After recently returning from a songwriting stint in California, local musician Colin Bracewell, 24, is gearing up for a Varsity Theater show May 1 and an album that will come out, well, eventually.
On any given day, you can find Bracewell at RiverRock Studios in northeast Minneapolis. Whether recording songs with his band or working by himself, Bracewell said he spends about 10 hours a week recording and two to three hours a day songwriting.
Many of the songs he is recording now he wrote 18 to 24 months ago. Bracewell said he and his band are trying to record the music live to maintain an organic ebb and flow to the music, which means they just have to work to get the best take they can and live with it.
“Hopefully, by the time the fall comes, I’ll have an album done and ready to release,” he said. “And then, depending on how the situation goes, I’ll put it out either winter or next spring.
Bracewell studied opera at the University of Minnesota, getting a bachelor’s degree in May 2024. While at the U, he recorded music out of his dorm in Middlebrook Hall. His first song, “Slopes,” has more than 150,000 listens on Spotify. He also recorded tons of songs on campus with his friend Stan Juzwiak, just for their own amusement.
“We would go back and forth from there and Ferguson Hall, there’s like, a hidden studio that no one really knows about,” Bracewell said. “We probably wrote like, I think it was over a semester, but we wrote like, 40 or 50 songs, just like, off the dome.”
While at the U, Bracewell was in an a cappella group, was a DJ for Radio K and performed in opera and theater productions. He credited Radio K with introducing him to the U’s music scene and, in turn, the larger Minneapolis scene.
He also got some help from the DIY scene in Iowa. After playing some house shows in Ames, he was introduced to the people of KURE 88.5, an alternative station in the area. Because of that connection, they booked him to play KURE Fest 2025 in February.
