Brandon Jenner: What Becoming a Father Forced Me to Finally Face About My Childhood

0:02Darin Olien:Welcome to Super Life with me, Darin Olien. A podcast where we explore, discover, and share solutions that promote a healthier life and a better world. Together, we'll ignite possibilities, inspire change, and build sovereignty, creating a roadmap towards a super life for you and for all. Get ready to start living your super life.

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4:12Welcome back to the Super Life Podcast.

4:14Darin Olien:Today, I am thrilled to welcome my very good and great friend, talented musician, and devoted father of four, my good buddy, Brandon Jenner. In this deep, personal conversation, Brandon opens up about the beautiful chaos of raising a growing family, including his twin boys and his newest baby, Joni, and the immense challenge of carving out space for creative expression. We discuss his recent dive into his home studio to record an incredible 10-song concept album in just three months, and how writing music serves as a profound, unfiltered, therapeutic release. We also explore the vulnerability required to share your authentic voice, modeling emotional honesty for our children and navigating the echoes of our own childhoods as we parent.

5:17Darin Olien:I also share a personal story about finding an unmarked cassette tape of my father singing after my mom's passing, illustrating how the art we share today becomes the legacy we leave behind. Powerful. This is a raw, inspiring conversation about showing up for the people we love, while honoring the art we are called to make. enjoy let's dive in welcome to the super life show is that what this is yeah it's changed but now i'm uh i get to be in in your place in your studio and recently the birthplace of your new album that's true that's true thank you d yeah it's nice it's nice to be in here a few years ago, like maybe two or three years ago, I built this building and built this room, we'll call it.

6:21And, um, I hadn't, I, as soon as I got done building it, I had to just go straight back to being a dad.

6:28Darin Olien:Cause it was like, it took, you know, four or five months off to just like do construction, do this thing, build the studio. And then I had to go back to being a dad. And then, And, you know, we had another baby. I think I did it while she was pregnant with Joan. And then Joan was born and I got right back into being a dad. And then now I got to make this record. Like, it was three months, dude. We started this record three months before it came out, which was really fast for us. That's really fast. Yeah. And the only way that I could justify it was to just dive fully in. Yeah. Just be like, okay, I'm just going to take these three months of my life, not be a dad for those three months be a dad but like a much more you know slimmed down version a much more slimmed down version of it yeah yeah i mean because i know that as an artist like through and through as you are and being dedicated to your family fully right and you're it's a dynamic i mean it's it's so full-on for you guys because you have four kids and there's a demand there and and then as as a pulse of art that wants to come through you and and create i can imagine the lack of a better word the struggle between you want to be because i know it i see it you want to be the best dad you can and you're phenomenal and husband and you're an artist and so you had to like completely kind of shut that down and then all of a sudden like what was that that moment where you said okay it's time and that choice because it's still required you're still a dad that doesn't go away you're still husband doesn't go away you still have responsibilities so when you made that choice how how did that occur and how did you know like okay I gotta go I gotta do this well somebody kicked me in the ass it was my buddy Jorge who I've known for a long time and we've worked together for a long time and Jorge basically called me and was like I've got this idea for a record kind of a concept record and you know part of it is like I didn't want to let him down, honestly.

8:55I was like, okay, let's do this. Let's make this record. And then from that moment on, I was like, okay, I've got Jorge riding on me. He really wants to do this together. He wants to make a great record. A lot of my life, I think, is defined by not letting others down. And that's crazy, right? But I think that that's a big piece to me. Obviously, with parenthood, I really don't want to let my kids down. I don't want to let my wife down. and then when there's other people that I'm working with creatively I don't want to let them down so I really want to show up and kick ass um and so when Jorge called and he had this idea and I thought it was a really good idea and I was like okay let's let's go for it um at that point it was like I didn't want to drop that ball you know it's kind of impossible at this point in my life sorry I'm so hot I'm still sweaty um it's it's kind of like impossible at this point in my life it's really hot outside by the way yeah um at this point in my life i cannot uh being a being a parent completely defines like the last well my daughter's 11 like the last decade of my life has been completely defined by parenthood for sure i've done some cool things i've put some music out.

