Laughter, loss and live jams with Bret McKenzie
Sunday, 18 May 2025
Ahead of the release of his new album, and some special Wellington performances, Flight of the Conchords star Bret McKenzie talks about losing his father, working with Jennifer Coolidge and the magic of playing with a live band. By André Chumko.
Bret McKenzie is somewhere in creative limbo.
Jammed between different art forms ‒ music, comedy, theatre, film ‒ the Flight of the Conchords star has always been experimental with his craft, merging song-writing with storytelling.
His new album, Freak Out City, which is out later this year, reflects his deliberate mixing of music with narrative ‒ its sound lies between upbeat and chaotic, energetic and genre-bending ‒ and with a playful use of instruments.
To be released under his own moniker, the album was developed with his eight-piece band the State Highway Wonders, who he describes as like a Wellington version of Wrecking Crew, referring to the Los Angeles-based musician collective that played studio recordings in the 1960s and 70s.
The project has been in the works since his 2022 tour of New Zealand and North America, that marked the release of his debut solo album Songs Without Jokes.
He’s learned a lot these last three years ‒ but also a lot of life has happened: his father, Peter McKenzie, died in 2023.
“My dad was a huge fan of my ‒ and supporter of my ‒ career in the arts,” McKenzie, 48, said in his first interview ahead of the sophomore album’s release, from his Wellington studio.
For much of 2023 McKenzie was looking after his father, who had became unexpectedly ill. This meant he only again started dedicating much of his time to Freak Out City last year.
He finished it at the end of 2024. (The delay between then and its release later this year is thanks to a significant backlog of artists wanting to create records, because of a global demand for vinyl.)
McKenzie said his father’s death was both tragic and funny ‒ he and his brothers inherited 50 race horses kept at a farm in Levin, north of Wellington.
“None of us know anything about racing horses, so we’ve been managing a farm badly for the last couple of years. … We’ve been giving horses away and finding homes for them. [It’s] really funny. That’s why I was missing for a year,” he said.
McKenzie says his father would have loved Freak Out City. “He’s definitely an influence. His love of melody and uplifting song is ‒ was ‒ a big thing for him. So he would absolutely love it. He’s a big fan. It’s very sad he can’t ‒ won’t ‒ get to hear it and see the show.”
The shows McKenzie mentions are happening next month, at Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse, in which he and the State Highway Wonders will play sneak previews of songs from Freak Out City, as well as tunes from throughout his career, as part of the midwinter Lōemis arts festival. He plans to share anecdotes from his career, and will also collaborate with the audience to pen songs live on stage.
McKenzie has been dabbling in this active type of audience interaction since a past Whanganui show, in which he asked a member of the crowd for a story from their life. McKenzie spun it into a tune on the spot ‒ and though his band had no idea about the scheme prior to it happening, they got on board by providing backing vocals and sound. The group ended up doing it all across America, and it’s now become a hallmark and highlight of a Bret McKenzie live show. “The more I did it, the more true it became to the person that I am,” he said.
It’s brought a personal and unique aspect to his performances, and created a new kind of rapport between him and his fans that goes beyond banter.
“The expectation is this distance. And so the music feels so sacred when the musicians are playing, [then] when the music stops and they talk, it feels like you’re let into them as a person,” he said.
“That’s why it’s so incredibly interesting and satisfying and often incredibly funny, because there’s been a sort of emotional tension during the songs, and then when they talk about something smaller ‒ like with the town they’re touring, or something ‒ the audience relaxes and … a real human connection happens.”
About half the songs on Freak Out City are recorded with the State Highway Wonders musicians, while the other half were recorded with LA-based musicians McKenzie had worked with before, with some crossover between the groups on particular songs.
The end result is an album that’s a little more live feeling, and a little less synth-jam than his previous Songs Without Jokes.
“My aim was to try and get that energy of a whole lot of musicians in a room and capture the playfulness. And so that was one of the main aims of the record. And that's kind of what the show is. You get this big band on stage all jamming together, and you hear music being made. … The group really plays,” he said.
While Freak Out City sounds like a disco bar of yesteryear, the album title is actually taken from one of its songs.
And as for the name of the band? Well, the Oscar and Grammy winner wanted something old-fashioned-sounding, and liked that State Highway Wonders made it seem like he could’ve collected them while driving New Zealand’s roads.
