Bridget Kearney

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Bridget Kearney
2012 Spring Skunk Music Festival
2012 Spring Skunk Music Festival
Background information
Birth nameBridget Ellen Kearney
Born (1985-06-10) June 10, 1985 (age 38)
Iowa City, Iowa
GenresR&B, pop music, indie music, bluegrass
Occupation(s)Musician, songwriter, vocalist
Instrument(s)Double bass, electric bass, vocals, guitar, keyboards, gyil
Years active2005–present
LabelsSignature Sounds Recordings, Nonesuch Records
Websitebridgetkearney.com

Bridget Kearney (kə́ːnɪj, car'-nee) is an American musician and songwriter. She is a founding member of the band Lake Street Dive and winner of the 2005 John Lennon Songwriting Contest in the Jazz category.[1]

Kearney's solo recording work began with her debut solo album, Won't Let You Down, released by Signature Sounds Recordings in 2017[2] followed by a number of singles released on YouTube, social media sites such as Instagram and available for personal music collections through most major channels.

Biography

Early life, influences and education

Bridget Kearney at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2022

Kearney was born and grew up in Iowa City, Iowa. Her mother played flute. She started her journey with music in the Lutheran Church's Cherub choir. Kearney took piano lessons at the age of 5 and began playing the double bass in the 4th grade, which is the year her parents bought a minivan in hopes of facilitating her career. She listened to her parent's rock and roll records from the 1960's and gained an appreciation of the Beatles' music. In high school, she played in the school orchestras and jazz bands and had her own rock and roll band. In interviews she recalls how her jazz band director in high school, Rich Medd, always made class fun saying, "I was always excited to go to jazz band rehearsal and that is one of the reasons I’m still playing music."[3]

Although already an accomplished and devoted double bass player at a young age, Kearney's knowledge, skills and innate capacity for creativity took her to a much higher musical level while studying with Mark Urness, a versatile bassist, composer, and educator in Iowa City at the time who later moved to teaching at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. Her early bass influences were Paul Chambers, Charles Mingus and Charlie Haden. [4]

In college Kearney double majored, studying jazz bass at the New England Conservatory of Music and English at Tufts University.[5] As a sophomore, she played with two bands she helped found: Joy Kills Sorrow and Lake Street Dive.[3]

Personal interests

Kearney likes to play tennis and run to stay fit and raise money for her favorite charities. She often seeks adventure on the road, like bungee jumping in New Zealand, and is a master of chipology. She once held the one-game record for selling the most (104) foam fingers at a Boston Red Sox game in Fenway Park.[6]

Songwriting

As a songwriter/composer she has registered over 85 songs as a member of Broadcast Music, Inc. Of those, about 25 are held solely by her, and the rest with nine different songwriters/composers for the artists Lake Street Dive, Cuddle Magic, Joy Kills Sorrow, Benjamin Lazar Davis and Margaret Glaspy.[7]

Kearney co-teaches a songwriting class with Paul Muldoon at Princeton University. She credits some of her song writing acumen to authors such as Ernest Hemingway, having once been quoted as saying "A lot of my ideals as a songwriter come from novelists and poets, like Hemingway's idea that to start writing a story, all you have to do is write one true sentence. A song works that way too. You just need to find one seed the rest will grow from there."

Bands

Lake Street Dive

Kearney is a founding member of Lake Street Dive, which started touring in 2007. She has appeared with Lake Street Dive on many national shows: The Colbert Report,[8] The Late Show with David Letterman,[9] Conan, The Ellen DeGeneres Show,[10] National Public Radio,[11] Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor and in the first show hosted by Chris Thile, now called Live From Here. The band has uploaded numerous videos, including their annual, humorous Halloween covers,[12] and T Bone Burnett asked them to perform on the Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of "Inside Llewyn Davis". The band has traveled and performed in almost every state and over a dozen foreign countries. Originally with Signature Sounds Recordings, in 2016 the band signed with Nonesuch Records and subsequently released their "Fun Machine: The Sequel EP" on Fantasy Records in September of 2022.

BB Wisely

Kearney launched the band BB Wisely with Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe in August 2022. The trio had been writing songs, recording and touring as a trio and alternating duo pairs for a few years prior to deciding on BB Wisely as the name of the band.