10:11I've done this and that, but truthfully that has been the centerpiece of my life for sure. And everything revolves around that. Um, and it's continued to increase now with four kids, right? I'm going to start it just with my daughter who's 11 and then the twin boys. That's, that's like a whole nother topic. That's completely insane. Um, and now with Joni, four kids is just, there's always too many balls in the air to actually like juggle. so you always feel like you're dropping a ball on something whatever it is i mean kaylee and i were talking about it yesterday she was kind of like i wonder what kind of a mom i could have been for the boys had joanie not been born of course great so grateful that we have the four kids that we have wouldn't trade it for anything but it dilutes you you know we only have so much bandwidth in this life and like you know her needing to mother the youngest you know i don't want to say takes away but it just she has to show up a little bit differently for the for the older boys you know um so your con your whole life is just constantly like you know you're dropping balls you just have to kind of like choose which ones you're gonna want to drop and unfortunately or fortunately whenever um music is a big one for me right like it's something that i have to be in a very proactive state you have to be bored you have to be like able to sit with yourself and just kind of be quiet and silent to in order to kind of get to that creative place and my life is so reactive like i'm just constantly living in a reactive state putting fires out all the time right when you think you've got a routine a kid gets sick or right when you think you get a routine a broken finger or right when you think you get a routine you know whatever it's just the the list is endless of things that can disrupt routine so my life has been completely void of routine it's just been what do you what does everybody need right now you know and i know that sounds like people pleasing and in a way it is but it's the role that i've kind of chosen also for my life like i've chosen to be the dad of four kids i've chosen to get married and have a wife you know i've chosen to have as many friends as I do.

12:26And, um, you know, I choose to be a good son to my mom and help her out as much as I can. Um, you know, they're, they're the choices that I've made. Uh, and it's not, I don't think it's, I think part of it is like not wanting to let people down. And part of it is knowing that through service comes like the most amount of joy, right? Being

12:48Darin Olien:useful yeah yeah so it's like it and then and then if your creative flow is required a level of space and silence for creativity to come through in the middle of a storm constantly of other people's other people's needs children how do you even begin to wrestle with that and and find the space and i think this speaks to anyone as well maybe maybe more to artists but also to like anyone who wants to create anything at any time in their life there's never a perfect time but there are also there always is a choice point where like choosing and then because there I don't know all the details, but being your friend, there was a moment where you chose and then you weren't showing up to the workout.

13:49Darin Olien:I was gone all of a sudden. You were gone, but fully in it and inspired. And another part of you showed up and you were fired up and it seemed to be contributory to other areas of your life as well and not necessarily taking away. And yet there's always a taking away because like you said, you only have a finite space and time. And, uh, so for you, what was the, when did you realize in an impossible, in an impossible place to find space? Yeah. How did you then make that choice to go, Hey man, I need to do this. I need to do it now. And Jorge obviously being one, but you still had a mounting family that you had to.

14:42Well, I really want to. I mean, you know, when you're a parent, you want to balance it, right? You don't want to just be like, I don't want to. I can't only be dad all the time. And them modeling me and my behavior is just, oh, I'm just showing up for the people all the time, right? Like I have to be, I have to do things that they'll be proud of.

14:58Darin Olien:I have to do things that I'm proud of so that they'll be proud of it. And you get to say no to them too sometimes and have some boundaries. Yeah. Which is really hard. That's a really hard thing. Especially, I mean, we had talked about this another time too. Like when my boys became the age that I stopped seeing my dad, that was a really hard thing for me. It was really hard for me to say no to them when they say, Dad, can we jump on the trampoline with me? And subconsciously, I didn't even really know why it was so difficult for me to say no, not right now. I'm going to do it later. but part of it was because it was you know that was the little brandon kind of didn't have somebody to go and ask that right to right at some point you know for just for people your dad wasn't around that much yeah yeah stopped being around kind of when i was you know five six was around a bit but my mom and my dad split and you know it was natural and they uh and and i had a stepdad that came in that was great um but yeah that was uh that was that was a hard thing to navigate I mean there was a lot of emotion there when I really thought that okay wait these boys are the age that I was it kind of hit me hard you know I remember you were there when we were talking about it um yeah you know one of the things I realized when it came to like making music my god Kaylee and I my wife Kaylee and I are so different she's vigilant hyper vigilant if there was a fly flying around us right now she would just go whack and keep talking like she's it's amazing like she sees everything that's out of place that's out of place this could have been that but you know she's it's amazing that mama bear it's mama bear but she's also like you know like we'll go to dinner with you know a dozen people and she'll tell you what everybody had for appetizers how much of it they ate what their main course was what they had to drink how many drinks they had like she'll tell everybody she'll go around the whole table i can't even i don't even know who was I was sitting across from you know the next morning I'm like oh yeah yeah we went to dinner last night cool I'm a daydreamer I'm like in class it was so hard for me when I was young because I'm just staring at the thing Brandon Brandon yeah what we've been asking you to read for 10 minutes you know that kind of thing I was just a daydreamer but for writing I think that's the superpower you know people that are daydreamers when they're young I think that they just kind of get lost in thought.

