Chris Bellamy

At the wheel of a small white skiff anchored among the salty marsh grasses and oyster shells of Pages Creek, musician Chris Bellamy talks about his newest project — the production and release of three brand new CDs, including the local tribute, “Time, Tide and Tackle: Old Songs, New Favorites.”

“It’s kind of an anthology of my musical life in this area,” Bellamy said. “A lot of people in my Wrightsville Beach/Wilmington listenership really like my old stuff, so I took the best of my old songs and put them on “Time, Tide and Tackle,” and then I wrote five new ones to go with them. It’s a tribute to this area, and places I go that remind me of this area.”

Bellamy spends his summers in Wilmington and his winters in places like Florida, Texas and sometimes Nashville. His guitar has traveled and played across the South with musicians like Clarence Clemons, Paul Case, Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson and Rita Coolidge.

“As an independent artist, I’ve done a lot,” he said. “It’s a hard job, if you want to be successful, and I’ve got champagne taste on a beer budget, so I work my butt off to keep this wheel rolling forward.”

Percussionist Danny Dixon can confirm the hard work of his long-time friend. The two musicians met in college, but it was not until five years ago that Dixon started playing drums with Bellamy. He said, “Chris covers a lot of territory with what he does on acoustic guitar.. He’s got a good work ethic, and he’s serious about what he does.”

Bellamy’s hard work is paying off. At the end of his current project, he’ll have released three CDs with worldwide distribution through Amazon.com, iTunes, Rhapsody, CD Baby and Best Buy. Dave Meyer of Masonboro Sound Recording has provided the studio for Bellamy and has helped him engineer the albums. “I like what Chris has been writing lately,” he said. “After you write for a long time, you sort of get down to who you really are and what things are important to you. I think he’s finding that out. I think it’s going very well.”

The second CD in the trio is a live recording that Bellamy, Dixon and UNCW jazz professor Bob Russell did about two months ago at Wilmington’s Waterford of the Carolinas, and the third is an album entitled “The Oyster Man,” which Bellamy refers to as his “pick of the litter.”

‘The Oyster Man’ is about people who I’ve grown up with right here,” Bellamy said. “Grainger is a gentleman who’s lived on this sound for 80 years, and he’s the oyster man.” The album is a perfect example of something Bellamy finds vital to his music - real-life experiences with real people. “That’s the trick,” he said. “What I do, there’s nothing contrived about it.. I’m not a songwriter in Nashville, sitting in a cubicle trying to dream up something to write about. I’m out here.”

- Lumina News