Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies

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 and 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 this is 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 and 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 if 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 played in coffee houses, and did a
lot of work as a sideman. Luckily, I could play just about any
instrument with keys or strings."

Wright started writing songs in junior high school and playing in bands
at parties after football games. It was the All-American rock combo
experience, revved up with the intensity of Texas soul. He also 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 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 girlfriend and 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 and 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 on 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 and 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.

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