Its members are all Wellingtonians, all great players, and all friends (or friends of friends) that McKenzie originally brought together for a previous Newtown Festival. They’ve kept playing since; in 2022, they joined him on his North America tour via a bus, something McKenzie said was a bonding adventure that crystallised the group’s sound to a point that went beyond what they could have achieved by domestic touring alone.
“That’s one of the challenges, I think, for bands in New Zealand. You do the tour, and it’s over in two weekends, you’ve finished ‒ you’ve done the whole country. You don’t get a chance to … road-test the material and let it evolve.”
It’s a far cry from writing with his friend and Flights of the Conchords co-star Jemaine Clement, with comedy-club performances in mind. McKenzie would later get into writing songs for TV and film stories. Now, he’s writing tunes for himself.
“What interested me about the solo song-writing work is writing songs that exist as songs, and so that aren't particularly led by the place to play them,” he said.
Playing some of his first songs with the eight-piece band, McKenzie noticed its members’ full talents weren’t being harnessed, and there was a mellowish vibe. And so he decided to write songs that let the musicians shine, and gave them space to play, so the group’s energy could “kind of explode into the songs”.
The album’s titular song was recorded at Massey University’s Wellington studio with, unusually, all eight band members and McKenzie in the same room playing at the same time, meaning no overdubbing.
“That’s what musicians are so good at … being present and moving and playing. When you give them that opportunity, it’s very exciting to be in the middle of it.”
While it’s hard to know how Freak Out City might connect with people, McKenzie says he knows it has a magical heart and “a lot of love” in it, and feels like the songs will play well live.
Not only is McKenzie producing new music, he’s working on new films, too.
He recently worked on A Minecraft Movie, the biggest feature production he’s ever been involved with. In addition to writing two songs for it, he acted as a villager in the Minecraft world “wearing a box on my head”, who Jennifer Coolidge’s character falls in love with, and who cannot talk.
McKenzie’s friend, the film’s director Jared Hess, wanted someone who would make the scene funnier. As it happens, McKenzie worked with Coolidge on the 2013 rom-com Austenland directed by Jerusha Hess, Jared’s wife. And so, when Jared was thinking of who to cast for Coolidge to bounce off in Minecraft, he knew who to call.
The pair were in hysterics on set. McKenzie says Coolidge, 63, who’s experiencing a mid-career fame crest thanks to The White Lotus zeitgeist, is “one of the funniest actors ever”, who has some of the best improvisation skills. McKenzie added she was an “absolute joy, and a blast to hang out with”. “She’s a master … She’s one of those actors who in real life, are as funny as they are on screen.”
One of the Minecraft songs that McKenzie wrote, Zero to Hero, ended up being recorded by Kiwi pop darling Benee. McKenzie said it was cool to have his track sung by “such a superstar”, of a newer generation. Benee, 25, was in the studio with her mother ‒ who’s also her manager ‒ who McKenzie spoke to a lot.
“I’m a big fan of [Benee’s] music, and she’s a fan of my stuff. We had a really good time working together,” McKenzie said.
He’s buoyed at the talent of artists coming onto the scene today, and is relishing his getting older for the fact he gets to watch younger creatives blossom.
As for the new AI frontier? Despite some initial concerns for his job, McKenzie feels the technology is still “very strange” and “wonky”, and as such, it hasn’t quite yet made it into his work in any significant way ‒ though it is lurking around the edges, and he sees its benefit as an efficiency and ideation tool.
He has multiple film projects on the go, and is writing songs for upcoming animated movies. He likes the idea of making a big New Zealand comedy film, with recognisable New Zealand characters. He recently opened for Kiwi indie rock band The Beths, and has been writing songs on Instagram from comments, kind of like in his live shows.
Scattered around his secret treehouse-type studio where he writes and records are various synths, speakers and instruments he gets to use and be surrounded by, including a beautiful old piano that belonged to his great-grandmother, who was a piano teacher.
He says he wants his music to be joyous, heartfelt, funny and honest.
McKenzie has also been raising his three children and “world”, 15, 14, and 10, who he keeps out of the spotlight and lets lead their own lives, with his wife Hannah Clarke in Wellington ‒ a city he still gets recognised in. Though mostly these days that’s from tourists who are unaccustomed to seeing him around on his bicycle, or at Peoples Coffee.
“Quite often people come up to me and say, ‘you look a lot like that guy from Flight of the Conchords’,” McKenzie laughs. “I’m his older twin brother … I’m his 20-year-older brother.”
Bret McKenzie and the State Highway Wonders play at Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse, June 18 and June 19, part of Lōemis 2025. Tickets via: loemis.nz/bret-mckenzie