Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies

Artist Information

Biography

"I was dreaming of you, she said

In your sharp black suit, she said

With your ten dollar words

And your five dollar shoes"

There are musicians in America now who have taken off for unexplored territory, land once staked out by the greats from our past: Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and other less-famous names. These new songwriters aren't there to grab headlines or fill the pages of meaningless magazines. They are there to write and sing their songs, living words that come to them sometimes in a hurry and sometimes in a haze. And at a time when the music business itself seems lost in a spiraling fog of self-declared importance and self-fulfilling decay, these new singers are actually saviors of the sounds we love so much. Without them, it might be hard to find our way out of the ninety-nine cent download, and even harder to care whether the world of music even continues.


Make no mistake: there is a small army of musicians who care enough about their calling to gamble their future on it. The singers and songwriters, guitarists and drummers, drive around the country playing wherever they find an audience. Some nights they may connect with thousands, others with ten. What matters most is their pursuit of the sound they hear in their hearts and in their minds. Today, when too much space is spent talking about what is going to happen to the music business, Brian Wright & the Waco Tragedies are like thieves in the night, sneaking into town to steal the thunder right out from under the media glare of despair. With their new album Bluebird, released on the new Breakout Music label, the group is poised to plant a flag in their Los Angeles home that his one band who isn't prepared to settle for less than greatness. The way they make that claim is at the heart of their strength.

"I bet you still got that cigarette smile

And your country boy blues

And you sing it over and over

Over and over again"

These are musicians who respect the boundaries of music, and then go about messing them up every chance they get. While some might try to collar them with an alternative country tag, that would be a big mistake, because Wright & the Waco Tragedies are at heart a band with a ton of country influences, sure, but with a rock & roll heart all the way through. Much of that has to do with attitude as much as altitude. The group plays with an aggressive edge even when they're quiet, like they're trying to take the music as far as they can even it gets twisted into a brand new shape. The album opener, "Over and Again," begins mildly, but it isn't long before the ghost of the Velvet Underground is knocking on its door with an experimental edge impossible to ignore. Every song on Bluebird has the same creative streak. Sparked by Wright's lyrical precision and endless imagination, this is music that dares listeners not to pay attention.


"She said you sing it like you mean it

But it's just some stupid song

But little ballerina it's my favorite

When you dance along"

All the while, when the young Texan was 13, Brian Wright went for music. He started as a drummer, he says, "but it turns out I was a better guitar player than I was a drummer. I did a lot of work as a sideman. Luckily, I could play just about any instrument with keys or strings."

Brian met a musician that would turn his life around. The teenager snuck into a club called the Blues Connection and heard guitarist George Spratt & the Spratt Attack. The older man and Wright became fast friends for a few months, but it was enough to seal a spirit into Wright that he carries to this day. Soon came the requisite relocation to Austin, and the quest to make his mark on a city bulging at the seams with other like-minded players. Wright's band there made a small noise, got a bit of record label interest but soon found themselves back at the end of a very long line.

"I literally flipped a coin and said, 'heads L.A., tails New York,'" Wright recalls, "just to get away from where I was from and do what I wanted to do. And it landed on heads, so I went to L.A. The weather was better anyway. I left for California with my drummer. That was 2002."

"The sunlight creeps in

And shines on the mirror

The night's passed us by

And morning is here."

Like a lot of stories in Los Angeles, Brian Wright & the Waco Tragedies struggled to find a home there. Wright fell in with similar songwriters and musicians, but little worked. "I couldn't afford to leave," he says now, "and my pride wouldn't let me. I did solo gigs and played rock & roll. Then I started writing some country-type songs, maybe because I missed home. I really didn't know how much that music meant to me until I got to California. I liked what my music was, and liked the sound of the band. It surprised me a bit. Now I know what I want to do."

