Chely's Biography
Chely Wright sings with the youthful edge of an artist still in her 20’s, but with the solid sense of experience that comes from singing country all of her life. It’s a unique and powerful combination of elements that gives a sound that is both fresh and classic at the same time. Her style emerged naturally into what is, by her description, "a good blend of fresh sound with a very, very deep rooted country ‘thang’. I feel like you can tell when you hear my voice that I listened to Emmylou and Connie Smith and Loretta, and I think you can also tell that I’m a big fan of Martina McBride and Patty Loveless and Trisha Yearwood."
Chely Wright grew up in rural Kansas in a family with four generations of musicians. "I grew up ‘economically challenged,’" she recalls, "out in the country. What we did for fun was play music and play cards. I really can’t remember a time when there was a family gathering that all the guitars and pianos and fiddles didn’t come out. We played country music, but my grandmother was big into gospel music and my parents had old rock ‘n’ roll records around, so I had a plethora of music in the house."
There were also country records in the Wright house, and Chely was fascinated by the sound of Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, Connie Smith, Wanda Jackson, Porter Wagoner and Conway Twitty. "I had no idea that this was old music," she said. "I was playing it and going ‘Wow, this Buck Owens guy is cutting-edge,’ when it was a couple of decades old, so I imagine that’s why I have a fondness for the older country."
Chely’s bedtime stories came not from children’s books, but from the liner notes of country albums. One day when she was just four years old, she had been sent to her room for a transgression against her brothers and told to think about what she had done. Instead she thought about a career as a country singer. "It wasn’t like maybe some day I’ll get to do that," she says. "I knew that I was going to do that ." At age nine, her Christmas list included a doll and a wish to move to Nashville.
Her role models were some of the all-time great country singers. "I used to sit around and try to sound like Loretta and actually do a lot of phrasing like Buck Owens and like Porter," she says. There’s a thing in my voice that people tell me does a kind of a Connie Smith thing, flips up on the end of notes, and that’s probably just from years of singing ‘Once a day, every day, all day long,’ which is probably the most famous Connie Smith record. I’m proud that I have all of those nuances in my voice."
She started singing in bands at age 11 and within a few years had formed her own band, County Line. The summer before her senior year in high school, she went to Branson, MO, and landed a job in the Ozark Jubilee, the long-running country show whose alumni included Brenda Lee and Red Foley. Then, at her grandfather’s urging, she auditioned and won a job at Opryland. She took her final exams a week early and moved to Nashville.
Chely realized Opryland can be a step along the way to stardom only for those who take the next step on their own, to Nashville’s Music Row. "I just called it putting myself through the college of musical knowledge," she says. "I got down here and I did an internship, I would go to writers nights every chance I could, I would sneak into BMI and steal their magazines. Little did I know they would have given them to me."
Chely had the background, the experience and the talent to be a star. Through the individual expression that comes from songwriting, she developed her own singing style. "That was the most pivotal point in developing my own style as a singer," she explains, "because I was paid at Opryland to go out there and sound like Loretta Lynn and Connie Smith or Jean Shepard.
When you’re singing someone else’s songs it’s difficult to sing it like Chely Wright. The best thing for me to do was write my own songs, as bad as some of them were, so I could see who I really was."
She first caught the ear of Harold Shedd (whose production credits include Alabama), who signed her to Mercury/Polygram and her first album, Woman In The Moon, was released in 1994 on the revived Polydor label. The industry took notice, and she was named Top New Female Vocalist by the Academy of Country Music. Her second album, Right In The Middle of It, was released on yet another PolyGram label, A&M. It was better musically, Chely thought, but she felt there were more changes to be made. In 1996, she wrote out a wish list for her career, including among others things a new record label and producer. At the top of her list were MCA and Tony Brown. She locked it up in a box and asked to be released from Mercury.
Within a year or so, all her wishes came true. She signed with MCA and went into the studio with Tony Brown. "We never had a time where we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a stylistic approach or sonically," she says. "We just knew we needed great songs. I knew he’d make great records on them. It was a wonderful marriage of creative energy." Chely’s first album with Tony Brown and MCA, Let Me In, included the singles "Shut Up And Drive" and "I Already Do" and charted in the top 25 on the Billboard country album chart.
Now Chely is putting the finishing touches on her latest effort, an album again produced by Tony Brown, featuring the title track "Single White Female." The Untamed & True 2 tour will give Chely an opportunity to whet her fans’ appetites with some new material until Single White Female is released in May ’99. With a new album to look forward to, Chely Wright’s star is ready to shine brightly at the top of the charts.
©(P)1999 MCA Records Nashville
