When Bodie Kuljian took the stage during blind auditions for NBC’s The Voice in 2022, it took just 20 seconds for Blake Shelton to press his button to indicate his desire to coach the singer. A split second later, John Legend followed suit, and less than a minute passed before both Gwen Stefani and Camila Cabello did the same. It was one of only seven four-chair turnarounds that season.
Though bodie eventually decided to work with Shelton, it was Cabello who posed the question that allowed bodie to succinctly sum up his artistry: “What kind of music do you want to sing?”
“I love it all,” bodie answered. That much is clear when listening to his debut album, No Skips. Fitting comfortably in the center of the Venn diagram of hip-hop and alternative rock, with traces of soul and pop for good measure, the album includes “whisper and the wind,” which hit the top 10 of both the Billboard Airplay and the Mediabase Audience charts.
We spoke with bodie ahead of his first-ever trip to Chicago, where he plays the Vic Theatre alongside Elevation Rhythm next Friday, about his admiration for Blake Shelton, becoming comfortable with expressing his faith in his lyrics, and paying tribute to his favorite show of all time by becoming a human piñata.
There are so many genres and styles that play a role in your sound. How did you determine the ideal way to make your full-length artistic opening statement?
Accidentally (laughs). Most of those songs already existed before I even knew I was going to do an album, which is kind of fun. It was less writing songs to put on this album and more, ‘I'm just going to write a bunch of songs that are true to my heart and reflect me the way I want them to, and that sound cool.’ And then when it was time to make an album, I'd say the majority of the songs already existed. So it was just finding the last few and then putting together, out of this pool of, I think, 16 songs, which ones were going to be the best for the album. So it was actually really, really fun how it ended up coming together.
Do you have any plans for those outtakes right now, or are you going to wait and see what their fate is?
Both. I'm waiting to see if they will come out, but there are some really cool ones that didn't quite make the cut that I'm hoping will come out.
What was it like narrowing down from 16 to 10? What was that clinching factor that determined what made the album?
That's a great question. Me and a couple of voices that I allow to speak into my projects kind of just sat down and hashed it out and decided which ones we thought were the strongest to support the project as a whole. And this is what we landed on, but honestly, there are two or three that could have been subbed in and out, and I think the project still would have felt the same way it does. It’s cool. I know that I made the right decision, but there are some songs I have in the chamber that are cool as well.
I hope we get to hear them soon. Curiously enough, you used the word “voice” there, and I’d love to know what you learned from your time working with your coach Blake Shelton on The Voice that came into play as you recorded No Skips.
Not a whole lot. I love him and his personality, and I'd say the biggest thing I took away from working specifically with him is just seeing a man of such accomplishment walk so humbly. Whatever the opposite of a diva is, that's Blake Shelton. He'd pull up to the set in a dirty pickup truck he drove himself. He's in his work clothes. I was like, ‘I thought you were a singer for a living.’ He's coming in with dirt on his jeans. The dude's just the real deal. That definitely helped me see a healthy representation of a star that doesn't operate in the normal sense of what you might think a star would operate in. Maybe I took some of that with me.
One pretty cool thing that might not operate in the “normal sense” of a star is that you’re doing a free show at your alma mater, Vanguard University, to promote the new album. If you could go back to 2011 and give a message to freshman bodie about everything that’s on the horizon in the next 14 years, what would you tell him?
Great question. On the advice side, stay faithful to the calling on your life. I wouldn't change a thing, but I think there are small things maybe that I could have done better, that wouldn't have altered too many things in the future.
But, man, on a lighter note, I would just say, ‘Hang on tight, because the things that you're believing and praying for, a lot of them are going to come to fruition over the next ten years that'll be hard to believe.’
You mentioned staying faithful. Your Christian faith is obviously very important to you, and you also count bands like Nirvana and blink-182, who were not always complimentary of organized religion, as influences. How do you bridge the gap between those two worlds that could sometimes be 180 degrees apart in your creative process?
I've made secular music for most of my career up until about two years ago, when I made the switch to be a little bit more overtly Christian in my lyrics. I've always walked a Christian faith, but I kept it a little bit more generic and vanilla in my lyricism prior. Coming into the Christian music scene as the new kid on the block in a lot of ways, I saw a need for that. There's a lot of awesome bands in the Christian space, and I'm not trying to discredit them. I have a lot of friends that are doing something similar to me, but I still take, I'd say, 95% of my inspiration from non-Christian music, because there's just some really killer old grunge and pop punk music that you just don't really see done very well within the genre that I'm now in, which is Christian music.
So yeah, on the regular, I listen to a majority of secular music, when it comes to what I'm listening to and learning from and taking notes on. Anything from Nirvana and old-school Green Day, the Offspring, Audioslave, Chevelle, Soundgarden—all that stuff gets me pumped up. And then some newer stuff, bands like Turnstile, Good Terms—sonically, I take inspiration from those bands. But conceptually, people just want to hear music that's authentic to them, and that's honest and relatable. And so for me, whether you love the church, hate the church, or you're somewhere in between, my lyrics are relatable because I'm just talking about my journey and my faith. As long as you're not just totally offended and put off that I talk about God in my songs, I think you can enjoy it regardless of what you believe.