"But if you gotta go

Go safely my dear

And the record just skips at the end

Over and over, over and over again"



Wright's first album, Dog Ears, was a first step towards making Bluebird. Recorded in just three days at the Wagon Wheel studio in North Hollywood, Wright and the Waco Tragedies new album is like a promise fulfilled. "I had the guys I wanted, and I'd been touring a lot of my own, so when I got home and went in the studio with the band, we were really ready," Wright says. "The setting was perfect. The studio is in somebody's house. Almost everyone was in the same room. We put the amps in the kitchen and the drums in the bedroom. We'd record, then play it back and there was the song, just like we wanted. We did the album in two days, but I'd forgotten some songs, so we went back in one more day and did some more. And that was it. Day three made the record."

Sometimes knowing when something is finished is the most important fact of all. Brian Wright & the Waco Tragedies knew their Bluebird album was finished on that third day. And now, with its release and a national tour about to start, their new life is just beginning.

--by native Texan, Bill Bentley

Instrumentation

Brian Wright - vocals, guitars, piano, harmonica
Fil Krohnengold - piano, accordion, backing vocals
Jason "Ace" Gonzalez - guitar, lap steel, pedal steel
Deacon - drums, percussion
Willie C. Golden - bass, piano
Sally Jaye - vocals

Discography

Dog Ears (2006), Bluebird (2007).
Tracks are streaming via myspace.com/thewacotragedies and www.brianwrightmusic.com

Audio

• Bluebird
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• War on Wilcox
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• Morning Cigarettes
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• Glory Hallelujah
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Video

Photo Gallery

Press

• the tragedies return to treff's tonight. [+ Show ]
  

  Waco native Brian Wright will bring his band, the Waco Tragedies, back to its namesake for a perform...Waco native Brian Wright will bring his band, the Waco Tragedies, back to its namesake for a performance at 10 p.m. today at Treff's Bar and Grill.
  
  The band is about a week into its tour, promoting its second album, Bluebird, which will be released Tuesday.
  
  Wright, lead vocals, said it's exciting to be back in Waco.
  
  "The best people I've ever met are right here," Wright said.
  
  The name of the band has a lot to say about Waco and the songs they write and sing, he said. Wright said the way people in the world view Waco can be tragic, based on tragedies that have happened here.
  
  "I would like to, in some way, shed a more positive light on this town," he said.
  
  Wright describes the band's sound as country rock 'n' roll. Songwriting and the stories behind it are important to the band, he said.
  
  "It's our own emotion going into our songs," Wright said.
  
  The story-telling songs are part of the folk and country traditions and a lot of them have classic bluegrass harmonies, he said.
  
  "It's a very familiar sound without being derivative," Wright said. He said he hopes the stories are something everyone can identify with.
  
  For the second album, Wright said he got all the players in the band he ever wanted.
  
  "I think it's a fantastic band of musicians," he said.
  
  The album was recorded in three days, with everybody playing and singing together. It is a good representation of how the band sounds live, Wright said.
  
  Friday's performance will mix songs from the both records and some stuff that isn't recorded, Wright said.
  
  Sally Jaye opens for the Tragedies on the tour and joins the band for some songs. The band will accompany her set as well.
  
  Jaye said she met Wright in Los Angeles, started singing with the band and Wright invited her on tour.
  
  She has a similar sound to the Tragedies.
  
  "It's roots, Americana," she said. "But it's got a little bit of honky-tonk to it."
  
  Jaye compares Wright's songwriting to musicians who "not only write great music, but are also poets." She said she finds a lot of inspiration in Wright's music.
  
  "I think Brian is one of the best songwriters of this generation," Jaye said.
  
  It's really good to bring this type of music to the South because this is where it started, she said.
  
  Patrick Treff, owner of Treff's Bar and Grill, said he usually books cover bands and local artists to play.
  
  "I went through word of mouth, through a friend (to book the Tragedies,)" Treff said.

