Lighting That Creative Flame With Jeremy Redmore

Creative psychology is a very interesting field to explore. Creatives oftentimes exert a certain type of enthused physical energy. They work on their art for long hours – oftentimes driving themselves crazy with stress – and teeter between fantasy and reality and are infamous for disappearing to the other side of the world to write, feel and dream.

There has been an endless amount of scholarly articles written on this topic. Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, even called creativity an act of anxiety that fulfills the inner-ego.

Anxious creatives down the bottom of the world are known as suffering from ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’. We will discredit any positive affirmation, even if what was created has affected so many lives, achieved national success and won several of the countries top music awards.

So when I sat down with Jeremy Redmore to talk to him about his latest solo album, The Brightest Flame, his humble nature shone all of the inner-ego out of the office. Born in Auckland and educated in Tauranga, Redmore first found his passion in music, singing for the Tauranga Boys’ College big band.
In 2006, Redmore first appeared in the music scene as the lead singer of Midnight Youth. I remember my years in college, with Cavalry and The Letter being anthems for a generation. Their first album, The Brave Don’t Run, peaked at number two on the album charts, had gold-selling singles and won the Best Rock Album, Best Group and Best Engineer at the 2009 New Zealand Music Awards.

After a second album release and a bit of soul searching, Redmore decided to quit the band to pursue a different type of creativity. He moved to Canada where he didn’t know a soul and reinvented his art, frequenting coffee shops and art galleries along the way, like a true creative.

In 2014, Redmore released his first self-produced album, Clouds Are Alive, that reached number six in the charts. It then wasn’t for another five years that we heard from him. After a series of cryptic messages appeared on his social media pages, Redmore has been releasing his latest album, The Brightest Flame, in five chapters on different release dates, having started in November last year. The album will be culminated as a full album on the 20th of March.

I got to talk to Redmore on his life with Midnight Youth, his creative psychology and The Brightest Flame.

How did you get into music?

I grew up in a musical household, but it was very amateur. Nothing particularly serious. There was no real pressure on me to learn instruments and it was a very casual involvement with music.

Even in school, I didn’t study music. I think I got a C in fourth form music. I was from a very academic-driven family, so I just passed on the arts. I went to Tauranga Boys, which was a very “rugby-playing” school, but they did have a very cool music department.

In my last year there, I had a teacher who saw something in me and suggested I sing for the Big Band. That was the first time I performed a solo, Easy by The Commodores, in front of a crowd, halfway through my last year there. I’m not going to be ashamed about it – I stole the show!

I sang in the choirs and then my mother passed away when I was 17. It lit a spark that wasn’t there before. It could’ve been totally subconscious, but I needed to express that, but didn’t have a place just yet. I remember asking my dad who had a couple of guitars to show me some chords and I sat down and wrote my first song straight away.

He showed me A minor, E minor, D and G. It wasn’t about my mother or anything. It was a pretty light love song and for me, it was that expression. I then went to uni and didn’t study music. I didn’t think I was very good. There are still question marks there.

Then I stumbled into being part of Midnight Youth. We were together for about two or three years and that blew up after our first album. That was the first time I took this music thing seriously. It was very unconventional and I still haven’t had any lessons for it. I am just a big music fan.

Who do you listen to?

No one in particular. It’s constantly changing and evolving. I’ve always been a huge consumer of music. I have always loved to sing along to tracks. It was the mid to late 90’s, so it was all cheeseboard ballads. Maybe that influenced me to have a higher voice.

These days, I listen to music that comes from somewhere and means something. It’s generally melodic, but that doesn’t mean I don’t listen to instrumental stuff.

I love the new Nick Cave record, I just listened to it and it blew me away. You put on headphones and disappear. I love music like that.

How do you think your solo work changes from the songs of Midnight Youth?

I think there is a change. It came from walking away from music. I moved to Canada and I was a different person. Different job, different friends. No one knew I was a musician in Toronto for a long time. It gave me solitude and reflection. Again, having this innate desire to express something that I couldn’t handle in other ways.

I had a full life reset and these songs just started coming. As I was going through this process, I started questioning what I should do now. I had no ties. I could do any job, anywhere. At the same time, these songs were coming and I thought they were really great.

The songs were coming from a place I had never discovered before. I was questioning things I hadn’t before. I was always thinking whether these songs had an audience. With this music, it isn’t so much about being a musician and creating songs, it’s about being an artist.

