|
|
 When Brett Dennen was growing up in a onetime gold rush town near Northern California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, his biggest inspiration wasn't Paul Simon or Tracy Chapman, the artists with whom he's most routinely compared. He was instead moved to start making music by his guitar-strumming summer camp counselors.
Later, like many teenagers of the '90s, Dennen was drawn to Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine and the like, and throughout high school and college he experimented with different styles of playing. Following a brief spell in bands, Dennen adopted a solo acoustic folk stance with world music underpinnings and he was soon performing wherever they'd have him along the West Coast.
In 2004, he self-recorded and released his eponymous debut CD; significant airplay in Los Angeles for a warm, restrained paean to the magnificence of the great outdoors called "Desert Sunrise" led to a deal with a small record label, which gave the CD a proper release in 2005. That first CD was dedicated to "the consciousness of truth, global and spiritual mindedness," an indication of Dennen's social leanings, which he has put into action through Love Speaks, an organization he started to help non-profit foundations in each town that he plays. So Much More brought him to a larger national audience in 2006 and 2007 thanks to favorable press (with The Washington Post calling him "a folk rock revelation") and national tours with John Mayer (an avowed Dennen fan), Ben Folds and Colbie Caillat, among others.
His third album, the John Alagia-produced (Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer) Hope For The Hopeless, arrived in 2008. The first single, a pointed sociopolitical statement called "Make You Crazy," was a soulful explosion of African pop featuring Femi Kuti, son of Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti.
Provenance: Oakdale, California
Latest Release: Hope For The Hopeless (2008)
© 2008 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|