If you’re not leery of straying from the fine, superb, simply wonderful material that radio stations, music emporiums, and Ryan Seacrest all repeatedly assure us that we love (and can be relied upon to purchase loyally), then there is a wonderful independent artist whom I would like to introduce. His name is Brady Earnhart, and he’s an acoustic troubadour who writes with a wry lyrical touch that belies the depths of the wellsprings into which he taps. He will beguile with a playful melody, then pop you upside the head with a stunning truth or a dizzying emotional memory.
I could not be prouder to confess that this fellow and I cut our musical teeth together, and I am ecstatic at the growing acclaim he is accruing. National Public Radio recently featured his song Car Repair on their Car Talk show, and the King of My Living Room concerts he puts on with his fellow folkies are becoming quite the rage up and down the Central Atlantic coast.
Mr. Earnhart has been compared to such great artists as Paul Simon, Leo Kottke, Lyle Lovett, John Martyn, and Bruce Cockburn, performing his songs with deceptive casualness and a disarming, conversational ease. His song Gargoyle won the Gold Medal in the Folk category of the 2002 Mid-Atlantic Songwriting Contest. Acoustic Guitar magazine’s Elizabeth Papapetrou calls his 1998 debut After You “one of the ten best contemporary folk CD’s of the 1990s.”
It should then be no wonder why I tout this fellow so enthusiastically. Nevertheless, some may suspect that, being a friend of his, there might be something in it for me. To dispel any such cynical humbuggery, I would like to quote from an unsolicited E-mail that I sent to another, non-mutual acquaintance a few months back:
“Believe me, this guy is good. Even if I did not know him, if I had never written songs with him, if I’d never pissed off his Mom… EVEN IF his dog had never humped my leg, I would testify that these are remarkable songs… songs that will stick, like creamy peanut butter, to the roof of your ears.”