17:17And I think it's a, it's a bit of a, I don't want to call it a creative muscle and I don't mean to pat myself on the back here. It's, it was a big Achilles heel for a long time in school. And it can be even till today in my own home, you know, I'm a daydreamer. Like, you know, my wife's like, Hey, Hey, Hey. Um, but I really allowed myself to just be that person for a little while. And I needed the support of my wife. I needed to say to her like, hey, listen, I'm going to be really checked out. Like I'm going to be really unavailable. I'll be here at times and I'll be present and I'll try to, you know, help as much as I can.

17:51And I'll try to compartmentalize as much as I can. But there's going to be a lot of times where I am like just psychologically kind of checked out, unavailable, just in a creative, weird, daydreamy space. And I just allowed myself to be in that place for a little while, you know, because you don't really leave it in the studio. You know, you come home and you're thinking about how the day went when you tracked those musicians, and you're thinking about the takes they did, and like, oh, I remember that one lick. Like, I got to remember that's on, you know, that's the eighth take that he did it on.

18:20And like, I love the way that that leads into the verse. And you just, that's, you're thinking of that while you're sleeping. It's just nonstop. And if I get taken out of that too much, I'm not going to make as good of a record. I heard somebody describe it, which I love, is that when you go to make a record, it's a little bit like a...

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20:25when you go to make a record it's a little bit like a fisherman going out to sea and the further out to sea you go the bigger fish you catch but you're more isolated from society you know and

20:35Darin Olien:it's it's it takes a toll like going that deep what is what is i mean making songs and everything but then putting a whole a whole album together is also a whole nother layers and layers of things and arranging all of that on top of each other like a whole like what do you what what is your driving force with that like what are you hoping to express from the album itself um because every you know we're we've we've lost we've got eight seconds of attention these days if we're lucky 12 um so like quick hits one song but like the art of putting an entire album together is a lot different than putting a song together and and and for you like what do you what do you think is driving you of what you want to express with that because again in an impossible scenario that you're in for you to like i was even surprised like holy shit he's gonna he's doing a whole album right now right fully knowing the best that i can as outside in knowing what you know how crazy my life yeah um and like wow so that that's a drive that that's a and and i want to get into your writing because your lyrics are so powerful and personal and meaningful what was the drive like what do you want people well that's the it's therapy for me also right like i can't tell you how many times i would write a line or write a chorus and cry and like just be i'd be in this room and i'm weeping like so grateful it's a very strange feeling you know because it really is like gratitude in a way you know when when music kind of comes to you like that and you you write something that you're really proud of and it just happened to go to this bridge like effortlessly and you love it and you're like whoa, this is, I mean, it's so gratifying for me.

23:06That's the main thing that I'm chasing is like kind of personal gratification when I'm writing music, you know? I just want to feel like really proud and really inspired. And I want to feel like whatever music I'm writing is coming from as deep of a place as possible and as little as, and as unanalytical as possible. I'm not trying to write music to like be analytical or be anything. I'm just trying to feel and then put that into music. So for me, it's very therapeutic. As far as the record is concerned, you know, it, yeah, it's an album, it's 10 songs, but it is a collection of moments. You know, each song means something so different.

23:50You could really break it down into different categories. It's like the album, how does the album make me feel? Well, the album makes me feel very, very proud of the collection of songs that we put together. I think that it's got a really cohesive kind of feel. I've collaborated with people that I really respect and admire. And I'm really proud of that as a body of work. But then you break it down into each individual song, and each song means something so different to me, right? Like there are songs that, you know, I put myself in this person's shoes. And then another song where I put myself in somebody who's experiencing something completely different.

