Q&A: Bre Kennedy’s ‘The Alchemist’ Leans Into the Bittersweet Uncertainty of the Process
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IVONA HOMICIANU ☆
Photo by Tabitha Turner
BRE KENNEDY’S THE ALCHEMIST IS HERE TO BRING YOUR INNER CHILD TO THE SURFACE — The artist found healing in creating the album, and she’s taking us with her on the journey. From the start of the record, “Grassroots” tells us about the voyage we will embark on. Getting lost in the process of growing up is a familiar experience, but Kennedy refuses to settle. Being as authentic as possible to who she is as a person is what Kennedy is looking for – and she’s sharing her found wisdom in her newest album, The Alchemist.
Inspired by a break-up from a long term relationship, Kennedy set out to become the closest version to her truest self. Introspection and deconstructing of social norms are essentials, but what transpires is the necessity for kindness and acceptance towards oneself. The Nashville-based musician has been in the carousel of the music industry for years, starting out as a songwriter in Los Angeles before pursuing her own music career as a singer-songwriter in Nashville. Following her first three albums, Twenty Something (2020), Note to Self (2021) and Scream Over Everything (2023), The Alchemist marks a pivotal point in her artistic expression.
“I think grief allows us to completely have to be wrecked down to the bare bones to rebuild our foundation, and at the end of the day, when we've lost those people, it really is just us at three in the morning by ourselves.”
Harboring a connection to nature, the album’s vulnerability is as delicate and resilient as the natural world surrounding us. The most recent single “Willow,” released today, compares the resilience of human nature to the tree’s swaying through the motions. Healing resonates throughout the record, with “Grassroots” introducing the journey, “Looking For” and “Becoming” showing the beauty in the process, while “Good Grief” gives us a glass-half-full perspective.
The stripped-back production allows us to take in the beauty and vulnerability of the lyricism. Paired with Kennedy’s vocals, The Alchemist takes us on a passage of perseverance through personal growth. It is no wonder she manages to put such a spiritual odyssey into words. With inspiration such as “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle, “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert and of course, the title of the album itself, “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho, Kennedy falls into step with the best of the best. The Alchemist feels like coming home, only this whole time the home was within ourselves.
Luna had the chance to talk to Bre Kennedy about her album The Alchemist, coming out January 30.
LUNA: On the first track, you talk about going back to grassroots. What does that mean to you specifically?
KENNEDY: I feel like I'm in a really beautiful place of wanting to return to the inner child. I'd write about that a lot in my music, but I feel like every time we get on track in our life, then we fall off a little bit and we get lost, and the world is so loud right now. There's so much chaos and fear, numbers we have to hit, and accolades we have to have. Anytime I'm lost in that, I just can't really figure out what it is my intuition is trying to say. A lot of this record is taking all of these stories that I have about who I am and ultimately, the only way I can really make sense of all of it is to get back to the grassroots. Like the version of Bre that loves music in the first place, and loves to stop and smell flowers, and what my core morals are, and who I am. Just really wanting to start the record with that intention of getting back to the pure core of who we are, before we dive into the storyline.
LUNA: That's really beautifully put. I did feel that it's very much about healing your inner child and going back to that. In the overall like themes of the album, I did feel that was the core energy of it.
KENNEDY: That’s so awesome to hear!
LUNA: What was the most difficult track to write for the album?
KENNEDY: Honestly, I would say “The Alchemist,” because I started writing that song with Melissa Fuller and John Stark in 2020 over Zoom, which was all we could do. I had to read “The Alchemist” to work at a restaurant. My boss was like, You have to read this book before. And I was like, I'll do anything to get money, you know. So I had read it when I was really young, but during 2020 I reread it, and even now, I'm like, oh my god, I need this again. It's just a book that I return to all the time. And that's how the song has been. The original song was in 2020 before I went through a massive life change, left a nearly decade-long relationship. From 2020 to when I made this album, I went on a whole journey. So I tried to rewrite the song like three times. There's a line in the back of the book of “The Alchemist” that's like, “What made you look for the light in your life?” and I was like, oh! It's like, I looked for the light in my life, because sh*t was really dark, and it was so broken at times that I didn't know what else to do other than to look for it. So it was hard to go into those moments and actually be vulnerable about like, my mom, and how things fell apart. That was a hard part of writing “The Alchemist,” but I am so proud that we carved it.
LUNA: The result is so beautiful. It really feels like a journey throughout the album. And then we get to “The Alchemist,” and it all makes sense. It all comes together so well.
KENNEDY: That’s so good to hear!
LUNA: It’s honestly such a beautiful album. So congratulations on making it. It's very special.
KENNEDY: Thank you, it means a lot.
LUNA: Your single “Idiot,” although it deals with heartbreak, I feel it very much also talks about forgiveness. Like, forgiving oneself for believing this one person was better than they actually were. Was that the original intention, or was it more of an evolution while writing?
