Kevin Briody Named New CT State Troubadour—

A Change Of Career Course Brings A New Title

By Shannon Hicks

RIDGEFIELD — It may not have the flash and pizzazz of Hollywood or New York City, but Connecticut has long been and continues to be a hotbed for the arts. After all, the Nutmeg State has been home to playwrights Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, author Frank McCourt, poets Wallace Stevens and James Merrill, visual artists Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, and Robert Motherwell, directors Lloyd Richards and Mark Lamos.

Countless stage and screen actors also reside in the state, including Hartford native and Greenwich resident Katharine Hepburn, longtime Westport residents Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have lived in Litchfield County since shortly after their 1988 marriage, and Dylan McDermott, the star of The Practice and a number of films, was born in Waterbury.

Singer Marian Anderson lived and worked in Danbury, composers Charles Ives and Steven Sondheim and musicians Dave Brubeck and Paul Winter and Jackie McLean have also lived within the state’s 5,000 square miles. Not bad for a state that is the third smallest of the country.

Since 1991, Connecticut’s Commission on the Arts (CCA) has been building its own list of residents who have been appointed the state’s official troubadour. Within the state’s musical circles — and one of the hopes is that by joining such a circle, each name has the potential to become known to even more people — the troubadours’ names are as familiar as the actors, authors, and playwrights listed above.

Kevin Briody of Ridgefield has now joined that list of honored Connecticut residents. As of January 1, Mr Briody became the new Connecticut State Troubadour.

“Basically I will continue to do what I already do, which is write and sing,” Mr Briody said recently, sitting in his favorite chair at his studio. The studio is his work place, and he tools around from desk to desk in his chair, smiling and laughing during most of an interview about his life and career. He hums to himself, and his arms and hands are constantly waving around to help illustrate whatever it is he happens to be talking about. Mr Briody is a happy blur of movement and music.

“The CCA will help fund some of the non-profit events I will be performing at, so this gives all kinds of organizations the opportunity to have me come in and perform for new groups,” Mr Briody explained. “There’s really no formal job description for what I’m going to do.” The state troubadour, which holds a two-year term, is the musical equivalent to the state’s poet laureate.

Kevin Briody’s studio in Ridgefield is comfortable and inviting, but it is also a serious working space. He is surrounded by photographs of his family, whom he calls his “squad,” but he is also encircled by the equipment that is necessary to create, keep track of, record, and produce his music. It is located in a building that has historical significance to the town where Mr Briody has lived all of his life, and that alone must have some bearing on the songs he has continued to churn out.

In naming Mr Briody the new state troubadour, John Ostrout, the executive director of CCA, cited Mr Briody’s “stirring performances, his incisive songwriting, and his dedication to sharing his music with others” as the qualities the honorary position was created to recognize.

Mr Briody has long been recognized as an accomplished songwriter. It was only about two years ago that he decided to change the course of his career to become more of a performer of his own songs rather than selling them for interpretation by others.

Ten years ago Mr Briody began writing seriously and he joined a group of songwriters who were making the trip to Nashville in order to sell their songs. Nashville, the singer-songwriter recently explained, is one of the last places left where there is still a market for songs, although even that has changed within the past decade as more and more performers pen their own songs.

He had some success with song publishing, but found that all the travel he was putting in between Connecticut and Nashville — Mr Briody took a few trips to Tennessee each year, but he and his wife always maintained their home in Ridgefield — was taking him away from his home and family too much.

His family is not just collected in the pictures on the walls of his studio, it also appears to be the most important thing in Mr Briody’s life. He talks adoringly about his children and reverently about his wife, and stories about these people find their way into many of his songs. He also remains very close to his father Pat, who lives in Newtown.

If Kevin Briody’s name is familiar it’s because he has been performing in a growing number of local rooms over the past two years, including the Ives Center for the Performing Arts in Danbury and Towne Crier Café in Pawling, N.Y. He was also one of the performers at the 2000 CityCenter First Night Danbury.

He has also been featured at The Kerrville Folk Festival, in Kerrville, Tex. (where he was a finalist in 1997 and 1998); he was hand-picked by the organizers of The Newport Folk Festival and BMI to perform at the 1999 North American Folk Alliance; and last spring he was one of 13 national acts selected to participate in Connecticut’s Folk Next Door IX concert and CD.

Mr Briody’s song “We’re All Heroes” opened the 1999 Connecticut Special Olympics Summer Games, and the song has since been adopted as the official CSO anthem.

Kevin Briody’s first release was a five-song collection called This Must Be the Place, and is described by Mr Briody as “an industry thing” — it was something he used to shop around, to show people what he sounded like and what his songs could sound like. His apt description of his music is “somewhere between folk and country, with pop influences.”

Like any good folk musician, Mr Briody definitely tells stories with his songs. “About 90 percent of my work is autobiographical,” he said. “The songs I choose to write usually have a good part of me in them. There is usually a lot of realness in a song, and just a little fiction as well.”

In July 1999 came his first full CD, the delicious When No One’s Watching. The ten-song collection is a terrific combination of love songs and life. Half of the songs were written completely by Mr Briody, and he shares writing credits on the remaining five selections. They are all good songs, and his voice is — with hints of James Taylor and Randy Travis — a comfortable sound that remains in your head long after a song ends.

Music Row magazine named When No One’s Watching its DISCovery Award last May, and music writer Dave Perry (The Lowell Sun) compared Mr Briody’s work to that of John Hiatt and John Lennon.

The CD is available at any of Mr Briody’s shows, and also through Amazon.com and CDNOW.com.

He is well on his way toward his second album, which has a working title of Familiar and a fabulous idea for the album cover. In the meantime, Mr Briody continues to write and perform. Being the state troubadour means, hopefully, two years of performing more frequently than he has been up to now.

As state troubadour, Mr Briody has now joined the Commission on the Arts’ roster of touring performing artists. As such, non-profit organizations and schools across the state will be applying with the commission in order to present performances and workshops by the Ridgefield musician.

Troubadours were originally one of a class of lyric poets and poet-musicians who were often of knightly rank that flourished from the 11th to the 13th Century. These men were found chiefly in southern France, northern Spain, and northern Italy.

They invented new poems and then new verses, and it was these poems that formed one of the most brilliant schools that ever flourished. Although the school reached its zenith by 1150, troubadour poetry continued to influence all later European poetry.

Mr Briody joins a growing list of state residents who have served as state troubadour since the General Assembly established the position a decade ago. His predecessors include, from the most recent appointments, Hugh Blumenfeld, Jeff and Synia McQuillan, Sally Rogers, Mike Kachuba, Bill Pere, Phil Rosenthal, Sandy and Caroline Paton, and Tom Callinan.

“This is going to get me more work, closer to home,” he said last week of his new title. “I don’t have any grand plans about playing on the West Coast. I like playing around here,” he continued.

“I want to be home in the morning when my kids wake up.”

To hear a sample from When No One’s Watching, visit the Web site www.kevinbriody.com. The page also offers a biography, links and tour schedule for Kevin Briody. His next performance in the area (as of this week) is scheduled for March 24 at King Street United Church of Christ Coffee House in Danbury. He also has performances scheduled for April in Roxbury and Woodbury.

Mr Briody can also be contacted by writing to Tune-Me-Music, PO Box 102, Ridgefield, CT 06877, or by calling 203/431-0099.