Photo by Andrew Feller
Milwaukee and Memphis are just a bit over 600 miles apart. However, as local musician Zach Pietrini and Memphis’ McKenna Bray recently learned, music has the ability to transcend distance. With their new EP Modern Love, they found plenty in common musically.
“We were just feeling the magic of it,” says Pietrini.
Authenticity and honesty are at the heart of their songs, weaving a gritty determination and hard work ethic into the melodies and lyrics. Bray calls it a “laid-back authenticity.”
They’re proud to come from independent-minded music communities where songs don’t necessarily need fit exactly into one genre or category. The EP offers everything from rock and Americana to pop and soul. “It’s got rock, it’s got Americana, but then it’s got this pop, which I feel like brings a little bit more of this modern Nashville sound to this grittiness,” says Bray. “With ‘Young Love’ and ‘Ends In Fire,’ it gave me more Memphis grit and soul vibes.”
For Pietrini, songs like “Young Love” reminded him of his Midwestern roots and the streets of Milwaukee. They’re also reminders of how love can transcend everything. In “Amelia,” Pietrini sings “modern love is complicated.” They trade off on lead vocals throughout the EP, which allowed them to examine the male and female perspective of relationships.
“I think we talk a lot about different parts of love that aren't necessarily talked about often in songs, when it comes to commitment, or the challenges that come with love,” says Bray. “A lot of these songs are more at a deeper root of love than just this feeling of romance.”
For example, “Yours” was written about a committed love regardless of how one feels at a given time, while “Young Love” as Pietrini puts is about “being young, not knowing a lot, just knowing that you each want to chase this thing down and wrangle it, no matter what happens.”
On the flip side, “Ends in Fire” and “Keep on Running” talk about a love in peril. “It’s about a love goes wrong, and what that can look like and what that does to people,” says Pietrini. “And then ‘Keep On Running’ is the idea of being so engrossed in other things in life that you kind of miss the person who's right there in front of you.”
Chance Encounter
Their Milwaukee to Memphis connection began rather audaciously a couple years ago. After recommendations from friends and a constructive first phone call, they decided to go on tour.
“I could tell right away that McKenna was not afraid of getting her hands dirty in that [administration] stuff and keeping things straight and doing weekly meetups. I got the sense she would work really hard,” says Pietrini. “When someone wants to work hard, too, and you don’t feel like you have to do it alone, that’s a win in my book.”
They planned to go on a short tour of Memphis and the surrounding area last year. However, the pandemic forced them to cancel the tour two shows in. Despite the discouraging news, they decided to continue working together in whatever ways they could. Bray booked a day at Farmland Studios in Nashville with her friend Caleb Fisher, after hearing Pietrini recount stories of his time on the road when he was younger and struggled to make ends meet.
They were pleasantly surprised with the ease they felt working together in the studio. “Nobody really has a big ego,” says Pietrini. “We’re just a pretty open bunch, and not very easily offended. It was really fun.”
Courtesy of Zach Pietrini
After spending a day in the studio creating their first song together, “Keep on Running,” they decided to keep writing songs and see where it led them. They held weekly FaceTime conversations to discuss song ideas. Without pressure to get something done by a specific date, the ability to work at a relaxes pace gave them limitless freedom. That process went exceptionally well, despite the frequent appearances of Pietrini’s kids. One song would lead to another and soon they had a handful of songs.
“I think we work really well together because McKenna has a really great ear for melody. She has a really good sense for rhythm, and how things need to move,” says Pietrini. “Whereas I will just sometimes ignore that and just write the song and finish it.”
Adds McKenna, “But [Zach’s] so good at lyrics. He can write something that I’ve thought about, but in a way that I probably could have never said it.”
Those qualities made their first project co-writing a breeze. It was a chance to get out of their own heads for a moment and get some added perspective. They didn’t have to do all the heavy lifting and could share responsibilities. “To have somebody just to be there, witnessing that with you, I think it just makes songs better,” says Pietrini. “It makes them more honest. It makes it easier to tell the story.”
There were many moments creating the EP that felt “sacred” to him because they “represents something bigger happening between humans.”
“When, normally speaking, people disagree about something, it’s a reason for people to pick up their toys and go home, but this ended up being a way for us to move forward into a deeper understanding of how we work together, and how we relate,” says Pietrini. “It was a beautiful moment of, ‘Cool, this is fun, we’re not here to just make music. We’re also here to connect.’”
One such moment was recording “Amelia” live, where not even creaking floorboards from the apartment above the studio could stop their momentum. There’s a “weird telepathy that you develop when you're with somebody that long,” says Pietrini. Getting a song to greatness rarely happens alone “because we can only see so much as one human.”
The songs from the EP have already gained some pre-release buzz. For example, “Ends in Fire” will appear in new film Deep Woods, which is produced by fellow Milwaukeean Jeffrey Kurz. Says Pietrini, “he was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is perfect.’”
