Meet the Kiwi star singing songs about swinging

Jeremy Redmore spent lockdown experiencing isolation from the point of view of his fans - with some surprising results.

By now, Jeremy Redmore should have completed his 2020 nationwide tour. He had 10 dates planned in small venues around the country singing sad songs about heartbreak to like-minded fans.

The Kiwi singer-songwriter should also be basking in the glow of his recently released and really rather good second solo album, The Brightest Flame, one written during the fallout of a rough break-up that’s full of tender, heartfelt and lovingly crafted moments.

On top of all that, he should be celebrating two shows played with his reunited rock band, Midnight Youth, including one very big - and probably very lucrative - night opening for another band on the nostalgia trail, My Chemical Romance.

Thanks to bung ol’ Coronavirus, none of that happened.

Instead, for the past six weeks, Redmore has been sitting inside his rented Auckland home wearing an oversized green bathrobe and black beanie while crooning solemn songs about swinging into his phone.

What the heck is going on?

“I've always been the kind of person that doesn't want to do what everyone else is doing,” Redmore told me when I called him at the end of last week. “When the pandemic came to New Zealand … I thought, ‘What else could I do?’ A lot of people were doing livestreaming (and) I’m not sure that's a particularly good idea. Playing live is such a special thing for a musician. The livestream event kind of dilutes it.” 

So Redmore mulled things over. His album was released as scheduled, but he decided pushing it onto people was a bad idea. “It seemed a bit off to be promoting a new record that was about heartbreak (when) heartbreak's really the least of our worries right now,” he says.

Instead, he trialled a new initiative, becoming a singer-for-hire for those in isolation, popping up on people’s porches and playing a small set as a way to cheer them up. When level four rules came into force, he had to flag that too.

One morning, at 3am, he woke up, startled by an idea. It was a good one. “Music isn't just about entertainment, it's about documenting what's going on,” Redmore says. “I went, ‘Okay, let's do some songs about what's going on, go full folk singer about it.’”

So that’s exactly what Redmore did. He asked fans to send him their experiences of lockdown, and began turning their stories into songs. Called Telltale Tunes, Redmore crafted an album’s-worth of material out of the stories his fans emailed into him.

And he got some really, really good ones.

“The first one I did, someone had said they'd found themselves in lockdown with their husband, and they'd actually fallen in love with someone before the lockdown and they couldn't stop thinking about that person. I did the song from the point of view of her husband: in my imagination, he was also in the same situation, but the wife didn't realise it.”

Many of the stories were about relationships. One was from a dad having the time of his life in lockdown: his ex-wife was an essential worker, so he had their children to himself. “He said it was just incredible,” says Redmore, “and he felt a bit guilty.”

Another was from a Civil Defence worker in Christchurch. She’d turned up to work through earthquakes, floods and mass shootings, but when the pandemic hit, her family suddenly had a problem with her job. “She's like, ‘This is my job. (He’s like), ‘I'm not comfortable.’ That really struck me,” says Redmore.

Amidst the 100 or so emails sent to him, Redmore received stories about accidental bubble breaches, a tenant who fell for their new flatmate, long distance lockdown love, a wide-ranging complaint about boomers, and a one-night stand that turned into something more over lockdown.

His songs had an impact: he heard from one guy who was forced to spend lockdown away from his girlfriend, and he planned to use Redmore’s song to soundtrack a marriage proposal once they were reunited.

But the one that really stands out involves multi-love. “It was a woman who recently started a swingers relationship before lockdown,” Redmore says. “She realised she was really in love with the opposite man, so to speak. I though that was pretty full-on thing to put out there publicly.”

Yes, Redmore wrote a song about it - and it has a happy ending. When the country moved into level three, Redmore heard back from the swingers. “When they reunited … they all listened to the song together. That's great. I made their song pretty dark and they said they loved it.”

Redmore isn’t sure what he’ll do with his new collection of songs, or what the future holds for him. With concerts on hold, his revenue dried up the moment the country went into lockdown.

But there’s been one bonus to making his Telltale Tunes series: it’s helped him recover from the gruelling process he went through putting together The Brightest Flame.

“Usually I'm writing all these songs about my life,” he says. “(I’d just written) a full-on self-confessional break-up album and this was other people’s shit. I found it really refreshing to write about other people's experiences.”

• Listen to Jeremy Redmore’s Telltale Tunes series here.