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He’s all grown up now. Schroeder has finished his first year of college at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn., and he’s wondering if releasing his fourth CD will have the same impact.
“I get less and less amazing as I get older,” Schroeder said with a laugh. “I’m just a regular college student who plays guitar.”
Such humility is typical for Schroeder. But what he lacks in youth phenom factor these days he more than makes up in ability, maturity, insight and adventurousness.
Musically, Schroeder’s new CD, “Alpha and Omega,” breaks some new ground, his songs taking on more melodic, lyrical and sonic complexity than his last collection of originals, “Lifting Up,” which was released in late 2005.
“I kind of had that Josh Grobin pretty sound going on. I wanted to get out of that and get out of that regular three-minute pop song and break some rules and try some other things,” Schroeder said. “I think my songwriting has definitely evolved. ... I’ve been more courageous with different kinds of instruments.”
In a lot of ways, he’s ventured outside his comfort zone, but the recording process was in the heart of his comfort zone: his bedroom.
Actually, his sister moved out of the house, and Schroeder now has two rooms when he’s home, turning his former bedroom into a place strictly for recording music. He’s got some new recording software that has opened up more possibilities for him and the resulting sound on “Alpha and Omega” doesn’t seem like something anybody could whip up in their bedroom.
“It’s fantastic. It’s so great. It’s such a step up from what I used before,” Schroeder said of the new software, Logic Studio. “It’s easy and you can do a lot more things.”
By now, Schroeder is an old pro at arranging and recording his songs, layering overdubbed instrumental and harmony vocal parts so seamlessly it seems like he must have crowded a whole band in his bedroom. But it’s all him, and he’s happy making his music that way and distributing it on his own, without any help from a record label. Not that he’d mind the help.
“I’m fine doing it my way. The music’s going to come out one way or another,” he said. “If somebody wants me to record in their studio, sure, I’ll do that.”
Although he recorded all the songs this summer, Schroeder said the album really has been in the works since right after “Lifting Up” was done. He wrote a lot of songs after he completed that collection and had a lot of songs that just needed a little work to be complete.
“It was kind of a second verse summer for me,” Schroeder said.
Although he didn’t plan it that way, during the recording process Schroeder realized that the 14 songs he picked out for “Alpha and Omega” fit into three distinct sections.
“The first chunk is when I first get to know what it’s like to follow Jesus, passionate, full of praise, maybe a little naïve,” he said.
The central suite of songs “is when all the trials come,” he said. “I’m really honest about the pain I’m going through.”
The final third of the collection finds Schroeder having a “new revelation” about his spirituality and his relationship with Jesus.
It might be a little hard to explain, but Schroeder is going to give it a try on his Web site, www.brianschroedermusic.com.
Schroeder said he drew some inspiration from the new Coldplay album for his new CD in terms of musical inventiveness, and he tried to incorporate some of the buoyant spirit he finds in Guster songs. “I wanted it to have a more summery sound on this,” he said.
With “Alpha and Omega” barely completed, Schroeder is already looking forward to working on his next CD, pumped up by the the way this project turned out. “I’m really happy with this CD,” he said. “I think it opens up some doors. It’s really warming me up to find what my music is all about.”
Schroeder has been performing his songs at area churches throughout the summer but he is really excited for his CD release concert Saturday at First Lutheran Church in Onalaska, where he’ll be joined by a percussionist and some other singers. “It’s going to rock,” he said.
Last summer, Schroeder spent a lot of his time working on a musical ministry he called Overflow, and when he went to college last fall, he was seriously thinking that he would go into the ministry. He’s majoring in the Bible and reconciliation studies, but still is unsure whether his path will take him to the seminary or in a musical direction.
“I just don’t know what I want to do,” he said. “I’ll just go wherever the wind blows.”
Contact Randy Erickson at randy.erickson@lee.net or 786-6812.
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