I don't think I've had anyone just come out and say, like, ‘Oh, this Jesus stuff is whack, I'm out.’ And that was really encouraging. Honestly, the biggest reason it took me so long to start writing fully in my authentic self was because I didn't want to offend or, selfishly, I didn't want to lose the small fan base I had at the time. Ever since making the switch and just being faithful to what God called me towards, it's grown so much. I'm really grateful.
That’s great that you and your fans have given each other that trust to be completely authentic. Your parents must have been similarly supportive as creatives themselves. What has it been like for them to watch their son forge his own artistic path?
It's really sweet. I grew up in L.A., and my parents enabled me to just be expressive. I was the kid showing up to fifth grade in pink Dickies. They were just like, ‘Do your thing, be you,’ you know, flame Converse, orange Dickies, spiked hair with blue gel in it. I owe a lot of my desire to be individualistic and performative to them. So now they're seeing their son do his thing—my dad's my biggest fan. Anytime I show him anything, he just cries. My mom’s the same way. It's really sweet. My mom lives in Colorado. My dad lives out by me. So when I do shows in Colorado, my mom's there, and when I'm doing California shows, my dad's there. It’s really sweet. That support system is massive, and I'm really grateful.
Going to another generation, what is it like for your three young kids to watch their dad rock out on stage?
When you're a kid, you don't really care; you don't really know what's going on. And so it's funny, they see me at church singing every weekend, and then they see me at a bar at a sold-out, 350-people show, and they're just kind of standing there watching. It's more of the attention that it brings that they are more fascinated with. My son will be like, ‘I'm pretty famous, right, Dad? I was on TV. So I'm pretty famous.’
I have to ask you about the Jackass-style stunts in your “Say So” video. How did you land on that concept?
I grew up watching Jackass. It was my favorite show of all time. It's so funny, because in a lot of the rooms I perform in now, they're Christian environments, so I have to be like, ‘There was a show I used to watch. I don't endorse it, but…’ Yeah, dude, that show was so sick and I still watch it all the time.
I grew up as a little skater kid in L.A. so I was fascinated with these guys. Now a decade-and-a-half later, I'm like, ‘Dang, I still love these shows. The song is about just letting go and trusting God. Why don't I pay homage to my childhood, the childhood version of me that was running around with little cameras, chasing my friends on skateboards and jumping in bushes and stuff?’ So that's essentially what we did.
And the disclaimer at the beginning, which I assume one of your children is reading that...
That was my son.
Your famous son.
My famous son. That stuff is really fun. My kids were behind the camera watching me cover myself with snakes, and they were hitting me with bats when I was hanging from a tree dressed as a piñata. I asked my kids—I actually made a video about it. I was like, ‘What do I do for a living?’ My son said stuntman, and then my daughter is like, ‘I think you just hang out with your friends.’ And I was like, honestly, I've demonstrated both of those things in my job. So yes.
In the future, if your kids want to do something reckless at some point, how will you tell them no? When they say, “Well, you rode a tricycle down a set of stairs,” how do you counter that?
“Just wear a helmet” (laughs). Luckily, ironically, my kids are all—and I say this with so much love—they're not the most daredevil, brave kids. They're more, sit and observe and be careful. I'm actually very grateful because we haven't had very many hospital bills.
Were there any stunts that did not make the cut or anything that you considered and ultimately decided against?
I think there were levels to the stunts that we didn't quite achieve. Like the U-Haul truck that I filled with water balloons, that took a whole day to fill, and it was really gnarly, but I wanted it to look gnarlier than it ended up looking. But you had to gun it in this giant U-Haul and then slam on the brakes, and it ended up being super-dangerous. I wish we would've gotten a little bit gnarlier, but it was just difficult.
Then there was one I showed briefly, where I went down a hill towards some cacti on a box on a hill, and it wouldn't slide. And so it ended up being a funny little part of the video, but it was a total fail.
On the subject of total failures, I have to ask my favorite question to ask any artist: What’s been the biggest Spinal Tap moment in your career so far?
A venue caught on fire before my set. I had to play my set in the lobby on an acoustic guitar.
I have so many questions. How do you get the audience to file suit and just come out in the lobby?
Smoke. The people were dying (laughs).
Fair, that’ll do it. How did the fire start?
It was a haze machine and a fan that had been left on for days, and the oil in the haze machine had run dry. It started smoking and caught on fire, and then it caught the fan on fire that was next to it. And it was a pretty tall fire, probably like three, four feet, and they had to run out and steam it off. It was during the last song of the artist before me.
Way to adapt.
We had to. It was a pretty full crowd in a city we hadn’t played before. We had to do it.
Is there anything you’d like the Chicago crowd to know before coming to see you at the Vic next week?
Yeah. My show is gonna be crazy. Lots of energy. You're gonna burn a lot of calories. It's gonna be good.
Hopefully only calories will burn and not the venue again.
Let’s hope so.
bodie's new album No Skips is streaming now. He appears with Elevation Rhythm at The Vic Theater (3145 N Sheffield Ave,) on Friday, September 12 (doors open at 6:30pm, show starts at 7:30pm). Tickets (starting at $50.94) are on sale now.
