Brad Colerick (Photo – Official website)
This week, Brad Colerick, South Pasadena-based celebrated songwriter, released his most recent CD Tucson.
By Debra Penberty
We caught up with Brad just before his weekly music series at the Firefly Bistro in South Pasadena, where we discussed his current musical pursuits.
I’m always interested in the stories behind the songs. Can you tell me about “Blue Horizon,” one of my favorite songs off your new CD?
That was a song that I wrote back in 1992, but I just hadn’t put in on an album… It’s about a lot of things. For a long time, I was not recording my own music. There was a twenty year span from my 1986 album to my 2006 release. And during that time I was doing mostly music for ads. I wrote ‘Blue Horizon’ during that break. It’s about our choices in life and the longing I had to get back to the things that matter to me. I’ve managed to do that now.
How does it feel?
It feels great! I still have my company DeepMix, based here in South Pasadena, but I’m able to strike a balance between that and doing my own music… And at my age, you think a lot about the passage of time. You see your parents and your kids getting older…, and so it brings a different perspective on life and looking back.
Brad Colerick’s newest release “Tucson”.
So, you’re thinking about what’s important in life and where you’re headed?
That’s right. And, my parents recently moved from Nebraska to Arizona. They had planned to move to Tucson, but they moved to Scottsdale instead. I’d already settled on Tucson for my new album name, though. So I kept that!
Yeah, Tucson rolls off the tongue a little more easily! Tell me about this series at the Firefly Bistro in South Pasadena.
Well, this series has been going for five years. It started at a wine bar that used to be on Mission… but we moved it to the Firefly. The owners, Paul and Carl, have been really supportive, and it’s been great to have this regular spot to try out new material and feature other artists. I usually open the evening with a couple songs, then our featured artists each do a short set. And we have some special guests each week who pop in and do a couple songs each, then the featured acts close out the night. And, it’s really been made into a listening room where people come and focus on the music.
Nice. One last question. Tell me about what roots you in the Americana genre.
Well, I used to call my music folk rock, I was heavily influenced by singer-songwriters like James Taylor and Jackson Browne. Then this term Americana began to surface in the ‘90s. I attended a retreat in 1996, shortly after Gavin Magazine began reporting an Americana radio chart. There were two factions, one the singer-songwriter camp and the other the alt. country camp. There was a lot of discussion about how to describe Americana music. That retreat was the catalyst to what became the Americana Music Association. It’s a fairly broad genre that encompasses a lot of ‘roots’ music sub-genres. My sound falls right in the heart of that spectrum somewhere between folk and country.
We wish Brad continued success with this new chapter in his musical path.
Check Brad Colerick’s website for music and upcoming shows.
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