I think that was something I discovered in Toronto where I was going to more galleries and reading more books and poetry. I came to the realisation that if I was going to create this thing, it had to have more purpose and have a world to build around it. It needed to have expression.

What’s your creative process to create that expression?

Solitude. All of these songs were put into a world where there weren’t any distractions. Just me and my mind. My mind just created melodies. If I was feeling something, it just created melodies. The emotions appeared as songs. It was then that words started appearing.

It was the middle of winter in Toronto when I was writing The Brightest Flame. Snow up to your knees and no one else around – they all must’ve thought I was crazy. But I just had this sense of freedom within that solitude that gave me room to express something.

It sounds crazy, but there was this voice that pushed me to speak. I find creativity in different places, though. I remember writing a song in Italy on this little island off the Amalfi Coast where I climbed Mount Epomeo. There was a cafe at the top and no one else about because it was too hot. I sat there and wrote this song called The Mountain.

Another one I wrote in Cuba where I was sitting on a balcony looking over the streets and I thought one storm could wipe us all out, but in the moment it was so beautiful and I could cherish that time.

You might be surrounded by this opportunity for destruction, but in that bubble you can just enjoy that one unique moment.

The Brightest Flame goes through a wide narrative. Can you explain the album?

While I was writing, the songs were presenting themselves to me as though they were diary entries. I’d had that separation from the industry where I was looking at the way music is released. I see my friends releasing amazing albums and they put them out and then a week later, they’re gone. No one will hear them and it’s such a terrible thing.

The Brightest Flame is my first album in five years and I was like: ‘how can I have a release process that fits the concept of ‘a year in my life’? How can I have chapters within that and give people the chance of catching on to the story?’

I like the idea of doing things differently. I’m quite a contrarian and thought ‘screw the system’ and created something that I wanted to create.

The audience wants to know what’s going on in the artist’s mind. They don’t want to be influenced by the industry or some outside force. That’s the whole point. This was the dream for the songs.

I got halfway through this concept and I was still processing it. Over the next six months, I wrote songs that fit into the story I was trying to tell. My next thought was, “Well, I’m signed to a major label and they’ll never let me release it this way.’ So I went to my label and totally undersold it so I could do it my way.

You’re a mentor at the NZMC and you’ve been involved with the Smokefree Rockquest. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

I had been doing work with the Music Commission – the mentoring in schools programme – when I was with Midnight Youth. When I was in Toronto, I was thinking about how I could create a full-time career being an artist? Not just have meaning in the music, but also have meaning in myself.
I’m really pleased to be helping young musicians so they don’t make mistakes. There’s no info out there. The NZMC are doing such cool work that I love.

Rockquest is really great because it brings school kids together to just have fun, rock out and just play instruments and getting that feeling of being in flow with people.

Rockquest used to be able to play covers, but now it’s about songwriting. These kids telling their stories and it sounds rudimentary, but they’re telling their lives through art. That’s something I really want to encourage. I look for those moments and hooks where I can be like ‘that’s your voice!’

I want to be doing a lot more of that as well. I hope to be an inspirer, because isn’t that the dream result? If you can inspire people, that’s the sign you’re doing something good.

What has been your best and worst time on stage?

I think the best might’ve been the Kiwi dream of playing the mainstage at Big Day Out. I think we did a really good job and had an awesome time. That’s right up there.

The worst? I remember playing at a place called the Hoey Moey on the Central Coast in Queensland. We were the first band of three. I remember the only people that were there was a family of five eating their fish and chips dinner a couple of metres away and they didn’t even blink. They were just eyes-down. It was like we didn’t exist. We were playing so loud too. It was just a horrific feeling. We were completely invisible to the fish and chips! I haven’t touched them since.

What next? A third solo album?

It’s funny. I’ve chosen this path of becoming an artist, which also means putting your financial freedom at risk. A lot of what I do next is if I can make any money at all from this record. I’ve written a whole new concept that’s ready to go.

In terms of song-writing, it’s another expression I’ve learnt. It’s going to be a different motive base to it. Even the production is different and that’s pretty cool.

I’ve also written a kid’s book about singing. A good friend of mine has illustrated it and has done a good job. That’s in the world of not just the songs, but the process. Kids singing as an act of joy.

There aren’t as many opportunities to just sing. Singing is this great individual expression that only you can do.