Newski and the Strength of Collaboration

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Photo: Newski - Facebook

Brett Newski

Brett Newski

“Freedom is the all-time greatest currency,” Brett Newski says. Artistically speaking, Newski remains a moving target. The nomadic singer-songwriter has been to Europe, Asia and Africa. You can’t put a price on freedom, the Milwaukee-based (for now, at least) artist emphasizes. He has set foot on all continents not bound by ice, played surprise shows at Chipotle and Wal-Mart and has previously been billed as Brett Newski and the Corruption. A few years back at Summerfest, Newski and drummer Spatola power-busked the stage opening for Courtney Barnett. By last year, on the UScellular Connection Stage, the new trio might have easily been called Brett Loudski & The No Tomorrow. A change was in the air.

Collaborations

For his new album Friend Rock, he decided to lose any pretense and simply use the handle Newski for the band also includes bassist Sean Anderson and drummer Steve Vorass.

How much time does it take to coordinate schedules, request let me get back to you or deploy any other modern sophisticated ways of putting something off? For Friend Rock, Newski just said screw it and recorded a batch of songs which he later asked acquaintances and folks he admired to contribute to. Every track of the album includes contributions—from Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), Brian Vander Ark (the Verve Pipe), Ryan Miller (Guster), Miles Nielsen, and Scott Terry (Red Wanting Blue) to overseas acts like H Burns (France), The Secret Beach (Canada) and The Shabs (South Africa).

“If not now, when?” Newski recalls thinking in the middle of the pandemic when folks became more reachable. He swung for the fence and began asking his musical influences to add tracks to songs that were largely already recorded.

“If we’d have co-written every song together it would have taken forever. I think people are so busy now… it’s important to be efficient.” When something is that soon in the future, he says, you often have a visceral reaction to agree and “honestly it is easier.”

But he also appreciates the therapeutic value of “non-billable” time. He recalls visiting other cities and countries where mañana rules the day. “There are so many cities or countries where it is normal to be late … and it is this weird game of anticipating what time things actually start. While that sounds like a total negative, I feel like that is the tax you pay to be in these really calm beautiful places. You just feel good because the pace is so slow. And the pressure is off.”

Getting on the road

Newski lived in Vietnam for two years doing music beds, recording tracks for television before moving to home and diving into the world of DIY touring.

“It took me forever to book that first tour because I didn’t have any contacts. Even the shows that weren’t that good…it was more money than I’d made at any of my other jobs.”

He didn’t mind booking the shows, loading gear or selling merch. He realized, “there’s nothing about this that I don’t like. If each tour got 8% less shitty, do that long enough and pretty soon you are not playing shitty shows anymore.”

Newski was also inquisitive early on, trying to figure out how this game without rules worked. “Musical role models were lacking and that might have be a good thing in a sense … I had to fail a lot on my own.” He lived in Madison and recalls seeing bands at the High Noon Saloon and noticing them in the parking lot, looking kinda burned out and tired while loading in, and wondering, “how do I do that, drive around the county in a van and play music every night?”

He picked their brains and they “sensed my puppy energy and thought ‘that was me eight years ago.’” Newski’s radar was up, realizing that scruffy dude was scruffy for a reason, having put miles on. “The drifter/nomad/bohemian always fascinated me. They live on the bare minimum and have a ton of freedom and maybe don’t have a lot of money—that has its taxes … and I’ve found that out.”

He also found inspiration closer to home. “My dad’s work ethic was also very inspiring. He was never a musician but I think seeing that blue collar work ethic as normal—that’s what you have to do—be proud of your work,” he says.

Newski says that living by his wits was jump-started by two things. “A: completely fueled by fear of being trapped by the circumstance of a job—just getting stuck.” He went to interviews where he looked at the building and its incandescent light “and the cool guy doing the interview who was high up but was trapped. That struck the fear of God in me. And B: a healthy obsession with music.”

Were Newski, in his travels, to find himself on a desert island, what album would get him though? “My visceral response would be Stunt by Barenaked Ladies but also the blue album by Weezer. The Bare Naked ladies was one of the first times I went to a store, looked at a CD and bought it.” He found the dork-rock, lack of coolness factor something he could relate to. “And Weezer was the first experience with loud electric guitars and simple songs. I still think that is way harder to do than you would ever imagine.”

https://newskimusic.com/podcast

Dirt From the Road

Currently, Newski’s podcast Dirt From the Road is up to 157 podcasts. The series is simple, conversations with fellow musicians about their strangest travel stories, mental health boosts, and how to navigate the hurdles of being a person in modern times. Additionally, during lockdown, the mental health advocate released the book It’s Hard to be a Person, which he wrote and illustrated: shepherdexpress.com/music/artists-beating-covid-19/brett-newskis-upcoming-book-adds-to-his-multi-media-assault.

Newski plays April 7 at Anodyne Walkers Point with Valentiger. Info here: eventbrite.com/e/wmse-presents-newski-with-special-guests-valentiger-tickets-503512638857.