Patrick Brayer
American singer-songwriter
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Patrick John Brayer is an American singer-songwriter within the Inland Empire music scene.
Early life and education
Brayer is the son of Raplh W. and Eleanore Brayer.[1][2] In 1958, his family relocated to rural Fontana, California, where they operated an egg ranch,[3] and where Brayer attended Fontana High School.[4] Brayer's elder brother, Michael Brayer, also sings.[5]
Career
In the 1970s, Brayer played in bands including Lost Highway, which he formed with Walden Dahl and Dave Dickey,[6][7] the Town and Country Boys, also with Dahl,[6] and the High Window Boys.[7] Brayer plays guitar, fiddle, mandolin and other stringed instruments,[8] and has collaborated with bluegrass, country, and folk artists including Alison Krauss, Alan Jackson, Ben Harper,[9] and Stuart Duncan.[10]
In the early 1980s, Brayer founded Starvation Cafe in Fontana, as a coffeehouse with scheduled musicians and open mic sessions.[11][9] Performers included Ben Harper,[12] Mike McClellan,[13][14] Blind Joe Hill[8] and John York.[15] In a forward to the book Always a Song, Ben Harper noted that a performance at the Starvation Café served to solidify his decision to transition from playing as a band member for Taj Mahal to becoming a signed solo artist.[16] Brayer also hosted a radio program, Starvation Café Radio Archives, from the University of California, Riverside, and was the first signing on Ben Harper's Inland Emperor Records label.[17][18]
Three of his songs were recorded by Smithsonian Folkways records as part of the Fast Folk Magazine, including Bourbon as a Second Language (2002),[19] Straight Life, No Chaser,[20] and Funeral Town (1995).[21] Brayer co-wrote the song So Long, So Wrong with Walden Dahl, which was covered by Alison Krauss on the album of the same name in 1997.[9][22] His song Lonely Moon was covered by Stuart Duncan in 1992[23] and by Northern Lights on their album New Moon in 2005. He also wrote the song, (Good) Imitation of the Blues, which was covered by Larry Sparks & the Lonesome Ramblers in 1983, John Doe in 1990, Chris Darrow on Slide On In in 2002, Orville Johnson in 2004[24] and Alan Jackson in 2006 on the album Like Red on a Rose.[25][26] The album went Gold in 2007.[27]
Brayer released a series of cassettes and CDs, entitled The Secret Hits of Patrick Brayer some of the songs were recorded in the kitchen of Dennis Hopper.[28][29] In providing guidance to aspiring song-writers, Jeffery Pepper Rodgers of Acoustic Guitar magazine described Brayer's underground song-writing and production style in this series as one way to focus on the process and work of songwriting rather than final products.[30]