24:22and then there's songs where I put myself in my own kind of shoes and or allow myself to be a a person that I'm too afraid to be um so every song means something and then you can really break it down to lines I mean there are you know lines in every song that when I hear them back or you know if playing the record in the house which my wife likes to do which is sweet um um and i hear a line i go damn that's a good line and i know i i've got a whole story behind it right you know there's you know a hundred lines in the record that i've i could write a you know not a

25:00Darin Olien:book on but you know i wouldn't want to but i could write the backstory behind why that line showed up and the way exactly yeah and so even break it down into just lines you know i mean they mean so much to me certain arrangements certain hooks you know certain melodies these choices um you know it really is like uh you know i see a record as just a massive lego thing that you just you piece by piece you put it together you piece by piece put it together and you spend hundreds of hours doing it you know i mean this is a like this maybe a silly most obvious thing it's like but i'm listening to you and i hear like you're allowing space so that you feel yeah and allowing for the energy to fill itself up in terms of representations of lyrics to to touch on a feeling so that you can express something that you deeply feel and then when you listen as someone it doesn't matter who that person is music is a feeling yeah you know what i mean and that's it's it's like oh wow i don't know why that just kind of hit me but it's like just listening of how you get there and then when we as as the audience gets to hear your stuff it's some sort of transmission of an opportunity but my own experience is allowing me to feel whatever it is I'm feeling.

26:35Darin Olien:Absolutely. You know, absolutely. You can express yourself and emotion through words. You can also do it just through sound or sound and words. And for me, you know, I, listen, I, when I was going through a breakup when I was 16 years old and I was driving in my truck down the highway and I was listening to forever by Ben Harper, you know, just give me your forever. Don't please. And I'm crying going, man it was it was so good while it lasted and but you know what is forever and you're just sitting there and you hear this energy that he's clearly he probably you know wrote that as a love song right for somebody and the way that it helped me process what i was going through um among many other songs as i was growing up and throughout my life um i i just think that that's what i'm really trying to do with music is like just to be as vulnerable and as honest as possible so that whatever energy i'm feeling in the moment um if somebody hears it it helps them process something that they're going through right is this it's this incredible transmission of emotion and energy and that's why i think you know there's i mean we're dealing with i mean think about how simple this is like there are literally 12 notes that's it there's only 12 notes and really you shouldn't use all 12 in the same song, right?

27:54Like you only have, you know, eight, you know, 10 notes, right? At max, if even if you want to make something that's kind of jazzy. And then we have 26 letters, 12 notes, 26 letters. And that's, that's, that's all we have to communicate through music. And think about how long music has been around and how many different variations on those 12 notes and 26 letters have been accomplished already, but it will continue to go on forever. And the reason why i think it will more than anything my belief is that when you sit down and you listen to you put in a there's no tape you listen to you put in a tape of somebody that you've never heard before and all of a sudden this this sound is coming through the speakers yeah everybody's played you know you've heard what an acoustic guitar sounds like you've heard what a voice sounds like but have you really heard it in that combination with that kind of energetic feel with that kind of emotion behind it with that sadness with that heartache with that whatever there's an energetic fingerprint that everything has and when we find something that's unique we're really drawn to it yeah and i know that's been the case for me throughout you know listening to music there are things that i've found where i'm just like this is so different i've never heard anything like this i've heard all those notes before i've heard all those words i've heard all those letters be used but I've never heard somebody interpret it this way and share what it is that they're going through in this way.

29:24Right. Um, that's one of the things I, you know, I, I love about music. Yeah.

29:30Darin Olien:Did I, I don't know if I told you this, you might've been head down in your music, but you know, when my mom passed and I was home, uh, I don't know if I did. Well, I'll tell you. No, I don't think you did. So my mom, So my dad and her were divorced for 30 years. Next to her bed was unmarked cassette tapes in the drawer closest to her bed. Oh, no way. I pulled them out, and my mom still has cassette player, still has old tapes. Listen to oldies, Elvis, you know, variety, carpenters, all these things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I put these blank tapes in. It's my dad. Oh, no way. Yeah. So now I'm in my mom, my brother and I.

