J. Bright - news

I've finally booked some time at Blue Sky Recording to finish my second CD, Order to March. My first CD, River Chaos, has enjoyed a small-scale renaissance in recent months. I've sold more copies in 2005 than in 1997 (the release year). Since there is so much new interest in my first album, and since I've accrued an eight-year backlog of material, the time seems right to release something new.
Order to March should be available by the summer of 2005.

New CD to be released, summer 2005

April 2005:

jonathan@jbright.com

NEWS

May 2005:

The recording is finished and the tracks are just about mixed. Mastering and duplication follows, so Order to March is on schedule for release in mid to late June. (CD release party location and date to be announced.)

June 2005:

I've added some gigs to the "shows" page, and, barring any production snags, the CD is due for release on June 16. There is a sample on www.myspace.com/jonathanabright, not to be confused with www.myspace.com/jonathanbright which brings me to my next bit of news. It turns out there's another Jonathan Bright out there. He's based in Nashville but plays straight out rock and roll. He's pretty good at it, too. Check him out at jonathanbright.com or the aforementioned Myspace address.

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The release party of Order to March was a great success.
Get your copy of the new album at CDbaby.

Jonathan Bright

Order to March available at CDbaby

Summer of 2005: Worst summer ever

    Just when everything was on track for the release and promotion of Order to March, I had a few setbacks this summer. First, a heavily armed manic depressive held my neighbors hostage while the police commandeered my house. My neighbor's son started dating a girl whose ex-boyfriend had been arrested for kidnapping. On the day of his arraignment, he jumped bail and held the girl and our neighbors hostage. Somehow, someone in the family managed to get to a phone and call the police who quickly evacuated the neighborhood. For some reason, they did not think we were home, so when the police found us going about our business, my wife, kids, and I were ordered into the basement where, for two hours, we watched Dora the Explorer videos while trying to distract the children from noticing the SWAT teams.
    There must have been fifty or sixty police in our home and a few lurking in the shrubbery and surrounding the neighbor's house. There were snipers with high powered rifles pointed out of our master bedroom windows and at the windows of the upstairs bedroom of the neighbor's house where they believed the kidnapper was holding his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.
     Just as they were about to raid the house, the gunman surrendered.
     It took an hour for the police to break down their gear and leave our house. However, when my wife went upstairs with my daughter to put her to bed, they were suprised to find two snipers still in our bedroom disassembling their high powered rifles. They apologized for the length of time it was taking them to vacate. They weren't used to it. Nothing like this had ever happened to them.
     And then came the media. They swarmed around our house faster than the SWAT team.   I was interviewed on my front step by a television reporter from WNYT, a local NBC affiliate. He kept asking how we felt about the situation. I must have misunderstood and told him what had actually happened from our perspective. "But how did you feel?" he kept asking.
     "I felt like an Iraqi in Falluja," I replied. My house was invaded by helmeted, heavily armed men dressed in black. I thought it was an apt comparison.
     It didn't make the cut. The only quotes from me that they used in the report was when I was describing my children's reaction. "It was frightening..."
     Two weeks after this event, I was driving to the guitar shop for strings when I was stopped in traffic. Everyone but the guy driving the SUV behind me knew that traffic was not moving. He rear-ended my car and put me in the hospital. I hurt my neck so badly that for a while, I could not feel my right arm. When the circulation returned, it felt as if I were being shot in the back and right arm with arrows, and not the practice arrows. I mean the real hunting ones with the razor points and serrated edges. This happened the day before the CD release party. If it were not for the codeine, I would never have gotten through the 20 minute set. If you look at the pictures of that night at either this site or bryanthomas.com (links on the photo page), you may notice a certain dazed look that can only be attributed to narcotics.
     I spent the rest of the summer months lying on a couch with an icepack and a heating pad, but there is one more chapter to the unfortunate summer of 2005...A few weeks later, this happened to my neighbor across the street.
I swear, even though the summer of 2005 was bad, it's not why we moved.

   Thanks to everyone who came out Tuesday, Jan. 3 and Friday, Jan. 13.
     The Union show was a three-hour sit-down performance in a coffee house with a completely attentive crowd. The Valentine's show was a half-hour stand-up rock set during early drinking hours in a bar with a largely unlistening crowd. Union paid me a lot of money. Valentine's charged me $4 for a drink, but that's not why I look unhappy in the picture below. (Photo courtesy of Kevbrockmusic.com) About 20 feet from where we are standing, a young mother was screaming, swearing, and man-handling her two young boys. I guessed their ages at about 3 and 6. Erin Harkes (on my left) had just told me that this miserable person had been doing that since Erin had arrived about half an hour before.
     I felt pretty helpless. I was afraid if I had said anything, it would make things worse for the kids. Why do people have children if they really don't want them? There are thousands of childless couples who
would be willing to adopt, so for the good of all, put them up for adoption for some loving family instead of raising the next generation of angry, damaged degenerates.

Union College, Valentine's, and child abuse

8/14/2006
Two J. Bright protest songs linked to Neil Young's web site

Thanks to a tip from Osonics, I submitted my protest song, "You Speak for Me Cindy" to Neil Young's "Living with War Today" web site. It was a good tip. The song is now linked directly to Neil Young's protest song page. Be sure to check out Osonics' "Church Street" which has made it to the top 100.

Just a quick update: "Convention Hall" was recently added to Neil Young's living with war web site. "You Speak for Me Cindy" was added about a month ago and has reached #70. There are a lot of great songs on the page. Check it out at Neil Young's Living With War.

7/26/2006
"You Speak for Me Cindy" linked to
Neil Young's web site

8/12/2007
I should rename this page, or perhaps the whole site

I should rename my "news" page to the "who-gives-a-shit about these occasional blog entries?" page. The hits are even more occasional than the updates, but it's great how much of the content of sites like jbright.com assume that there are regular readers and fans. "Here's a quick update for all of you on the edge of your seat: I played in a crumby bar for no money last year. You should have been there. A good time was had by all...." It's beginning to strike me as delusional. There are a lot of sites that have a presumptuous tone, so I'm not alone in this. Though, actually, this entry is nothing more than me talking to myself, so in a sense, I'm alone in this. I blog better on Myspace, so if you are really interested in the latest in Bright world, go there. (Here I am telling myself to go to where I already go more often than here. That completes this installment of the delusion.)