I was dreaming of you, she said
In your sharp black suit, she said
With your ten dollar words
And your five dollar shoes"

There are musicians in America now who have taken off for unexplored territory, land once staked out by the greats from our past: Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and other less-famous names. These new songwriters aren't there to grab headlines or fill the pages of meaningless magazines. They are there to write and sing their songs, living words that come to them sometimes in a hurry and sometimes in a haze. Make no mistake: there is a small army of musicians who care enough about their calling to gamble their future on it. The singers and songwriters, guitarists and drummers, drive around the country playing wherever they find an audience. Some nights they may connect with thousands, others with ten. What matters most is their pursuit of the sound they hear in their hearts and in their minds.

"I bet you still got that cigarette smile
And your country boy blues
And you sing it over and over
Over and over again"

All the while, when the young Texan was 13, Brian Wright went for music. He started as a drummer, he says, "but it turns out I was a better guitar player than I was a drummer. I played in coffee houses, and did a lot of work as a sideman. Luckily, I could play just about any instrument with keys or strings."

Wright started writing songs in junior high school and playing in bands at parties after football games. It was the All-American rock combo experience, revved up with the intensity of Texas soul. He also met a musician that would turn his life around. The teenager snuck into a club called the Blues Connection and heard guitarist George Spratt & the Spratt Attack. The older man and Wright became fast friends for a few months, but it was enough to seal a spirit into Wright that he carries to this day. Soon came the requisite relocation to Austin, and the quest to make his mark on a city bulging at the seams with other like-minded players. Wright's band made a small noise, got a bit of record label interest but soon found themselves back at the end of a very long line.

"I literally flipped a coin and said, 'heads L.A., tails New York,'" Wright recalls, "just to get away from where I was from and do what I wanted to do. And it landed on heads, so I went to L.A. The weather was better anyway. I left for California with my girlfriend and my drummer. That was 2002."

"She said you sing it like you mean it
But it's just some stupid song
But little ballerina it's my favorite
When you dance along"

Like a lot of stories in Los Angeles, Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies struggled to find a home there. Wright fell in with similar songwriters and musicians, but little worked. "I couldn't afford to leave," he says now, "and my pride wouldn't let me. I did solo gigs and played rock & roll. Then I started writing some country-type songs, maybe because I missed home. I really didn't know how much that music meant to me until I got to California. I liked what my music was, and liked the sound of the band. It surprised me a bit. Now I know what I want to do."

Wright's first album, Dog Ears, was a first step towards making Bluebird. Recorded in just three days at the Wagon Wheel studio in North Hollywood, Wright and the Waco Tragedies new album is like a promise fulfilled. "I had the guys I wanted, and I'd been touring a lot on my own, so when I got home and went in the studio with the band, we were really ready," Wright says. "The setting was perfect. The studio is in somebody's house. Almost everyone was in the same room. We put the amps in the kitchen and the drums in the bedroom. We'd record then play it back and there was the song, just like we wanted. We did the album in two days, but I'd forgotten some songs, so we went back in one more day and did some more. And that was it. Day three made the record."

"But if you gotta go
Go safely my dear
And the record just skips at the end
Over and over, over and over again"

Go ahead, listener, please, call out, yell, scream-- it will be our pleasure. Music is a good thing for everyone to have on their head. What, do you not believe?