Chely Wright bursted on the country music scene in 1994 with her album "Woman In The Moon" and scored her first three singles "He's A Good Ole Boy" her first single and then the next two singles were "Till I Was Loved By You", penned by Alan Jackson, and then her third single "Sea Of Cowboy Hats". Once she hit the road running with those singles she shot right up to the top of stardom with singles "Listening To THe Radio", "The Love That We Lost", "I Already Do", "Shut Up And Drive", "Just Another Heartache", "Single White Female", and "It Was" those are just to name a handful of her hits there are so many more hits and deep album cuts that should have been hits that we can't name them all here in this article. Chely is out on the road and coming through Massachusetts starting on October 9th at the Boston City Winery, making her way up to the Iron Horse Music Hall on October 10th in Northampton, and making her last stop on this part of the tour on the 11th of October to close out Women's Week at Fisherman's Hall in Provincetown.
I recently spoke with Chely on her celebrating 25 years in the music business, and she said "isn't that crazy a quarter of a century life is good we live in a crazy worl there's a lot of joy out there and i'm just trying to keep my eye on the ball, but it's crazy and
awesome it makes me proud and stunned all at the same time thinking how long i've been doing this and have had records oout, but i'm greatful to still be out there doing what I love. Everyone has to have there moment in the sun and it takes a lot to get a big record and commercial success out there, and the tradewinds kind of shifteed after the Single White Female album because of the president of the label who signed me at the time left after that album so when the next one came out a new president of the label came in focused more on his artists the came in with him , but that never stopped me from writing songs and recording and doing what I do, it just changed the
climate in which I could do it, but if you see yourself as a creative person or writer then that's your responsibility to create, and
write and i'm glad i've been able to continue, and along the way i've gotten to collaborate with some great artists in the industry,
like Vince Gill, Trisha Yearwood, Emmylou Harris, Richard Marx and Rodney Crowell, just to name a few so when I look at all of those
people who've come in and helped me along the way it's a sweet thing to see looking at my whole back catalog to see how many friends i've made along the way.
On my shows I like to take the audience on a journey and of course I have to make decisions on what songs to sing cause I have so many and can't fit them all in to one show, but a big part of the journey I try to lay out every night at the shows is the stories and thread the storytelling with the music , hopefully people leaving the show have an experience like they've never had with anyone or anywhere else, we've been doing this story and song tour for about two years now and you know the music is there but it's not overwhelming we lead with the song then the story and our guitars are there to just facilitate the storytelling.
In 1999 after the event at Columbine I like most americans and people in the world was just stunned by what the undercurance about what those boys did to their classmates it was just horrific, but I spent a lot of time thinking about how schools should be a safe and affirming place to be and I was a band geek so I decided to open a non profit to raise money for instruments in public schools I was pretty popular then being at the height of my career, and that's a really good time to use that leverage and do something so every year we would do a show to kick off fanfair/CMA Music Festival and it was called the reading writing rythm music show and my
buddies from country music would come and help me out and raise money for this cause and we had legends like Ronnie Milsap, Lorretta Lynn, Tanya Tucker and new upcoming people at the time like Kieth Urban and Taylor Swift so nothing but the best in the field as you see, we
raised over a million dollars within a ten year span it still exists but, it's kind of dorment right now since I shifted my focus over to the Like Me organization, but I still run into people to this day that say hey I just wanted you to know that reading writing and rhythm got me a trumpet my junior year and I got good on it and it got me a partial scholarship to college cause of it and that feel really great and again I had a really great team of people working with me, and then after I came out I started the Like Me Organization and our flagship project was to open a brick and morter LGBTQ center in Kansas City, because there had never been one and so we did and we has planned opened it and had it for five years and then we turned it back over to local leadership and it was called the Like Me Lighthouse but now I believe it's called The Kansas City Center For Inclusion and it feels really good knowing again that we built something.
Revival the title of Chely's new EP released back in may of this year and her Christmas EP and Santa Will FInd You her christmas Ep released last christmas were both recorded at the same time around April or May of 2018, but we knew we were recording two EPs Santa Will Find You my first holiday cd with five new original tracks, and then in may of this year we put out "Revival" if you had asked me five years ago would I ever put out an EP I would have said no way i'm an LP type of person I believe in at least ten songs, but you know i'm trying to do is pay attention to what the youngsters are doing and EPs the way people are consuming music now and the way our business model has changed I think EPs are fantastic and I was surprised how I still felt pretty satisfied with at kind of the narrative of just five songs it's not a walk in the park where you say okay I just need five songs and that it's easy to just make an EP it's complications as well but if you can work those complications out and find an emotional throuhline in the music then you've done something well and i'm incredibly proud of this project and my producers the whole thing is pick people that are better than you and work with themso my goal in life is to make sure that i'm always the least talented in the room because the rising tide of what they do will lift my ship, the EP is also on vinyl cause vinyl is back, and we're selling vinyl copies of the EP at our shows.
We're excited to be coming back to these venues as they're great places to do our type of show with music and
storytelling. If you want to hear the audio version plus more with Chely you can come check out the interview we did with her on Talking Hendrix this friday night from 10-11:30 p.m. eastern time on www.bostonfreeradio.com, and for more information on Chely Wright including tour schedule, merchandise, and much more at her official website below:
www.chely.com
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