Braden Bales on Rap Battles, Moving to Nashville, and His Newest Single “PICK ME UP”
[UNPUBLISHED:] Can you tell me a little about how you got your start in music?
[BRADEN BALES:] I’m from a musical family and I’m the youngest of four and everyone in my family is involved in music somehow. We all just play instruments, not professionally but I kind of just grew up around it. In high school, I started writing music after doing rap battles, and I just fell in love with it right away.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Can you tell me about the rap battles?
[BRADEN BALES:] Totally! They were more like slam poetry but we’d be at lunch and would decide who was rap battling at the end of the day. Then we’d write a bunch of lyrics or bars on a paper with no beat. We’d call them diss tracks and you’d perform the rap battle at the end of the day and everyone would rate them.
[UNPUBLISHED:] I loved your single “PICK ME UP”- what was the inspiration behind the single?
[BRADEN BALES:] That song is about the new position that I’m in. “CHRONICALLY CAUTIOUS” did way better than any of my other songs up until this point and with that newfound success, comes a new environment you get tossed in to. It’s about me acclimating to the new environment and figuring out who I am. It’s like I’m seeing the industry from a different perspective and the whole way it works.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What was your process like for creating it?
[BRADEN BALES:] So, I showed up hungover to a session with friends and we wrote the song. It was kind of just like a hangout while we wrote it. When I go to writing sessions, we typically crank out a song per session so it wasn’t really different than normal. I just showed up, we hung out, talked about how I’m feeling and what’s been getting me down, and cranked it out in a couple hours.
[UNPUBLISHED:] When you enter a session, do you come in with ideas already in your head or do you start from scratch?
[BRADEN BALES:] Typically I keep my mind completely blank when going into a writing session. I heard the instrumental and thought about what it meant to me.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What do you hope your fans get out of the song?
[BRADEN BALES:] The song is about moving to Nashville from home and it’s about being in that new environment. I hope that it’s for anyone in that environment where they feel new and vulnerable. I hope they can connect with that and it becomes something that soothes them through that moment.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Who are some artists that you look up to and that influence your sound?
[BRADEN BALES:] Recently it’s been a lot different. I’ve been listening to a lot less of my genre but historically it’s been Ed Sheeran, Jeremy Zucker, and Alexander 23. Lately, it’s been a lot of lyrical rap, like J Cole and Afro Beats. For some reason, those two are all I’ve been listening to right now. It’s also been a lot of Bon Iver, and other folky artists. I find a lot of influencers from those genres going into my music.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Who are some artists you hope to collaborate with in the future?
[BRADEN BALES:] I really want to make a song with brakence. Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler would be crazy. Jon Bellion is on the bucket list. That’s a good start. There are so many I’d love to make music with. Obviously, Ed Sheeran would also be a crazy collaboration.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you think moving from Canada to Nashville has influenced your sound?
[BRADEN BALES:] Absolutely because I used to produce all of my music and now that I’m just writing, I get a lot of influence from the production, it’s opened my sound a lot. There are instrumentals that I would have never built for my own songs that are being created during the session and it’s growing me. It’s making me write on new types of beats and the production ends up sounding different than it would have. It’s expanding all my horizons. Similar to when I started producing, I stopped using my own guitars because I felt like I was trapped in the box of my own four chords that I like to use. It’s just a new dimension of depth that has been added to my music.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Tell me a fun fact about yourself that not many people know
[BRADEN BALES:] I was going to say that I have sleep apnea but that’s pretty out there online. I sleep every single night with a CPAP mask on. I post about it sometimes but I’m not sure if everyone knows that.
Photo by Nick Walker