Biography
Few emerging artists have been able to bring the type of showmanship and songwriting to studio and stage like Gentry Bronson. The San Francisco-based musician is drawing fans back to the piano-driven niche carved out by artists like Tom Waits, Tori Amos, and Ben Folds. The intersection of storytelling, theatrics, and melody in his writing have also earned him comparisons to Nick Cave, David Gray, Michael Stipe and "Hedwig's" Stephen Trask. Throughout his music career, Gentry continues to prove himself to be an original.
Gentry's multiple CD releases cross over many musical boundaries from alternative rock to indie pop, folk to jazz, and ambient to classical styles. And his live performances are passionate and electric, keeping his audiences captivated from start to finish. A troubador, a vaudevillian, a balladeer, a punk, a pirate, a clown, and an entertainer.
KEY CHANGES - THE EARLY YEARS
Born in Bemidji, Minnesota, and named after a hitchhiker, Gentry started playing when he was 4 years old. "I used to sit at my grandparents' piano and make up melodies", Gentry recalls. The white keyes were 'good' characters and the black keys and were 'bad', and I'd create stories with the piano. So my parents asked me if I wanted lessons. They moved an old upright bar piano into the farm house I grew up in, with keys that had been replaced by plastic keys that would fall off, and it never got tuned again. You take that old out-of-tune piano, some snow drifts, corn fields, naked telephone wires, mosqutio infested marshland, factory smoke, plastic covered windows, hay bales and haunted old pig sheds, combined with Mozart and Khachaturian pieces, Beatles records, and punk rock, and that's where my 'sound' comes from.
From 1982 to 1987, Gentry won 5 Minnesota Music Teachers' Association awards for classical piano perfomance. He began winning so much and was advanced so many times above his age level, that he was competing with college age students by age 15. As he won his final award, Gentry discovered college radio, and his parents' 1960's and 70's record collection changing his music world forever. Soon after, Gentry became the lead singer in his first garage band, The Eviction Committee. "I didn't play any instrument in the band, I was the lead singer. I'd write lyrics based on Dr. Seuss, adolescent sex, Midwestern mind altering, and then I'd roll around on stage while my buddies in the band created really good songs and sounds for college and high school kids. But I wouldn't recommend trying to act like a rock star when you're 15. It's...um...pretty ridiculous."
THERE AND BACK AGAIN - THE 1990'S
Gentry's personal road to where he is today is painted with those colorful life experiences you often hear stories about from the mouths of true artists. After spending his first 18 years in Minnesota, Gentry headed off to the U.S. West Coast and found himself in Oregon, where he went to the University of Oregon for a year, but despised it. "I've always worked all kinds of outlandish jobs, but it was there, through making samosas for Jeff Pasternak, who's the son of late Universal Studios producer, Joe Pasternak, that I ended up in a music studio. I got hooked on music production in the studio." He then went to Alaska for several months and worked on the docks. Following that, he travelled down to Key West, Florida where he learned to bartend from an old 'Queen' named Daisy.
After that, Gentry moved back to Seattle and worked as a bartender at the infamous Off Ramp Club, hobnobbing at the edge of the exploding music scene with the bands of the day. He fronted the bands Bastard Slide and Buried Child, started doing spoken word, composed the music for a Withered Wall film fest, and wrote the score for a dance piece called "Goddess."
In 1994, he moved to San Francisco and returned to university. There, he played piano in an avant garde jazz combo called The Partial Orchestra, and did more spoken word performances. Moving to Prague, Czech Republic in 1995, he was a weekly DJ at the famed Roxy Klub, worked for Yazzyk, an art and literature magazine, taught English, and went to Karlova University. He discovered Middle Eastern music while travelling in Turkey for several months, then moved back to San Francisco again, where he finished a Bachelors of Arts degree in Humanities and International Studies. Afterward, he found work as a multi-media producer. Between contracting as a producer and travelling to Central America, Mexico and Southeast Asia, he wrote songs. In 2000, he won 3 Northern California Songwriters Association awards.
BAREFEET, FEDORAS AND HARD WORK - 2001 TO 2008
In 2001, he started the band, the Night Watchmen, writing the songs and producing one EP and two full length LPs with them including the dark, cabaret-styled record Lost In California. At the same time, he worked as a music director for Alchemia, a non-profit art and music program for disabled adults, where he co-wrote a musical. After releasing 2 low profile solo records, the acoustic LP Home and the instrumental LP Tranquillo, Gentry phased out the Night Watchmen and put his focus on his solo career.
Gentry recorded two LPs in 2006 - Santa Fe Sky, and No War. On No War (officially released in 2007), 14 songs are divided into three parts, each with a different theme, with piano and vocals as the central focus but backed by a full indie rock band sound. This LP showcases Gentry's broad sweeping range of songwriting prowess, from soaring beauties like the opener, Shine, to sweet soul-bearers like, Save Me, to the head-pounding piano punk of, Heads On Fire. He calls it, jokingly, his 'Star Wars Trilogy' record because of the 3-part concept format of the LP.
The Santa Fe Sky LP is on the opposite side of the musical spectrum. An ambient, instrumental record, co-written and co-produced with multi-instrumentalist Dave Hoover, this record leads the listener through a meditative enviro-soundscape of desert moods. Recorded over a short period in New Mexico, it was a real departure from the No War sound Gentry was working on at the same time.
