Patrick John Brayer is an American singer-songwriter within the Inland Empire music scene.
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Patrick John Brayer is an American singer-songwriter within the Inland Empire music scene.
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]
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]
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