Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon Henry.
Hi Brandon, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’m currently gearing up to release songs under a new moniker, Lucky Henry, but this is not my first time putting out music. My first single, “Apathetic,” is coming out on January 10th, almost six years after my band, Fake Blond, and I released “Sweet Adolescence” in May of 2018.
I grew up outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, where there is a pretty thriving music scene. Bands like The Backseat Lovers, Neon Trees, The Aces, Imagine Dragons, and Ritt Momney all started playing in clubs around Salt Lake City and Provo.
I started writing songs when I was about six years old, just melodies and lyrics. They weren’t finished songs; more chorus and verse ideas. My dad taught me guitar when I was twelve, and I immediately taught two of my friends guitar and started a band. When we were twelve, we played a talent show at a local high school with The Aces, and, while we didn’t win, it was a great experience. I spent the rest of middle school and high school playing in different bands at places like Velour in Provo with different members, but I was always the different groups’ main songwriter.
After graduating high school, I started taking music more seriously with my new band, Fake Blond. I invested the money I made working at a ski resort into studio time and got a few songs finished. We recorded “Sweet Adolecensce” at June Audio in Provo, where the Backseat Lovers recorded a few of their hits. We released the singles over a few months and started playing more gigs at venues like Kilby Court and Velour. Our best moment in Salt Lake City was playing a sold-out show at Kilby Court I had organized with The Backseat Lovers and Ritt Momney. They’re great guys; it was fun playing with them. Eventually, we were offered a record deal from an indie label in LA but turned it down because the deal wasn’t great.
Shortly after receiving the offer from the label, I moved to California to go to college. There, I wrote a ton of songs, started recording on a Tascam Portastudio, and put together demos before tracking them in Ableton. I spent the next four years moving from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara and, after getting into UCLA, to Los Angeles. I played shows at places like The Mint, Killer Yacht Club, and UCLA while continuing to write and record songs at home and friends’ studios. I also had the opportunity to work at Remote Control Productions in Santa Monica, which was an incredible learning experience. They’ve produced music for movies like Dune, The Dark Knight, Inception, and TV shows like Game of Thrones and The Last of Us, so I got to see the composers’ creative processes firsthand. I also played guitar on the score for the film “The Conqueror (Hollywood Fallout)” while I was working there.
I have a handful of the singles that I’ve recorded slotted for release under Lucky Henry in 2024. “Apathetic” is out on January 10th, and we also filmed five music videos in one week for a group of songs that we’ve put together as a short film; I’m excited to share those with the singles. The earliest song of the bunch was written five years ago, so this has been a long time coming.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My journey hasn’t been particularly smooth, but I think things always work out for the best in the end. The bands I played with in high school had different members who would come and go as their priorities moved away from music. After high school, we had our long-time guitar player leave the band to go on a Mormon mission, and our bass player decided to move away from music and prioritize work and self-care. Our drummer and I decided to play it like the White Stripes and do a guitar and drum duo, which was great. We played some of our coolest shows that way.
After leaving for California, the music scene in San Luis Obispo wasn’t as active as the scene in Utah, and I was pretty isolated in the spot I was living, but I ended up writing songs and recording demos at my family’s place on a ranch in Arroyo Grande. It ended up being one of my most creative periods. This continued when I moved to Santa Barbara during the pandemic, which also threw a wrench in playing live. I wish I had taken advantage of the social media activity at the time and worked on TikTok, but I got to improve a lot as a songwriter and producer during that period.
I continued working on those things when I moved to LA, and while it was a pretty rough transition, only having lived in smaller, more suburban areas, I eventually met some great people and could get some feedback from professionals I met in the city. I met people like Colin Wolfe, who’s worked on records like ‘The Chronic’ by Dr. Dre and played bass on “Waterfalls” and “No Scrubs” by TLC. He’s a very supportive, artistic guy who gets music. Working with friends, there opened my eyes to different styles of production and helped develop my ear.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I write songs, produce them, and perform them. People who know about me see that I write songs, play guitar, and sing, but I write pretty much all the instruments for my songs and usually perform them on the records. I get by on drums and usually find someone else to play them for me, but I did play drums on “Collarbones” when we had Fake Blond. My real strengths are songwriting and producing; I love putting a song together that grabs your attention from the start and stays interesting throughout. I especially love writing bass lines and melodies. I’m most proud of the recent songs I’ve written, and I’m excited that I could record and mix them to a point where they feel good to release. I also think “Sweet Adolescence” with Fake Blond is one of the best songs I’ve written aside from the newer ones.
I think what sets me apart is the songwriting and arrangements. That’s the part of the craft I care most about.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I think there’s already a big shift in what music is popular that’s only going to increase as the internet and streaming create more niches for artists. There are musicians with tens of millions of monthly listeners I’ve shown to music lovers who have never heard of the artist. I think the days of household names like Michael Jackson, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, or Beyonce may be gone, and artists will have to focus more on their devoted audience. Even if that audience is in the tens of millions, it’s moving towards a future where, most often, success looks more like The Grateful Dead than Prince.
Pricing:
- Production: $250 per song
- Mixing: $150 per song
- Guitar (lessons and performance): $50 an hour
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luckybhenry/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-henry-3301b2220
Image Credits
Sydney Lester
