06/17/2023
THE ARTISTS OF KMP
Rick Brantley and I have been friends for a number of years, played some shows on the road together (from Montana to Georgia to California), even wrote a song together. But…no matter all of that, no one, not even me, will ever be as cool as Rick Brantley.
He is the opener for artists like John Hiatt, Zac Brown Band, Better Than Ezra, Brandy Clark, Bonnie Raitt, Kiefer Sutherland, Lori McKenna and Steve Earle. And not just the opener- most often times a SOLO opener. That’s cool.
In his younger days, he wrote a bunch of songs for a couple of Meat Loaf albums. And that’s pretty fu***ng cool.
He is an amazing talent- as both an artist and a songwriter. I’ve booked him on shows occasionally over the years, but now we finally have him on the roster.
Welcome Rick Brantley to the KMP team.
And…long live cool.
ABOUT RICK BRANTLEY
Singer-songwriter Rick Brantley smiles lopsidedly and repeats the interviewer’s question back to them: “A vet? Of what? Have I really been around that long?”
Whether the erstwhile Macon, Georgia artist wants to admit it or not, he has indeed been around that long, even if his years don’t really show it at just 38.
The long-time songwriter on Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee scoring dozens of cuts from artists as varied as David Nail, Liz Longley, The White Buffalo, Ruston Kelly and Meat Loaf and placement on major TV shows and films (Yellowstone, Pitch, Nashville) while concurrently globetrotting plying his own song wares around the world as a touring artist and producing acclaimed records by long-time collaborators Rob Baird and Justin Halpin, is a veteran of the music business any way you cut it.
Now a transplanted New Yorker living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn (“It took me all of about a month to become a full on NYC street kid, flying in and out of traffic on my bike half naked and unashamed on stinky hot ass summer mornings, eating Rocco’s Pizza by the tonnage every other day and walking miles and miles nowhere and everywhere. This was always my home, in some strange way”, he says proudly), consulting for a Manhattan based theatrical company producing pops symphony shows and performing in them when he’s not busy sharpening and releasing his own music and touring, Brantley seems as surprised as anyone where life has landed him.
“I got here. From somewhere. How? I don’t know. The world is wide open. The far away is close and the far off is immediate now. Anyone can do anything at any time, these days, if you’re willing to work for it. Somewhere along the line I stopped saying ‘no’ to things and the opportunities to do other cool s**t in this business just started piling up. It’s wild.”
After a long layoff between releases in which he wrote a novel and collection of poetry to be released in 2024, the preacher’s kid from nowhere who calls himself a “mostly-New Yorker” now, jumped back into the fray, sporting a brand new, more modern, more lush sound courtesy of longtime friend and producer Bryan Dawley with the release of three singles in 2022: “Villain Like Me” the confessionary anthem, “Lonely Guy” the loser cry for forgiveness and “Ocean”, a meditation of love and death, all regarded as some of his finest work to date.
Brantley says the best is yet to come in 2023, beginning with the release of the epic, tragic love song “Nola” in late summer.
“Man, I know too much at this point to not do exactly what I want. The luxury of hanging around this business for almost 20 years is all the wisdom gained. From the f**kups and to the triumphs…all the lessons you learn, the tools you sharpen, the bulls**t pieces of yourself that you shed and hopefully replace with smarter, kinder, more savvy parts…you put all of that into what you want to say and exactly how you want to say it. Then you just do it.”
According to Rick Brantley, 2023 is the time to, as the man says, do it.
