Brett Dennen started small.
He wrote songs and played them at coffee shops to people sipping lattes, mochas and chai teas.
He branched out, playing at festivals and opening up for other bands.
And now he’s playing coffee shops, but he won’t be able to see the crowd or smell the signature house blend — his songs provide, in some shops such as Starbucks, the morning ambiance through speakers only.
“One show leads to another, and you gain popularity in one area,” he said. “That area grows and grows, and you come back to that area and play again and again until you have a base.”
The career, he said, chose him.
“There’s nothing else I want to do, no matter how successful — or not successful, for that matter — I would get doing something else,” he said. “It found its way toward me.”
Dennen is currently supporting his newest album, “So Much More,” which he said consists of “acoustic folk music” with “some rock and world music influence,” and said he has been on tour for about a month.
But he said he’s been touring as a musician for three years, during which he composed songs about the events that take place in his own life as well as his friends’ and family’s.
He’s content being on the road, he said, because the places at which he stops or passes through keep him interested.
“You get to go see new places and all the great cities,” Dennen said. “You get to see the country and all the beauty it has to offer.”
However, he also noted the drawbacks of travel, which included a poor diet and lack of sleep.
“It can really wear you down for a while,” he said.
But that doesn’t keep him down — in both his lyrics and life, he said he is influenced most by what keeps him sanguine.
“The most current theme in my music is hope, plain and simple,” he said.
So it’s fitting, he said, that he’ll be playing before the Homecoming game to inspire the Wolfpack to defeat the Cavaliers.
“I’m glad that I can be the band for that,” he said. “An educated and enthusiastic audience is always better to play to, as opposed to a drunk audience.”