The Bridget Kearney Band

Kearney has worked with a varying array of other musicians, producers and performers to create her own recordings, videos and tour, solely performing her own music under her own name. Other tours were designed as collaborations with varying musicians each taking the lead role in arranging and performing their own songs with the other members backing and exchanging instruments. These appearances were sometimes referred to under the name of each, or all, performers.

Bridget Kearney and Benjamin Lazar Davis

Bridget Kearney and Benjamin Lazar Davis began making beautiful music together and shooting out hits while performing as "BBGun" from the time they were students together at the New England Conservatory of Music. In 2015 the two alumni teamed up to create original works which are in part a fusion of music from the west African country of Ghana and Kearney and Davis' music. Various artists, including Stevo Atambire and Aaron Bebe Sukura as well as musical instruments and cultural elements from Ghana were used by the artists from Ghana, Kearney and Davis in the making of these recordings. The results of these creative efforts are contained in two recorded music releases: "Bawa" in 2015 and "Still Flying" in 2020.[13]

Joy Kills Sorrow

Kearney was also a major songwriter and stand up bass player for Joy Kills Sorrow from 2005 to 2012. Joy Kills Sorrow was a Boston-based, indie pop, American roots, string band formed in 2005. This band released three albums before Kearney left the band to join Lake Street Dive full-time.[14]

Cuddle Magic

A pop-rock-folk band that varies in membership, Kearney wrote songs and played with Cuddle Magic before joining Lake Street Dive full-time.[citation needed]

The Fundies

The Fundies was another part-time band collaboration featuring Margaret Glaspy, Rachael Price, Brittany Haas and Kearney. Their first performance was in 2010, and they self-released an EP called The Fundies in 2012.[15] Glaspy and Haas played a Fundies reunion gig in 2015.[citation needed]

Discography

Solo

Albums

Singles

  • I Bet UR (Nov 2021)[16]
  • So Badly (Dec 2021)[17]
  • Diary Fire (Feb 2022)[18]
  • All This Time (Mar 2022)[19]

With Lake Street Dive

With BB Wisely

  • Coal Canary (Aug 2022)[20]

With Benjamin Lazar Davis

  • BAWA (2015)
  • Still Flying (2020)

With Joy Kills Sorrow

  • Darkness Sure Becomes This City (2010)
  • This Unknown Science (2011)

With The Fundies

  • The Fundies EP (2012)

References

  1. ^ "John Lennon Songwriting Contest". Jlsc.com. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  2. ^ "Bridget Kearney". Signature Sounds Recordings. January 24, 2017. Retrieved February 2, 2017.
  3. ^ a b Spencer, Sloane (May 19, 2012). "#1221 Lake Street Dive" (Podcast). Retrieved February 3, 2017.
  4. ^ No Treble - The Groove Podcast – Episode#44:Bridget Kearney, retrieved August 2, 2018
  5. ^ "This Unknown Science". Archived from the original on March 12, 2015. Retrieved February 9, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  6. ^ Olson, Ben (June 22, 2015). "An Interview with Lake Street Dive". The Reader. Retrieved May 15, 2022.
  7. ^ The BMI database shows joint registration with Olson(49), Price(48), Calabrese(46), Davis(4), Corbett(3), Beaton(1), Joliff(1), Glaspy(1), Jefferson(1)
  8. ^ "The Colbert Report". Cc.com. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  9. ^ "- YouTube". Youtube.com. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  10. ^ "Ellen DeGeneres Show 18 March 2014". Archived from the original on April 21, 2014. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
  11. ^ "Lake Street Dive". Npr.org. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  12. ^ "Love Shack cover – Lake Street Dive". Lake Street Dive. Retrieved September 15, 2015.
  13. ^ Signature Sounds, retrieved March 7, 2021
  14. ^ Lawless, John (September 4, 2012). "Bridget Kearney exits Joy Kills Sorrow". Bluegrass Today. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  15. ^ The Fundies EP -, retrieved March 24, 2022
  16. ^ I Bet UR (single) -, retrieved March 24, 2022
  17. ^ So Badly (single)-, retrieved March 24, 2022
  18. ^ Diary Fire (single)-, retrieved March 24, 2022
  19. ^ All This Time (single)-, retrieved March 25, 2022
  20. ^ Coal Canary (single) -, retrieved August 19, 2022

External links

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