On March 2, the night a deadly storm steamrolled its way across Tennessee, Brian Wright was onstage at The Basement East, performing with his wife Sally Jaye under the name No. 1 Knife. Within an hour of the rock-schooled songsmiths packing up their guitars and heading home, a tornado had crossed the Cumberland River, nearly leveled the Beast, as the venue is known, and roared eastward toward Five Points and beyond.
“We left about an hour before the tornado came,” Wright tells the Scene. “We were lucky to get out. Our home was unscathed, but all around us, there’s damage. Our kids were with my mom, and her house was also unscathed. But it took us four hours to drive what normally would take 10 minutes to get them. There was just so much devastation.”
Wright and Jaye had formed No. 1 Knife largely to fund the production and distribution of Brian Wright & the SneakUps’ Lapse of Luxury, his seventh album, which is out Friday via Cafe Rooster Records. The tornado, combined with the tumult brought on by the coronavirus, gave him pause about releasing the 12-song LP as scheduled.
“I certainly considered delaying the album, but it’s been finished a long time,” Wright says. “I wanted people to hear it. When’s a good time anyway? Nobody really knows. In the end, it was a simple choice. I make records, hopefully sell enough to make more. We’ve got so much music we’re working on for this year from [the Cafe Rooster Records] roster, I don’t want it all piled up waiting for the right time. I’d also like to help keep people entertained as best we can during this time of uncertainty. If you’re gonna be locked down, might as well turn the music up.”
Wright and Jaye founded Cafe Rooster with Gabe Masterson in 2016. In addition to Brian Wright & the SneakUps and Sally Jaye’s band Ladies Gun Club, artists on their label include The Minks, Jon Latham, Blackfoot Gypsies and LadyCouch. Alumni include Darrin Bradbury, who signed with ANTI- Records in 2019.
Wright, a versatile alt-rocking guitarist and songwriter, relocated to Nashville from Los Angeles in 2011. At the time, he was hot off a three-year gig as guitarist for the house band on the late-night TV show Last Call With Carson Daly.
“L.A. was good to me,” Wright says. “When I came to Nashville, I just liked it. I signed a publishing deal with BMG/Chrysalis. Besides being a songwriter for myself, I wrote with people like Darrell Scott, Bill Lloyd and Jim Lauderdale. I got to spend a day writing with Guy Clark. Working with these seasoned, legendary songwriters was very eye-opening to see their approach.”
In addition to seeing how these songwriters approach their craft, Wright also saw the nuts and bolts of their methods. He says Scott fuels his songwriting with notably high-quality coffee. Lauderdale carried two cellphones into his writing session with Wright, one of which he recorded their session on. And Clark hand-wrote the lyrics to the two songs they wrote together in pencil on graph paper.
But the same day they penned those two songs, Wright played for Clark an original song with trendy hooks and flashy lyrics that Clark characterized as “tidy.” Wright says the polite criticism of the lyrics’ commercial nature was a hard lesson, but a helpful one.
“I’ve not played that song since,” Wright says. “Guy affirmed for me that an artist should write from the heart, write what he wants, and don’t write with other people in mind. Everybody wants people to like their songs. But a poet’s job is to follow the muse and surprise yourself. Guy could have been a lot more wealthy and well-known if he had tried to write more commercial songs, but he knew better. Do you want to be rich, or do you want to be happy?”
Leaving behind commercial songwriting is not to suggest that Wright’s music is an exercise in self-indulgence. Lapse of Luxury is a reflective, sparkling burst of alt-rock creativity driven by inspired grooves, aided by Masterson as co-producer. The aforementioned singer-songwriter Latham contributed, as did bassist Tommy Scifres and drummer Matty Alger. Wright grounds the album with masterful guitar work and portraits of novel-worthy characters.
Today, Wright is as independent as an indie artist can be. He recorded Lapse in a 20-by-15-foot shed in his backyard.
“It’s not a Home Depot shed; it’s one step up from that,” he says. “To see it from the outside it’s super humble, but inside, it’s a nice studio. We’ve got it vibed out. It’s a little laboratory in the backyard. We have everything we need, but not everything we want.”
