On a cool fall evening in Northampton, country artist Chely Wright took the stage thursday night at the Iron horse music Hall, and she had the crowd's attentionn. She started off with her warm welcoming smile to welcome the crowd in and then went right in to her first song of the night which was "Broken" from her album "I Am The Rain", a great way to break the ice with the audience, from that point on in the show she told the audience she was happy to be there and that we were going on a musical journey with her telling her fascinating stories behind some of her best material she has recorded throughout her 25 year career to this point. Chely had the crowd intrigued with all her stories including how when she was eight years old she knew she wanted to be a country music singer, and followed through with that career choice from that young age. The stories had myself and the audienced mezmorized that even though she told many stories and performed fewer songs then most people probably expected that you didn't miss the songs as it's very true about what country singers/songwriters say in their interviews the best material in songwriting comes from true life experiences, and Chely's songs don't fall short of that infact they most certainly made great compensation for any songs an audience member would have wanted to hear. Chely performed for close to two hours but it felt like the show had just started when she closed the show she saved a big hit for the closer which was "Single White Female" which really seemed to please the crowd, but she also gave the audience a brand new song that she only finished writing less than a week ago and this was the second performance of that song we never did hear the title of it but it's a song that will take no time to grow on you, the premier of the tune was performed the night before in Boston, Massachusetts at the City Winery we're in hopes she'll record this song and have it out on her next release or for digital download possibly.
Chely was even so nice to grace us with an early holiday tune from her six song christmas ep called "Happy New Year Old Friend" written by wright and good friend Richard Marx who graced us with many of hits in the mid eighties and early
nineties I really wouldn't call it too much of a holiday tune as we're talking about a new year but it certainly was a crowd surpriser.
The story thatt went behind what I would call the best song of the night not that there was a bad song but this particular song i'm talking about was "The Bumper Of My SUV", which in all honesty is brilliant and something Ms. Wright said originally in the story she wasn't trying to make this a commercial song, but it ended up being one for all the military song fans, Chely captivated us by telling the whole story which I won't do here i'll give the brief version as it's more poignant coming from her so the basics of the story is she wrote the song because her brother became a U.S. Marine and had sent her a bumper sticker about supporting the marines so she put it on the back of her vehicle, while driving around a lady driving in a car went by her and gave her the finger for having the sticker and said your war is
wrong, in which while i'm hearing this I don't disagree about war being wrong, but if we didn't have wars many of countries would have conquered us by now and we'd probably be a third world country like Iraq amongst other middle east countries, anyways Chely went home and did what any good songwriter would do she wrote a song about it and recorded it, but she sat on that one for sixteen months before she would perform it, she performed it when she went over to play USO shows at different bases throughout the middle east and all the troops even non marines kept saying to her she should record it but she said no I don't think so, then she played it a few more times in front of troops and as she was talking with them after the show a young gentleman who's last name was Henry told her how his mom was a big fan of hers and country music, again told her she should record it, well low and behold unfortunattely Chely got a call the next night before doing one of the few last shows of that tour saying that "Henry" had died during the act of war, that's when she decided to record it in honor of him, I just think it was such a beautiful and patriotic influenced story to have made the decision to record something like that vs. what I think everyone except Chely and a few others did everyone basically cashed in on the idea of writing songs to do with the war we're still in because of the world trade center, now before I get hate mail i'll explain why I feel like that, we had ridiculous songs like "where were you when the world stopped turning" by Alan Jackson which sorry the world did not stop turning due to the world trade center it was a very sad and tragedy that it happened yes but how did that help the people who died in those buildings? it didn't or Toby Keith's famous line in his so called patriotic song in honor of that tragic disaster which was "we'll put a boot in your ass"....seriously like we can actually do that because he says we can. Now Chely out of respect released her song much later after all of those travesties of musical pieces to just name a few, she did hers in honor of the fallen soldier as she had just spoken with him and talked at length with him and her family members were also in the Marines so it made much more sense to release, and on our night's performance we actually had marines who've served at the show in the audience and all the more reasons to perform it. After her performance she came out to meet and greet with the fans and was so personable to take the time to talk with all the fans there along with sign autographs and take photos. I highly recommend the first chance of anyone hearing her coming to a venue near you go and check out her show you will not be disappointed at all, as this country singer and songwriter still has a lot more great songs in her for another 25 years to come.
For all up to the minute information on Chely Wright please go to her official website:
www.chely.com
and if you'd like to hear the interview I did recently with her featured on Talking Hendrix click the link below to hear the show:
https://talkinghendrix.blogspot.com/2019/10/talking-hendrix-show-198-say-word-with.html
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