Ain’t Just Dreaming

The Olympics are such a beautiful time for everyone. Such a time of togetherness, and unity. You don’t need to be sport-lovers to appreciate the draw of it and the love for the games. Just being in love with watching your country come together and succeed is enough. The Paris Olympics 2024 is just around the corner too, so the excitement is high!

Our mighty NZ Olympics Team have been working not on just their fitness and sport, but also their anthem. The New Zealand Team has teamed up with soulful, funky and talented Wellington band TOI to deliver an uplifting anthem, ‘Ain’t Just Dreaming’, featuring two exciting Olympians, Ellesse Andrews and Max Brown.

And what a tune it is! Laid back, groovy, modern soul, to inspire not only the athletes heading to Paris 2024 Olympic Games but New Zealanders alike.

I got to sit down with the lead singer of the band, Conway Jeune, and talk ‘Ain’t Just Dreaming’.

Whereabouts in New Zealand are you at the moment?

I am currently in Wellington, but I’m just in my car. About to go to another jam and a recording session with the boys, which should be fun. I’m just in Wellies today but I usually am based in Stokes Valley and Lower Hutt.

What would you say the power of music does to people?

Man, I think the power of music is huge. This tune that we’ve just released with the NZ team. I think the potential power of this tune is huge, man. It’s about unifying us as a country and pulling everybody together. That was the goal for us when we started working on this song. We wanted to make this song more than just something for sports…something for everybody. You know the power of music, brother. You can be having a s**t day and you put on something that makes you feel good. It might even accentuate and heighten that crap feeling, but somehow it makes you feel better.

How did the journey of ‘Ain’t Just Dreaming’ start?

I went to jazz school with Max. He was a couple of years below us all. He used to come to all [TOI’s] gigs and he was always super supportive of us. He then went on to pursue his kayaking and his sport. Whenever we had gigs in Auckland, he would lend us his guitar amps. He was always a real champ. Anyway, he got in touch with us early last year. He had us on Instagram and he said: ‘Hey bros, myself and Elise have been asked to work on a song for the New Zealand team for the Olympic Games next year. Would you guys be keen to be involved to help us to write, produce and record it?’

He sent us a few demos of a couple of songs that he and Elise had been working through. We, then, as a band, had a listen to them and we picked which one would work best with our sound and our kaupapa. We ended up workshopping it for one day, and then we had Max and Elise and their team come down to the studio in Lower Hutt. We just wanted to play it through to them acoustically to see if they liked what we had done. Because, obviously, it’s their baby, you know? It was awesome! We had five-part harmonies, all the boys were singing and we were trying to make it sound as lush and full as possible. We all played with our eyes closed. When we finished, we opened up our eyes and looked over at Max and Elise and they both had tears in their eyes! Mission accomplished!

We wanted them to be involved in the whole recording process from nothing to the whole thing done. It’s not every day that you get to go to a studio. We wanted them to experience that. It was a beautiful process, bro. It just flowed. It was one of those experiences that everything came together as it should. There were no egos in the room. Everyone was just feeling really good. It was great.

What would you say that your creative process is?

I don’t really ever have one go-to creative process. Sometimes a creative process will come from a place of being with a group of people where someone will have a little idea and then TOI will start kind of jamming out on that. Sometimes my creative process will start from somewhere really random, like when I’m doing the dishes. A melody will come to my head and I’ll go s**t, that’s cool!
When we were workshopping ‘Ain’t Just Dreaming’ the day before release and Max came down, we had quite a few of the fellas from TOI in the studio. We had the guy who produced the song as well—we’ve done lots of work with Neil; he’s an amazing producer and musician. I ended up going for a drive and I had the song in my head and where the song originally was placed harmony-wise. It all came to me just on my drive away from the house. That’s happened many times, bro.

TOI’s got an album that we’ve recorded and it’s all ready to go (it’s coming out this year)—there was one tune on that album where you couldn’t write the second verse. I had to leave the studio to go and pick up my son from Kohanga. On the drive to Kohanga, which was only like 10 minutes, the whole second verse just hit me. If I’m in a space where there’s a lot of different energies and a lot of different ideas, sometimes just stepping away and having a little bit of space to myself to reflect on everything that’s come together helps to just give a little bit more clarity.
I’ve got a smorgasbord of lyrics and melodies and everything flying at me (which is awesome) but sometimes I just need that little bit of space.

Would you say that working with Elise and Max offered a different creative process?

It was definitely different. I guess that’s the risk that you take when you get involved in something like a collaborative process. You never know how it’s going to go, how people are going to gel and how people are going to feel. A creative space is also quite a vulnerable space. You’re putting everything out there. But it all flowed beautifully. We, as a band, have sessions where we’ll be working on a song and sometimes those songs take a long time to have all the pieces come together. And sometimes there are songs where someone will bring in a guitar riff and then someone will have an idea for some vocals and that song will come together in the space of a day and it’s beautiful.

That’s kinda what happened here with Max and Elise. They already had a really good foundation of the song ready to go. They knew what their vision was. It was beautiful bro.

Serious question: Are you a fan of the Olympics?

I am definitely a fan of the Olympics. It’d be f**king awkward if I wasn’t! I think everybody in New Zealand when the Olympics are on, gets into the Olympics, you know? Everybody gets a little bit patriotic. I wouldn’t say that I’m usually up early watching sports—I’m not that kind of person. When the Olympics are happening, I’m always game. Having this involvement with the Olympics scene has created some new friendships and some strong connections there. Even when the Olympics aren’t on, if Max is doing something or if Elise is doing something, I’m gonna be going hard for that.

Do you think that ‘Ain’t Just Dreaming’ will become the next Kiwi anthem?

Imagine that. That would be f**king crazy. It’s quite hard to step away from your work and look at it from a different lens. When I look at it in that respect, I think the song has all of the things that it needs to do. I feel like it has a story and lyrics that people can connect to on many different levels, like whether it be sports, which is its main goal here. But we tried to make it so that it was for everybody too. I mean, every person in Aotearoa is reaching towards a goal or some sort of peak. I feel like this song can connect with people in that respect. When we were writing it, we were thinking obviously from the point of view of our athletes and the Olympics.

I think lyrically, yes. I reckon musically it feels great. It’s got good hooks. It’s got a f**king cool story. Like, you know, I don’t know if there’s any Olympic team in the world that has a theme song for themselves that has literally been written by their own Olympians. That’s pretty damn cool. Elise and Max did a great job. Like, they wrote a killer tune. I’m so stoked that they wanted to get us involved with it. We’re very honored and feel extremely privileged to be part of this.

To answer your question, bro, I hope so. That’d be a pretty cool story for us and it’d be a mean little thing to tell the grandkids!

In creating ‘Ain’t Just Dreaming’’, did you experience any challenges?

I think the only challenge that we had was being involved in a collaborative process with people that I haven’t worked with. That was a scary, nerve-wracking kind of place. Exciting too. But in terms of the song, bro, the communication with Max and Elise was on point; everyone had a great time. It was probably one of my most cherished studio sessions that we’ve had. We were just like, f**k yeah, this is great.

What do you have planned for the future? What’s your next step?

TOI has been working on an album for the last two years. And it’s been a beautiful process. It’s been all recorded completely at home in our studio. Many late nights, many late drunken nights that were just talking about life, which was awesome for us. Having the space to record an album like this. This album is all ready to go. We’ve released a few singles of it already and we’re hoping to release that around mid this year. We’re just getting all of the final touches in place and we’re very proud, bro.