During his work as a soloist and with the Night Watchmen, Gentry continued doing live and studio work for numerous artists and playing on film soundtracks, including the films After Hours (2002) and Dark Crimes (2005) (both composed by Brian Hawlk), and the films Nature's Flesh (2006), Minnesota Ice (2007), and Hero (2007) (all directed by his brother, Kaleb Bronson). He has also been featured on records by power punk band Tragedy Andy (2006) and Nashville recording artist Don Gallardo (2007) among other guest appearances.
In 2006, 2007 and 2008, Gentry completed several tours throughout the U.S. and playing hundreds of shows and travelling thousands of miles. His 2008 tour dates included a duo tour with fellow singer-songwriter Jesse Brewster whom he would work with later on recordings and in the Gentry Bronson band.
Gentry put together the Gentry Bronson band in February 2008 to do shows in the San Francisco area. Bringing in Jesse Brewster on guitar, long time collaborator and former Night Watchmen member Alex Aspinall on drums, and newly found musician David Fairchild (former player with Alejandro Escovedo) on bass. Dean Cook also did several shows with the band on drums. In October 2008, he disembarked for a 14-show series of live solo dates in Europe with several radio and television appearances along the way promoting the release of his new song, "Avond", an English version of the famous Dutch song written by Boudewijn de Groot & Lennaert Nijgh. The release of the 2008 "Avond" single was also Gentry's first collaborative release with Jesse Brewster.
"Avond" was released internationally in October 2008 by Zjelva Records and Gentry's own independent label, Stolen Hat Records. Shortly afterward, Gentry collaborated with filmmaker, Courtney Angermeier, on a short film to accompany the song "Avond", and it debuted on YouTube the same month as the release of the song. Gentry, Sacco Koster, of Zjelva Records, and Daniel Dugour, of Anitime 3D computer animation, worked together to launch Avondsong.com, a site dedicated to the amazing international history of the song Avond. The site went live in December 2008.
In November 2008, Gentry went on a self-described 5-month 'disappeared' in the Mayan Riviera. He returned to the U.S. in March 2009, and performed a concert 2 days after his return at the Pioneer Theatre in the Minnesota town where he grew up with his long time friend, Andy Novak, on drums along with Cannery Row as his backing band.
WHATS NEXT
Gentry just completed his new self-titled 2009 4-song EP. A new collection of original songs, it is fresh out of the studio and will be available as an advance CD release at his 2009 European shows with an official release planned for December 2009. Produced by Gentry and Jesse Brewster, it was recorded in Northern California at Shabbie Road studios by Alan Hertz. In addition to Gentry and Jesse, other musicians on the album include Alex Aspinall, along with singer Allyson Paige and guitarist James DePrato. Mixed in Los Angeles at Blue Velvet studios by Brian Hawlk, and mastered by Ken Lee (who has done re-mastering for Nirvana, R.E.M. and Sonic Youth), the record moves into yet more new musical territory for Gentry. For the cover, Gentry worked with artist, Ethen B. Luce, and Ethen used a photograph of Gentry performing a concert in Minnesota taken by Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, John Stennes.
Gentry is talking with several filmmakers to do videos for each of his new 2009 released songs. He plans to record either a series of 4-song EPs or a full length record in 2010, and he hopes to work further with Boudewijn de Groot. The Gentry Bronson band is primed for showtime with new original songs being added to the growing set list all the time. 2010 tour dates in the U.S. and Europe are brewing, but for now, you can see Gentry on tour in Europe from October through November 2009.
Gentry says about songwriting, "A good song will always stand on its own, no matter who sings it. To me the best songs tell a story, with characters, a plot, and a conclusion that continues to bring the listener back to the hook, the chorus, with simplicity and honesty and heart and humor and drama. I hope I'm able to achieve that with my songs."
Instrumentation
Gentry Bronson: lead vox & piano
The band:
Alex Aspinall: drums
Dave Fairchild: bass & vox
Jesse Brewster: guitars & vox
Discography
Gentry Bronson - "Gentry Bronson" - 2009 - Dec 2009 New mini-album release - Indie, worldbeat, americana, dark hop & roots rock
Gentry Bronson & Jesse Brewster - "AVOND" - 2008 single - English version of the Boudewijn de Groot & Lennaert Nijgh classic
Gentry Bronson - "NO WAR" - Official indie release Feb 2007 - Piano-based alternative, indie, 3-part concept rock
Gentry Bronson & Dave Hoover - "Santa Fe Sky" - 2006 - Instrumental, desert soundscape, meditation music
Gentry Bronson and the Night Watchmen - "Rain Come Down" - 2005 - Alternative rock, pop, jazz
Gentry Bronson - "Home" - 2004 - Acoustic, recorded raw, solo & live in the studio
Gentry Bronson - "Tranquillo" - 2004 - Solo instrumental, ambient piano compositions
Gentry Bronson and the Night Watchmen - "Lost In California" - 2003 - Alterna-noir, indie rock, dark pop
Gentry Bronson and the Night Watchmen - "Illumination" EP - 2001 - Alterna-noir, indie rock, dark pop
Links
| http://www.gentrybronson.com |