Brandi Ediss (rhymes with lettuce) is a self-taught, left-handed guitarist who plays a righty guitar upside down.
She is a classically trained pianist who abandoned lessons as a teenager in favor of learning to play her favorite songs by ear. She’s a self-diagnosed compulsive harmonizer who has been arranging complex backing vocals since she accidentally learned to multi track in middle school, and she prides herself on being able to play keys and glockenspiel at the same time. Brandi became obsessed with music at a young age, and it was a sanctuary for her as she grew up in the farmlands of southern New Jersey, where she struggled to fit in. But she never quite took herself seriously as a capital-A Artist. Now, at 40
years old, she finds herself with a critically acclaimed debut album and featured as the singing voice of the main character in an award-winning Netflix film.
Brandi has spent most of her adult life in Early Childhood Education, first as a teacher, tutor, and nanny, and more recently as an educational researcher. She also maintains a photography business that she started in 2007, following a move to Chicago, which specializes in private sessions with children and families but also encompasses promotional and commercial work. Her photos have been published in magazines (e.g. Time Out New York, National Geographic Kids, Chicago Life), licensed by companies worldwide, and used for promo by artists like Andrew Bird and Mike Birbiglia. As years went by, Brandi’s love for music remained strong, but she participated mostly as a fan, making a point to see her favorite bands as often as she could. While she made music for children nearly every day, she rarely wrote or played for herself, and she hid her original songs from all but a handful of people until she joined a Facebook group for musicians in her early 30s.
In 2012, Brandi accepted a friend’s invitation to Theme Music (TM), a group that stressed the idea of making music for its own sake and building a supportive community to share it with. TM centered on a weekly challenge to record a song and video that fit a theme, e.g. songs with “this” or “that” in the title or songs about summer. Though she began with hesitation, Brandi quickly grew to love recording at home and collaborating remotely with faraway friends. Her lo-fi, harmony-laden covers began to attract attention both within the group and elsewhere, and her original songs were lauded for their honest, evocative lyrics, melodic sense, plaintive vocals, and quirky charm. Her experience in Theme Music led her not only to build the confidence and skill to write and record more of her own music, but also to seriously entertain the idea of making a record. Meeting Frank Padellaro (King Radio, Scud Mountain Boys) in the group in 2014 was a turning point, as he offered to produce her debut album and introduced her to musicians who would play pivotal roles, like Ken Maiuri and Dave Trenholm (both of whom Brandi was already enamored with, thanks to their work in bands like School for the Dead and the Pernice Brothers). Though Frank and Brandi lived a thousand miles apart at the time, they managed to forge a friendship, plan an album, and fall in love.
Bees and Bees and Bees was recorded between 2014 and 2020 with a lot of life in between, including a move to Massachusetts, a graduate degree, an engagement, and the opportunity to sing a song written by Joe Pernice for the Netflix coming-of-age film The Half of It. Brandi and Frank currently live and play music together in Easthampton, where they cater to the whims of two very old cats.
Read more about the album here.
