Brent Kutzle talks about OneRepublic's tour in India filled with energy and the cathartic experience of connecting with people on stage. By Ramya Palisetty’
Ryan Tedder didn’t have any siblings. And there was no internet or social media during his growing up years to take up his free hours. To kill time, he began to sing and play the piano since the age of three. During his senior year, when the family moved to Colorado Springs, he met OneRepublic bandmate Zach Filkins. In 2002, Ryan headed out west to los Angeles where he was able to convince his old classmate to rejoin him in the pursuit of fame and fortune. They rounded out the band with another guitarist, Drew Brown, Brent Kutzle on bass and cello, and Eddie Fisher on drums/percussion. And thus OneRepublic was born.
Initially, they dreamt of being an alternative rock stars but the popularity of Apologize made them genreless, allowing them to evolve and have fun making the kind of music they wanted.
The band always tried to do something different and unexpected, climbing the pop charts with hits ranging from Apologize to Counting Stars.
My parents suggested that I take cello lessons at a young age which I didn’t like at first — but ended up glad that I took them!
It was very typical for a kid — going to school, doing homework. I was in college with one semester left before I joined OneRepublic.
I have worked with U2 on their last two albums and with Peter Gabriel on Oh My My — it’s hard to top those two. I’d love to continue to collaborate with more artists — whether it fits for OneRepublic or not!
We focus less specifically on the sound and more the sentiment of the lyrics and the feeling of music. We try to connect human to human in each song as if we were sitting at dinner together talking about real life issues.
No, we very much like to lead normal lives.
I think a lot of music (not just pop music — across many genres) has started to sound very programmed and that works for some artists.
For us, we are still a band who tours live very heavily. Having live instrumentation in our songs is important so fans are hearing what they anticipated at a live show.
I’m not sure we have time for that on this trip as we are focused
on putting on a great show but we will definitely have to return to do so!
You can expect a great live show and a lot of energy.
It’s been an incredible ride — meeting new people, exploring new cities, falling in love with other countries. We are very lucky to get to do what we do.
The fact that we have such a great fan base. They inspire us to keep writing and making music. Also, our families and the experiences that we all have as individuals.
We’ll never stop making music and to be inspired by average or monumental events is imputation enough to inspire the inceptionof each song.
(OneRepublic will perform on Saturday, April 21 at NSCI Dome, Mumbai)