A Dutch journalist, Marscha Holman, interviewed me for the radio. You can read the interview here.

Folk singer/songwriter Bruno Merz had been writing and recording songs at home for himself and friends, just because he enjoyed doing it. Then one day, he received an enthusiastic e-mail from the content manager of Starbucks Entertainment saying they were interested in choosing one of his songs as their ‘Pick of the Week’…..   Hit that title for the rest of the interviewa complimentary service provided by Starbucks and iTunes through which customers get a chance to discover great new music each week. Singers like Duffy, Diana Krall, The Decemberists and many more have hugely benefited from this service in terms of gaining more popularity.
Did anything change after the ‘Pick of the Week’ success with the song ‘Nine Sixteen’?

Bruno smiles: ‘After the ‘Pick of the Week’ things have been great, though I think I’m still the only person on the ‘Pick of the Week’ list that’s not signed to a label yet, but different labels have shown interest and they’re all labels I really look up to, so that’s exciting. Also the response of the listeners has been amazing. It all encouraged me to work on the new EP (to be released this month, MH) Departing from Crowds.’

Bruno wrote his first song when he was twelve and lived in New-Zealand. ‘I went to a catholic school back then and I just didn’t like the songs we had to sing. I wrote one with this weird pump organ-thing that didn’t even work properly, but the class and teachers liked it! I would cringe to hear that song again.

I had a clear idea about what I wanted my music to sound like, but living in such a small town in New Zealand it was really hard to get hold of good music, so I didn’t have any inspiring examples. But then one day I was at my cousin’s house and he had Mazzy Star playing in this big sparse room and I just stood there and listened to the album from start to finish. That was a real eye-opener, I realized there were bands out there making the kind of music I’d been imagining.

I got a band together with my brother, my sister and my best friend. We were called Rain. We had a lot of fun, and even ended up playing on TV once, which was a big thing for us. Then most of the band started moving overseas to different places.

Being a talented artist, Bruno decided to study animation in Auckland. Then he got just enough money together to buy a one-way plane ticket to Paris.

‘I had a lot of reasons to leave the continent, personal reasons. I remember when I took off from the airport in Auckland I just couldn’t stop smiling. I felt so free.

I first went to France to work on some organic farms I’d found on the internet. The whole idea of being totally self-sufficient really appealed to me.  Although actually I have to confess that the dream of becoming a full-time farmer probably already ended in the first two days of being there; we had to work so hard and then for 10 – 11 hours at a time. Fortunately it was beautiful there and I had my guitar with me. It was tough physical work, but I felt so free and I grew more in that year than I had in the twenty years before. I wrote a lot of songs there too. It was inspiring.

I remember one night there when all the workers were gathered around a fire and I played some songs on my guitar and a few of the girls cried. That was the first time I saw that my songs affected people and it encouraged me to keep on writing.

Both my parents are originally Dutch (they emigrated to NZ in the 1950’s, MH) and they spoke Dutch with us until I was six years old. So I moved to Holland, because I needed to earn some money and at least I could speak the language.

It was those first weeks in Holland that I probably experienced some of the scariest days of my life: I had no money at all. I remember watching the bums on the streets and wondering if I was going to end up like that. I remembered that my dad had an old friend there and luckily she let me stay with her a few weeks . I first worked as a projectionist at a cinema and soon found a job as an animator. Music was at that time still my number one interest but I had to concentrate more on basic survival!
I met a girl who was also a projectionist and we went out for about 3 and a half years. She broke up with me in a pretty awful way and that was the start of a tough time where I found a lot of solace in singing or writing songs.

I had a really crappy computer with only a standard soundcard, but that’s what I used to record my first album ‘Through Darkness Into Day’. I think that that album refers to the whole phase of soul-searching I did and leaving the past behind and step by step coming closer to who you really are. ‘Nine Sixteen’ for instance is about the 9:16 train to Amsterdam – at the time I was temporarily living in a small town called ‘Zeist’ – It was still a pretty bad time but I could see glimmers of hope. The tune and the first verse just popped into my head without me thinking twice about it.

I’m happy that we’ve re-recorded some of the songs, because as much as I loved Through Darkness… I still had a lot to learn about production techniques. I’m lucky to have been able to work with Juno Jimmink, a really great and patient producer helping me out with Departing from Crowds.

The quality of Departing from Crowds (the new ep with three re-recordings and two new songs, MH) is a lot higher than the previous album. We invested a lot of time in really just figuring out what the exact feeling behind a song should be. When I feel that what I sing affects me, I usually know I’m onto something. I’ve learnt that it has to come from myself. That’s why usually when you’re down, songs seem to come out a lot easier because you are forced to come face to face with who you really are, that’s where you find your own sound. But what I’m now learning to do more and more is how to find that creative point without having to be depressed first, because you shouldn’t have to be depressed at all to be able to find inspiration. The title Departing from Crowds partly refers to this process. Get away from the crowd in terms of all the distractions around you and just listen to the silence and your intuition.

The last three years have been a really big process in terms of personal development. I got rid of a lot of things that were pushing me down and without my music I would not know where I would be right now. When I see people in the audience affected by the songs, it surprises me more than anything else but it also makes me happy, because I suppose that’s what the songs are for. I started writing for therapeutic reasons for myself, but if they’re also therapeutic for someone else that’s even better.

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