Colin Bracewell

BY GABRIEL MATIAS CASTILHO & SHANNA SIVAKUMAR

Indie singer-songwriter Colin Bracewell is a student here at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Born and raised with music in his ears, Colin is a Mar- keting and Vocal Performance major. He has performed at First Avenue’s 7th Street Entry and recently released a four-piece EP titled “Cozy”. His music is reminiscent of Bruno Major, Daniel Caesar, and UMI, just to name a few examples. For The Wake Magazine’s 10th issue, our Cities intern, Gabriel Matias Castilho, sat down to interview the artist himself.

An introduction for the masses, please:

Colin: Hi everyone, my name is Colin Bracewell. I am a marketing and vocal performance major here at the University of Minnesota. I am also a singer-songwriter by the name of Colin Bracewell.

When did your career begin?

C: I started making my own music, probably, well— I started writing my own music, like, 10 years ago. I distinctly remember making a YouTube video and posting about the first song I ever wrote. But I didn’t start performing and producing and all that stuff with my current band until about three years ago. Yeah, that’s how it all started.

Do you have that initial YouTube video now?

C: I’m not gonna play it— [laughs] I’m not gonna play it right now, but yeah, here they all are. The first YouTube video that I ever uploaded was August 2nd, 2011. It has 335 views and 9 likes. Yeah, I think that was when I posted my first song that I ever wrote.

How did it feel to do your first concert?

C: My first concert— my first legit concert— I played at 7th Street Entry in 2020. And it was March 11th or March 13th of 2020. So it was right before COVID happened. And I opened for this guy named Billy Raffoul. It was definitely a surreal experience. I still remember doing soundcheck and everything, because that was the first time I had ever done a soundcheck, and the 7th Street Entry’s people who are like, musicians in the Twin Cities: they know that’s a pretty important and historical venue. I played a thirty-minute opening set and I think I played all originals— and it’s funny because I don’t think I play any of those songs anymore. That was my first real taste of performing with my own sounds and with my own songs that I had been writing — And I was nineteen at the time? I had done other stuff before, but that was the first, legit concert that I had done.

A sneak peek behind the scenes of his November release, “Julia”:

C: I tracked the trumpet on it [the song], bass, drums, saxophone, there’s some, like, key parts that I tracked pretty easily, by just using my MIDI keyboard. I had one of my friends record her vocals on it. This is the whole project. The song is called “Julia”. The name is just ... what I wrote the song about, no particular story. I mean, there is a story, but it’s not super closely related to what it’s— the song’s— about.

What instruments can you play, and why choose those?

A: I started on the violin when I was four, and that was just because my family had grown up playing violin, so it was kind of like a rite of passage. And then, I remember, I started doing choir in fifth grade. I was still doing violin, but I was at a different level than everyone else was, since I had been studying and playing since I was really small. So I ended up learning to play the viola, while everyone else was learning to play the violin. Then, once middle school hit, like, eighth grade, I remember I was just not a fan of the violin anymore. I guess at that point, I was twelve or thirteen, so I had been doing it for almost ten years. I decided to pick up the saxophone during the second half of seventh grade. Then I joined the jazz band in high school. I fell in love with the saxophone. Then I started playing ukulele way back in the day, in 2011. I remember thinking I would never be able to play guitar. I was like, “ugh, I’ll just stay with ukulele for the rest of my life ‘cause it’s so easy, you know? And like, guitar is six strings instead of four.” But then in eighth or ninth grade, I started learning the guitar. I then started playing three-hour cover gigs.

There’s [also] a drum kit behind you. I actually played drums in the jazz band in my sophomore year of high school. So I did that for a little bit. And then in freshman year [of high school] I started playing guitar and singing. Now, I primarily just do guitar and singing for most of my performances. For producing, I track my own bass, I track saxophone, vocals, obviously, and then I have someone else do drums. In an ideal world, I would just play all of them [the instruments] when I perform, but that’s just not possible [laughs].