• sometimes it takes a second album [+ Show ]
  

  Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies, Bluebird (Breakout) Sometimes it takes a second album to rea...Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies,
  Bluebird
  (Breakout)
  Sometimes it takes a second album to really bring it all the way home. Ask Bruce Springsteen. Same thing for Brian Wright. And make no mistake: Bluebird is music that says something is going on here, way beyond what everyone else in alt-country or whatever goofy name you want to call it is doing. Maybe that's because Wright is past categories, firing away on so many inspired cylinders that he's creating his own niche, like all the greats do. He recorded this album
  in North Hollywood in three days, and was smart enough to realize he didn't need another. There are songs
  here that inspire wonder, and make you realize that just because the media is writing off the music
  business as a sinking ship doesn't mean there aren't passionate people out there gambling their lives on
  the sound they hear in their heads and hearts. For Brian Wright, that means a soulicious mix of country,
  rock, folk and the undeifnable, which is always a dead giveaway we're in the presence of someone ready to put
  their name up on the board in big letters. Watch him.
  (Bill Bentley)

• My Top Ten For 2007 [+ Show ]
  

  My Top Ten for 2007 BY BILL BENTLEY Some annual rituals are actually all they’re cracked up to...My Top Ten for 2007
  
  BY BILL BENTLEY
  
  Some annual rituals are actually all they’re cracked up to be, like picking ten albums that came out over the past year that really rang the bells of freedom, truth, soul and just flat-out musical monkey business. The following albums all did that, and then some. Some got heard, and others disappeared faster than a Democratic candidate talking about cranking up the war in Iraq even higher. Each of them, truth be told, have made 2007 a year to never forget.
  
  1. Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies, Bluebird (Breakout).
  
  Wright hails from a small town outside of Waco, but writes songs like he’s a master of the universe. Whether he’s pinpointing the exact reason a relationship is heading for the rocks, or figuring out why the world won’t behave, no one playing today captures the ability to make the future feel like it’s the only place anyone in their right — or wrong — mind would want to be.

• Over & Over Again [+ Show ]
  

  Music is a funny racket. How else to explain why someone as talented as Brian Wright can release a...Music is a funny racket. How else to explain why someone as talented as Brian Wright can release
  an album full of modern wonders--songs that beg to be heard and felt--and not make any impact at
  all? Forget the fact it’s not fair. It borders on the criminal that music this majestic is overlooked. Brian
  Wright takes those moments in life that turn the world around, the ones we might overlook at the time
  but realize later are total game changers. He uses an unerring eye for detail and an amazing ability to
  paint the big picture, mixing them together so it’s impossible to tell one from the other. “Over and
  Again” bounces from tiny observations about a record that skips to the realization that things will
  never be the same, taking the music from clipped guitar chords to a full-tilt frontal assault with
  massive organ chords and the kind of cacophony that hurtled the Velvet Underground to unending
  deity status. There are only a handful of artists who can capture this kind of magic--Bob Dylan, Lou
  Reed, Neil Young to name three--but so far Wright has been in the wrong place. Don’t expect that to
  last forever, however, because there is no way he won’t get even better and when he does, look out.
  His Bluebird album will be a collector’s item, fetching beaucoup bucks on amazon.com, and he’ll
  have more best friends who knew him when than he’ll know what to do with. Just watch.
  — 10/14/2008
  

Setlist

The following is a typical set list from Brian Wright & the Waco Tragedies:

Morning Cigarettes
Former Queen of Spain
War on Wilcox
Adeline
Radar
Mrs. Rosenthal
Cordelia (new & unrecorded-tentative title)
Downtown Eloise
Philomena (new & unrecorded-tentative title)
Your Brother, The Poet
You Think Too Much of Me (new & unrecorded-tentative title)
Bluebird
Glory Hallelujah

A typical set from Brian Wright & the Waco Tragedies is roughly 1 hour, but once in a while they are known to go on a marathon run if time permits.

Covers are a rarity, but when they do happen they are always random and spontanious.

Basic Requirements

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