KENNEDY: I'm so, so happy about the way that you're hearing it. That makes me happy, because I wrote it, not even from a place of grace and forgiveness. I wrote it as a cathartic way to be like, I'm mad. And I never write songs about being mad. As a people pleaser in recovery, I'm learning how to feel my own emotions. So this is the first song that I was like, No, I'm just going to say the thing. But in hindsight, I think that's true with anything in our life that we're humble about, like when we show up with humility, there's a grace to it, and maybe that's what you're hearing. I'm just laying it out on the table like, I know I was an idiot for putting you on a pedestal. I felt like you were an idiot, but really, we're both in this together. That's what being vulnerable does, and can make you feel. So I think it was the latter discovery, the amount of grace that I have for that person, and yes, myself.
LUNA: How did you decide to have “Idiot” be the single?
KENNEDY: I didn't want to make it a single at first because I was so scared to hurt anybody's feelings. I don't really write breakup songs, so this was my first song about that. I wanted to honor every stage of grief that I've gone through that has led me to “The Alchemist.” It would be disingenuous if I put out an album called “The Alchemist” about taking all the broken pieces and didn't share them. I really wanted to be brave and and put “Idiot” out. The whole release of it, I was a mess. I was just like, What have I done? I really like putting out music that instills a little bit of hope in people, and it didn't feel like that, but I wanted to be brave. And I think when we tell the truth, then other people feel like they can as well. Those are my favorite kind of artists and songs, so I wanted to do that as well.
LUNA: I think it's such a good song. If it helps, while I was listening to it, I thought you are telling the listener that if they put someone on a pedestal and they didn't live up to their expectations, that's okay, because that means they just have a big heart. That means that they believe in that person. To me, it's such a gentle, nice way to deal with heartbreak.
KENNEDY: That means the world. That made me feel so much better.
LUNA: The production on the album is stripped back. Was that done on purpose to focus more on the lyrics, or was it the natural progression of creating the album?
KENNEDY: I think both. My team and many people that have been following my career were like, Hey, Bre, what you do live is the raw kind of true grit, it’s what people are drawn to in you. I agree with that, and I wanted to capture more of what it sounds like when I'm in my room with my guitar, and then build a world around that, an atmospheric world that invokes that feeling of rawness around it. But also, I just wanted to be intimate with the listener the way I would live.
LUNA: How did you decide on “Baby Blue” as the lead single?
KENNEDY: The lead single was going to be “Good Grief.” But I said about the stages of grief, that I wanted to start with what happened. This feeling of… I want to honor being sad. It's okay that I'm a little baby blue right now. And in fact, I'm gonna dive into a whole record of it. It also felt like a fun, light song on the record. Because I started putting music out in late spring, early summer, I wanted a fun, light approach to say, hey, I'm about to dive into some sh*t [laughs] and I'm okay. I have my women here around me, and I'm going to be breaking norms of how women are supposed to be put together and beautiful and ethereal, and all of the things that we're told were supposed to be. Be soft, but not too soft. I wanted to set the tone for this record that it is an art record. Like a lot of the artwork is very artistic. It's just very colorful, and I wanted to capture all of that in the first video. Just a little piece of what I feel “Baby Blue” captures so much of, what this record is about with the simplest “if I'm going to be blue, then I'm going to make it beautiful.”
LUNA: I've seen that you've drawn inspiration from writers such as Elizabeth Gilbert and Glennon Doyle. I was going to ask if there are any works in particular that made you want to write this record, besides “The Alchemist.”
KENNEDY: Oh my gosh. I have all the books up here actually. I read Doyle's “Untamed” in 2020 and I remember looking up at my partner at the time, cooking in my apartment, and having this out of body experience, like I am growing and changing internally that hasn't been shown on the outside yet, but I am not in alignment with the life that I am feeling inside. I need to go look into the dark corners of my life and my childhood and all of these things, and go on a journey to do work so that I can fully bloom and become the woman that I know I want to become. So, “Untamed” was huge for me. If I ever got to talk to Glennon Doyle, I would be like “You, literally with your words, slapped me in the face, and fast tracked me to a whole other life.” Talk about being brave. “Eat Pray Love” and “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert were huge inspirations for me. Both of their bravery as women was huge. Being willing to look at how hard things can be and the resilience in that.
There's a book called “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” by Rebecca Solnit. She talks about the blue of heat, the loneliness of the blue of hue over a sunset or a sunrise, and how's the color beginning and ending? It's beautiful. “Root Bound” by Alice Vincent, “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz. Talking about “Big Magic,” I've been getting ready to put The Alchemist out, and so much just aligned. Probably those books, those are the ones that really, really have helped me get through. “The Mountain Is You” by Brianna Wiest, and Brianna Pastor’s “Good Grief” also have been really huge for me.
LUNA: I love to see that so many of the titles are inspired by books I also read a lot. The record feels as if it's meant to be listened to in nature. So there's a lot of connections between growing as a human and the natural world surrounding us. Did you spend a lot of time outside while writing it?