30:25Darin Olien:Oh, my God. You're in your mom's bedroom. Now, well, we're in the living room now, and we're cleaning my mom's house after she passes away. I put in this thing, and my dad now is in the room. I haven't heard my dad's voice. He was a singer. He did a lot of things. he he was in the room energetically singing through these tapes that my mom still cherished the emotion i the emotion was beyond anything because number one i haven't heard his voice number two the fact that it was that that time with my mom and i just automatically started singing along like full as loud as i can because my dad and i have a very similar voice so i just you know me it doesn't take much for me to let it rip and it was it was one of the most powerful things because and i'm i'm speaking to it not just to say this but i'm speaking to the energy whatever my dad you know a lot of them were religious he's saying at choirs and stuff like It was just a random stuff that was so powerful because it was transmuting the energy that I was feeling then, but feeling what he was feeling.

31:52Darin Olien:It was so complex and beautiful and simple all at the same time. And so, you know, all that to say, like the, the, the music, you know, it's just, it's such an opportunity for, and I love the fact that you're aware of it, that you're therapeutically aware of yourself enough to go like, I need to do this for me and I need to find the deepest layers of myself. and i think it's interesting also that you did choose to do it at a very intense time right right and and and one could argue you needed to one could argue that you absolutely needed to for you yeah right yeah and uh something that you grew up with i mean your stepdad your mom Music, music, music, music was all around you.

32:58Darin Olien:So the fact that you reached to something that is deeply, deeply personal, I think is masterful.

33:12Darin Olien:Again, I keep saying it, but in a situation that didn't seem like you had a minute to yourself. Yeah. Yeah. But you created it. I did. To do this. And yes, is there a people-pleasing side to you? Yeah. We all have it in some. Yeah. And you did do this for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Both can be very true. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. And once you get the ball rolling, it's like there's a people-pleasing aspect to it of maybe that is the initiator. But then once the ball's rolling, it's like I just, I couldn't wait to come back up here and, you know, track and do it. Yeah, you're just in it. I mean, there's very few things where you forget that you own a phone in life these days, right?

33:59Right. Right now, I guess, right? We're sitting here chatting like this. But that's how it is with me in the studio. Like, I can get mixing something, get started layering, doing whatever, right? Just being creative. And I just completely forget that the outside world exists. There was only two times, and it was actually at the very end of the record, Kaylee scared the shit out of me because I was just sitting there working away and then tap on the shoulder. I mean, it was like terrified. I was terrified.

34:27Darin Olien:It really threw me. Because you're so in it? Because I'm just so in it. And one of the things I love about a studio, my own studio, is that nobody can hear you, right? Like you feel completely alone, right? You're in this box. It's pretty soundproof. And so you can try stuff. You can just sound like an idiot. You can really experiment and stretch yourself, right? It's so safe. And so for somebody to tap you on the shoulder all of a sudden behind you when you're in this just safe zone is oh so unsettling that happened twice I think she felt pretty bad but she also realized like whoa I just disturbed him when he was in like a it's like waking somebody up from a meditation or something just like but you know the other thing like when you were just describing being in your mom's house after she's passed and in her living room this place where she had spent so many years of her life um and now she's gone like that scene is just to me it's so emotional it's so thick it's so like tragic and beautiful all at once right like totally i mean i can only imagine what that must have felt like for you is to be i mean those are really milestone moments in life where it's forever etched in my forever and music connected at all yeah isn't that amazing because on the one hand we were doing stuff yeah we're cleaning my mom's house yeah and i was there with my brother who is a doer and wanted to get it done with me there and there was something really necessary of course with him right because we're sharing this incredibly hard moment together and for him he needed to express it in that way but like out of left field this completely unexpected thing filled the room and that was my dad and my mom loved him singing to the very end wow even though they didn't talk even though they They had separate lives.

36:44Wow. Yeah, him singing transcended all of the bad blood or the challenging times they went through. It was like, that's amazing. Here's a lot of the - That's so cool.

36:55Darin Olien:Here's another layer to that. That next day, my dad had twins, fraternal twins, and he had passed when they were three, right? Another marriage. They passed when they were three? No, no, no. My dad passed when they were three. When they were three. Oh, and I met one of these guys, right? One of the boys. Yeah, Nathan and Jenna. Yeah, okay. So I met them because I was in Minnesota. I went to Minneapolis just to spend a dinner with them while I'm going through all this stuff, just to touch base. I meet them in Minneapolis, and I sit down with them, and I said, I just found our dads and it's wild to say, right?