resist War” has been a popular download on the Internet), while Fenner was the front-and-centre voice.
“As a writer, having the palate of a voice like Kate’s allows me a kind of emotional breadth that’s almost orchestral,” Brown explains. “Some of the stuff that Kate and I do, just the two of us, it goes a lot of places dynamically. It’s always great writing for your own voice, but because we’ve had all this experience and time together and all these common influences, but yet developed different skills and different talents, I think that probably what I write for the two of us is as affected by Kate’s voice as Kate’s voice is affected by what I write. There’s kind of a symbiosis there. In both going out on our own this year, it helps us really appreciate and understand what it is we do together, almost like a third entity.”
Fenner agrees, having found a new creative outlet in writing her own songs for the first time for her Horses and Burning Cars album. Most of the album was born out of poetry that Fenner had written that developed into songs as she sat in her kitchen with her guitar.
“I found that having had the courage-and it took courage for me, anyway-to do the record on my own, that I understand the whole picture a lot better,” she offers. “So when we go and do our stuff, it just has more breadth, and it’s more precious to me. At some level I can appreciate it much more deeply.
“And part of it is Chris’s songwriting-our personalities are very different-he’s very patient and I’m very impatient. So most of the songs I wrote came out of single very intense feelings. It’s not right or wrong to go about it that way, but it really makes me appreciate Chris’ songwriting, which also comes out of single intense feelings, but he’s prepared to sit them all the way through until they widen. And that’s what I would like to aspire to as a writer, but I don’t think I’m there yet.”
While both solo outings are low-key, mostly acoustic folk-pop records, Brown and Fenner took very different approaches to making their respective albums.
“My album (Burden of Belief) started on a mono recorder, just sitting in the kitchen,” Brown explains. “So the album kind of stayed mono, even as some of the songs were dressed up. The process of these songs was just very direct and unadorned. It felt very good as a writer for me to sing all the way through a record, too-you kind of take responsibility for things.”
“In my case, some things came very, very suddenly after long periods of high agitation,” Fenner laughs. “I can think of one in particular where I was out in the Hamptons for a few days, got home and it was the end of summer, a beautiful evening, and I was completely restless-I didn’t know what to do with myself. And so I sat out this terrible feeling that I was a worthless tool, and then I sat down and wrote a song, top to bottom. I made up the chords; I don’t even know how it happened.
“So a lot of it came like that, which is a little unnerving, because now when I think, ‘Okay, you’re a songwriter-so stay in tonight, make yourself some broccoli, and write a song’, except I don’t know how to do it! I still have no ‘craft’-it seems more like an accident.”
The pair may have different creative methods, but they’re on the same page when it comes to their long personal and musical relationship. Both appear on each other’s record (and they’ve already started on their next album together), and they’ll be touring across Canada as a duo this month to promote the CDs.
“It means everything. It’s our whole lives,” says Fenner simply. “From an emotional standpoint, it’s everything. Through discovering this process on my own, of what it’s like to say what you mean and try to stand behind it by performing it and releasing it and all that, it makes our job a tiny bit different. I really take refuge right now in my friendship and my musical partnership with Chris now that I know what kind of courage it takes to do what we do.
“I think I was getting to run a little under the radar all these years, because I relied on my voice, but if it came around to pointing fingers, I could always step into the shadows and say, ‘I didn’t write it!'” she laughs. “But once you’ve written anything, then you can start to imagine writing everything. And the compassion and the allegiance you feel to someone who’s trying to communicate in that way is changed, it’s altered. So (our partnership) has deepened, in my opinion. And not just because of time… Because Chris Brown just keeps getting better looking…”
“Yeah-nose job, liposuction, Botox…” Brown interjects. “No, seriously, I think it’s not always something you think about-it’s like your family, you have times when you analyse it and all this stuff, but for the most part, you basically do your best. And our thing developed where music was just this glue. You’re not even conscious of it.
“But occasionally I’ll see Kate sing with someone else in New York, and I’ll think, ‘Wow, she can really fucking sing.’ But when we’re together, she’s not singing, I’m not really writing-we’re just doing that thing we do. When you’re young, and you’re just playing in the basement, it’s just what you’re doing, and that kind of spirit stays with it, so that it’s just like, ‘This is what we choose to do with our time.’ But the people around you start to appreciate that this is a real commitment at this point in time. It certainly feels that way, and it’s nice to feel it’s bearing all these different fruits.”
Though they live in New York now, Brown and Fenner maintain close ties with the tight-knit T.O. indie scene-former Bourbon band members still litter the local musical landscape, playing in bands like Broken Social Scene-and several of these pals show up on the solo records to lend a hand. But while they’ve left a bit of themselves behind at home, their new abode has clearly left a mark on the two, particularly witnessing the terrible events of September 11th first-hand. The grief that scarred their adopted city shows up in the elegant, mournful poetry of Fenner’s songs and the righteous anger of Brown’s.
“On September 11, 2001, I was on the roof of our building watching, and really, the first thing that was in my heart beyond the kind of tragedy and concern for everybody around, was ‘Wow, I’m glad I do what I do.'” Brown says. “So I think that whatever you do for a living, you kind of have to do the fuck out of it and do it the best you can, and love it. And if you don’t love it, you gotta do something else. So whatever we need to do, whatever odd jobs we need to take, and whatever things that we take on above and beyond our means, whether it’s charity work or making sure that everybody in our band is paid before we are, it’s all part of the deal, and we get it back.”
Chris Brown and Kate Fenner play a special CD release concert at the CBC’s Glenn Gould Theatre (250 Front St. W.) this Wednesday, Oct. 8 at 8 pm. For tickets, call (416) 205-5555.
