"FIXER UPPER", track by track by Brooklyn Doran
My newest record is called “Fixer Upper” which I originally thought up in the studio while we were envisioning how all these tracks would sound sewn together. I was with my producer and co-writing partner Dan Hosh. The title feels representative to me as an artist. The album itself was a bit of a fixer upper, and sometimes as a person I feel like a bit of a Fixer Upper too. This LP works to bridge the gap between my older sound and my new one; my pre-pandemic self and the body I inhabit now. We’re all a bit of a fixer upper, aren’t we? It’s important to keep working on ourselves. I’m so proud of this record.
Some of the songs from FIXER UPPER were released as singles during the pandemic and some are songs that we recorded in 2019 and completely gutted only to rebuild them like the perfect reno to a house with “good bones.”
1. Relics
Relics is written like a cheating song; but it isn’t about cheating at all. Relics is about finding a bobby pin left behind in the apartment of your new love by the person they used to live with. It is about starting a new relationship with someone with the memories they shared with their ex always hanging over you. Have they danced in this kitchen before? Did she make breakfast at this counter? It is about trying not to disturb those memories so that you can begin to make your own.
2. Wasted My Twenties (feat. J3M)
Wasted My Twenties is a song that I began writing with Jemuel Roberts (J3M) during the first few months of the pandemic while we lived and quarantined together in our Toronto apartment. We wanted to write something real, about breaking cycles and thinking back over our twenties as we came into a new decade together and all the stupid shit that we got up to while trying to make a name for ourselves.
As I enter my thirties, I think back about the urgency I had in my twenties to prove myself- as a person worthy of love, as a musician and songwriter, and as an adult. I also wanted to speak to this feeling, and the realness of touring in your twenties. Sleeping on strangers’ couches and playing for beer tickets; smoking mystery pot with the door guy, binge drinking in my dorm room and kissing girls for the first time at Crews & Tangos after a little liquid courage. I feel like I really paid my dues in this era, but I also look back and see more than a few unhealthy habits that could’ve been broken earlier.
3. Fuck That Guy
This song was born out of a session with singer-songwriter, Evan Redsky a few months after we first met as the Alianait Arts & Music Festival just south of the arctic circle.
Evan came with this song almost totally envisioned. He was coming from the perspective of being/feeling like “that guy” and trying to find ways to heal and grow. I was coming from the perspective of someone who had known quite a few of those guys and also trying to find ways to heal and grow. It was a pretty deep well to dig from. Lyrically and melodically this song came entirely from Evan but spoke right to my heart. The only modification I made to the lyrics was “he’s a fucking wreck in an indie band”; which I think is such a jab - because often times I find indie rock dudes to be the worst perpetrators of those who abuse their power or status to fuck with young women; who seem like the safe guys who will offer to walk you home, but end up being the ones to watch out for.
4. Tomorrow Never Comes
Tomorrow Never Comes is a song that is so important to me as it was written in memory of my late friend Andrew “Glamdrew” Henderson. I think truly, it was Andrew’s wish to be memorialized through the artmaking of his friends and I feel so lucky to have contributed such a beautiful piece – one that features his voice and laugh in the recording. All of the proceeds of this song go to support The 519’s Will Munroe fund to support Queer and Trans people living with Cancer.
5. I Can’t Be Alone With You
I Can’t Be Alone With You is the oldest song on this record, having been originally released in November of 2019, back when I thought this album was set to drop in March of 2020. This song is the starting place sonically for where I wanted to take this project – and as a whole offering I think it is one of the best sounding songs I’ve ever written. This song is about that feeling of wanting to be with someone so badly, but knowing that ultimately it isn’t the best decision – that the act of actually being with them doesn’t feel as good as the idea of them in your arms.
6. This Town Won’t Miss You
This Town Won’t Miss you is a song about nostalgia for the place you grew up in. This song was released in the spring of 2021 and featured a video filmed by Matthew Kennedy at Upriver Media & Nicolas Camire; two local filmmakers in Kenora, Ontario. In the video we wanted to showcase the grittier areas of my hometown that would only be known by a person who has a history in living in that town; just shy of the areas that would be shown to tourists.
The first verse of this song is about visiting my grandmother’s house after she had passed away and a new family moved into her house. It had been years since I’d been there, and it moved me to tears to see the place I had grown up in be a vessel for new memories with a new family who knew nothing of my own history or ties to that place.
The second verse is about making out with my high school boyfriend in the back of my Honda Civic in a church parking lot. I remember being 17 and wanting nothing more than to escape and move to the city. And now I look back on that time with such nostalgia.
7. One Way Ticket
One Way Ticket is about leaving a relationship and moving on, even though it is hard and means leaving behind a life that you’d built with them. This song is special to me because it features two of my friends who are some of the most talented musicians I know- Kaia Kater on banjo and Ryan Funk (Mariel Buckley, Del Barber). One of the things that I love the most about the sound on this song is that it sounds like prairie music- like driving on a long highway in a vintage car.
This song is also important to me because in it I wrote is as I was leaving a relationship with a man as I was coming into my queerness. “I don’t have the right ways to tell you that you’re wrong” and “I don’t know the way back, even if I want” are lines that cut deep with me, because I was conditioned to only leave relationships that were awful, and that relationship was fine- but it was also like two puzzle pieces that almost fit together but didn’t. I remember desperately wanting to find my way back to the version of myself that I was when I began that relationship- but years later I feel so free and whole that I barely recognize the person who wanted to go back into that closet.
8. Michigan State
Michigan State is a song about the beginning and the end of a relationship- driving home from a little dive bar in Michigan. The first verse is about meeting the hottest prettiest girl at the bar and that sexy feeling of wanting to take her home- and that silent anticipation of what the rest of the night holds as you drive home together. The second verse is about the breakdown of that same relationship and the silence in the car hanging with all of the things unsaid.
I love the synth solo in post choruses and the 80’s drum sound- the song feels nostalgic but also so new at the same time. I wrote this song pre-pandemic but we re-opened the track in 2022 and completely redid the song from top-to-toe. I was listening to a lot of music steeped in this sound and was really inspired by tracks like “I’ll Be Your Guy” by Bambina and “Big Wheel” by Samia around this time.