KENNEDY: That's a great question. Not while writing it, but yes, absolutely. I love nature. I always have. It's part of “Grassroots.” When I was a kid, I was always barefoot and I was always outside. I'm an aquarius, and I'm such a little daydreamer. I have a big imagination, so being outside always regulates me. I think that the world, the natural world, is so poetic and so metal, and constantly reminding us that the sun's going to set, the sun's going to rise, things are going to die, things are going to bloom. It's all, it's all poetry. It's all a metaphor, really. I spent a lot of time walking after my breakup, and a lot of time hiking and traveling. So yeah, nature is huge for me. And I might not have even realized that, but I do take a lot of voice notes of birds, or cicadas, and I'll put it in the record.
Photo by Tabitha Turner
LUNA: I truly love that in the record. Listening to it, I felt connected to it in that way.
KENNEDY: That makes me happy. Wow.
LUNA: Could you talk a little bit more about “Another Side of You?”
KENNEDY: It’s definitely a song on the record that I'm like, it might even be okay that I put that on there. Like I said, I don't really write a lot about relationships, but I’ve been single for the first time in nearly a decade for the last two years, and it's been the best just dating myself, and learning the poetry of timing. Learning how you can give so much love to somebody and it's there. It's not time for them or vice versa, like someone's really ready to love you and you're not.
I had this love with somebody for a while, and just being like, we're just ships in the night and we're missing each other. I loved the idea of maybe I'll see you on the B side, honey. Maybe I'll see you in another life. I'm really, really inspired by MUNA’s record. I really wanted a rowdy capturing what it's like for me to just play with my friends here in Nashville, like banjo, mandolin. I just wanted a song about a feeling. I didn't want to prescribe anything. I feel like as a songwriter and a poet, I tend to tie a bow on things, or, have an a-ha moment in a song. And I was like, I just want to write a song about a feeling. I was falling in love with someone. They were in love with me. It was the wrong timing. We were missing each other. It was hot. And I'll never know if it'll go anywhere, and that's okay. And it's that bittersweet “I'll see on the other side maybe.”
LUNA: That's a great sentiment. Sometimes that's all that it is.
KENNEDY: It’s just very nuanced. It starts side B, or, it ends side A, which is the best part about it.
LUNA: I was listening to “Looking For,” and it sounds a lot like when you're having a realization where, you know, we figure out that maybe all this good grief was to bring us closer to ourselves. Did the album bring you closer to who you are as a person?
KENNEDY: Yeah, god, you are making me feel so seen right now. All the grief that we go through, these stories that we hang on to and leave claw marks on, they really are just us attaching our worth to that love or that relationship or that failed dream, or like I should have done that, or that thing that I was reaching for, all these things that we're trying to find ourselves in. I think grief allows us to completely have to be wrecked down to the bare bones to rebuild our foundation, and at the end of the day, when we've lost those people, it really is just us at three in the morning by ourselves. Even if we are still in a partnership or whatever, we live, we are born alone, and we die alone, and we are our own best friends. I have been taught through every Disney movie ever that I need to find Prince Charming, and the home I grew up in was like that as well. Making sure that my dad was happy and making sure that everybody else was happy, especially as women, we're just taught to nurture everyone else but ourselves. So that's my unlearning.
I had this realization while I was writing this song with Wilson Macbeth. He had that swimming, haunting guitar at the beginning of “Looking For,” and he's like, What do you think about this? And I was like, Just keep playing it, I want to sing to this. I just figured the song “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley is like, the one who outdrew you is actually you. At the end of the day, it is just you. The love I was looking for was myself, in every man I was with. I was looking for myself in every accolade I tried to go for. I still am, and have to remind myself it's always been me I was looking for. I was just looking for my happiness and my worth and I'm the only one that can give that to me, turns out. Wish someone would’ve told me that!
LUNA: Honestly, yes. That is beautiful. The album feels like a warm hug. “Becoming” is particularly emotional. At least to me, it feels very much like an ode to growing as a person. What do you hope people take away from the album as a whole?
KENNEDY: That we have the pen in our hands, that it's not over when you feel it's over, it's just a continuation of our story. What happened to us in our life, we have no control over that, right? Somebody who breaks our heart, if we lose someone, if we lose that job. We can't control that, but we can control how we write the rest of the story. When I think about the woman that I want to become, I'm like, oh, I have to write her into existence. That's part of my work. It's just every day and being like, I fell back into old patterns, or like, I fell back into an old story of something broken. Okay, but how do I take this broken thing and make it beautiful?
LUNA: That’s a really good thing to take away from it, and I definitely feel it with the album. There's a lyric that really caught my attention in “The Alchemist,” which by the way, has some of the most gorgeous lyrics I've ever heard. “All that's left is to be friends with the girl that's doing her best.” I think that's so, so beautiful. It's so healing to hear that. I truly believe this album will help people be kinder to themselves and to the process they're going through. It's genuinely such a beautiful album. I wanted to say congratulations on it, and for creating such a beautiful piece of work.
KENNEDY: Thank you so much. You're such a light. Oh my gosh. That means a lot.
