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Article published Jan 19, 2007 Brendon James Wright makes fans the old-fashioned way: He earns them
By Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times Staff
If there was a contest for the title of hardest-working man in the local music scene, singer-songwriter Brendon James Wright would certainly be a contender.
Roughly 200 nights a year, you can find Wright trekking up and down the Cumberland Avenue "Strip" and Kingston Pike, in bars and restaurants throughout the Old City and Market Square. With guitar in hand and a batch of hardscrabble Americana songs about hard-luck prisoners, melancholy lovers and the everyday people of blue collar America, he's made a name for himself as an roots-music troubadour.
He hasn't done it by thumping his chest and inundating the media with tales of his exploits. He's done it the old-fashioned way — through honesty, hard work and a belief that art ultimately wins out.
"For the past six or seven years, I've been playing my ass off, for sure," Wright told The Daily Times this week. "There's good things and bad things that go with that. For the most part, that's what I've done for a living, and now I really feel like I'm in a transitional phase. I'm trying to focus a little more on quality and not on quantity. I told myself that if I had the right project to push, it would be imperative for me to make that crossover to becoming a recording artist rather than playing covers in a bar ever night.
"I think there's a lot of ways to approach that, and some guys around here are very good at it. In lots of ways, it transcends their music, because if you're good at getting publicity, you can get a following based on anything. Me, I'm not really great at those things. I'm not a self-promoter as much as I am a musician. I just have faith and confidence that if I put out the best stuff I can, all of that other stuff will take care of itself."
As Wright puts it, he's been writing songs since before he even knew how to play them on an instrument. It's always come natural for him, and as he grew older and his tastes more refined, he found himself drawn to the roots rock of singer-songwriters like Steve Earle, Chris Knight and Darrell Scott.
"I like to describe what I'm doing now as sort of Steve Earle meets Damien Rice," Wright said. "I try to listen to and model my songwriting after guys like that. My biggest idol is Darrell Scott; I think he's the consummate musician — he's got a great voice, he can play with anybody and he writes the best songs. I definitely look at where he is and scratch my head sometimes over why this guy is not America's artist, like a Bruce Springsteen or a John Lennon. He feels like that to me, because he's that good, but really the only time he gets heard is when someone else does one of his songs.
"I like what he does, but instead of being that guy in the background, I want to be that guy in the foreground. But that goes back to publicity being what it's all about. I'd be very happy to be in the same circles as Robert Earl Keen and Steve Earle, but you've got to shoot for the highest point possible, because if you don't, you'll end up selling yourself short."
Wright has played in his share of local bands; in fact, a few years ago, a band he helped found, Stillshine, won a local radio station's battle of the bands contest. The group fell apart not long after, however, and Wright has opted to remain a solo musician ever since — although he does count some top-notch partners among the crop of musicians who play with him these days.
"Stillshine was my first foray into playing with a four-piece band, and it just kind of got out of control," Wright said. "I felt pretty good about our product, but I never felt comfortable with the big picture. The guys I'm playing with now play some of the same sort of material I do, and that completely goes back to the singer-songwriter stuff I was doing. Now, I'm doing an acoustic duo, and that's really more my vibe. It's kind of what I've always gone for, a cross between real rootsy-sounding Americana, Southern rock, some bluegrass and some blues — things that are really inherent to East Tennessee."
Although he plays a mean harmonica, Wright's skills are superb on the acoustic guitar. He's currently at work on his first full-length studio album (he has another record, culled from sessions performing live on WDVX-FM), "Sunday Sessions," due out later this year. Already there are a few songs from the record on his Myspace page, and a listen to any one of them — particularly the harrowing prison song "Circle of Light" — demonstrates why his coarse voice and nimble fingers paint vivid portraits of those about whom he writes.
Those characters are what draw his fans close, listening raptly as he spins dark tales and humorous stories. Folks hear what he sings, and they can relate; they know those characters that populate his songs, because they spring from the mind of an East Tennessee boy whose music is connected strongly from the land from which he sprang.
"I'm slowly gaining momentum, picking up a couple of fans here and there," he said. "I feel like I can definitely put together big shows; not because I've been up on a platform yelling, 'Come check me out,' but because they've heard the music and identify with it."