Gary Bragg
Denver, Colorado, United States | INDIE
Music
Press
Gary Bragg has been selected as a finalist in the 2011 Mountain Stage Newsong Contest - Newsong Recordings
By Charlie Englar
For professional musician Gary Bragg, power in numbers must be the way to go, noting all the superb bluegrass and country musicians he commissioned to play on his new album, High Plains Storm.
With the likes of Tyler Grant, Eric Thorin, Chris Elliott and Casey Driessen in the mix, Bragg, a musical composer and former Steeley Dan tribute band keyboardist, took the all-star cast and added his own humorous, silly style to the disc, while also lending his rural Nebraska upbringing as legitimacy that he too, when needed, can go country.
High Plains Storm, produced by Thorin, takes a ride from the Front Range and out into the never-ending Eastern Plains. The fiddle, banjo, lap steel, pedal steel and various guitars all lend commentary in this rural how-to guide.
Bragg has perfected a Neil Young-style, tongue-in-cheek, nasal-type of a vocal delivery, which, to be perfectly honest, works marvelously well when the aforementioned Bragg is discussing such topics as Jesus being born in a barn (see “Born In A Barn”). Or when he is talking about women, which happens a lot, but most notably in “You Are The Cure,” where Bragg realizes, “You had a lie on your lips and his pants were un-zipped / said he’s just friend, but that wasn’t true.”
Moments of reflective sturdiness show up in songs like “Kansas Land” and “Boots On The Fence,” keeping a strong balance within the mixture.
High Plains Storm provides top-notch country and bluegrass sound, highlighted by Bragg’s voice and intermittent piano in a generally wink-wink format, and it works. - Scene Magazine
Discography
High Plains Storm
Sons of Igor
Songs from The Ticket
Songs from Before I Wake
Photos
Bio
Born and raised in Imperial, Nebraska, a small town that is full of great music -- if you listen for it. Growing up at the empty end of Nebraska meant being outdoors. "It meant reservoirs full of fish and fields full enough of pheasants to keep us tramping through them. We took our shotguns to school so we could go hunting after class. Trying to shoot birds from a moving vehicle made perfectly good sense to us… until we shot the station wagon.”
Gary bears the harmonic strains of his parents (Dad a band director and Mom the former diva of Limon, Colorado). “Mom used to dress up my sisters and me and have us sing at social functions. It left some scars on my psyche.” Trumpet his intent, Gary studied music at the University of Northern Colorado. But it was his other instrument – his voice – that made him a featured singer on a Grammy-nominated album, in only the second college group in Grammy history to be nominated for an award. And at UNC he found his calling as a composer and was a finalist for the Elevox National Composition Contest.
Gary fronted the Denver all Steely Dan cover band for twelve years. In 1998, Gary’s first musical, Before I Wake, was produced in Denver. In 2003, Campaign, a musical that Gary conceived of and co-wrote, was chosen to do a workshop at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati. Campaign became The Ticket and was performed in 2006 as an equity showcase (16 shows) at the Sage Theatre in New York City. The Ticket features smooth jazz, broadway sounds and even reggae music.
For the past few decades, Gary has been in Denver writing, performing and working.
“I continue to have opportunities to write music. High Plains Storm – making music relating to my rural upbringing, collaborating with good friends who sing along in their own hearts to the wind across the prairie – has brought me the most artistic joy of anything I have ever done. I hope people can hear that in the album.”
Gary is currently playing in the Denver area promoting his new CD.
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