Rising Stars: Meet Bart Bryars

Hi Bart, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I am the second eldest of seven brothers and sisters from Mobile, Alabama. My father, Marion, was a pro ballplayer and fireman and my mother, Dianne, was a writer.

I had a great childhood and was always drawn to and trained in sports and art. Music was something I picked up on my own as a form of rebellion. I am now a musician, songwriter, producer, artist, author, playwright, illustrator, and librettist.

After dropping out of college and working on off-shore oil rigs for a while, I joined the Coast Guard in 1982. In 1985, while stationed at a USCG lifeboat station in Michigan, I was busted for running cocaine. While out on bail, three days before my scheduled trial I faked my death in an ice-fishing “accident” and went on the lam.

Four months later, I was re-apprehended in Louisiana and subsequently spent seven years in prison (1985-1992). It was in prison, due to years of reflection and self-discovery, that I made the decision to pursue a life of music, which I have successfully done. After I was released, within two years I had a band and began making records and have continued doing so to this day.

And now, after 30 years of telling wild and crazy stories from that time in my life, and 30 years of people telling me I should write those stories down, I finally did. It’s a memoir titled “The Rabbit In Me”.

This book is about my life in prison from 1985 to 1992. Seven years. From when I was 24 years old till 31 years old. More than half was spent in Federal joints, the rest in state penitentiaries and hoosegows. When I was released at 31 years old, I had spent 25% of my entire life incarcerated. And fully half (50%) of my adulthood.

Those critical years 24-31, when one is usually learning and growing from life experiences and relationships, were suspended for me. Put on hold. Slowed to a grinding halt. Literally non-existent. A stunted societal development, for sure, because I will never get those years back.

But they were years that literally changed my life for the better. It was there that I learned about my true inner self. Who I am. What makes me tick. What makes me a happy person. Looking into the mirror, in a small 6×9 cell, every day for over 2,500 days in a row. Truthful introspection, with nowhere to run or hide.

It was in there that I made the decision and commitment to a life of making music. Along the journey, I befriended and hung with some pretty unsavory and interesting characters. A lot of the memoir is about them. And just surviving. And battling the rabbit instinct deep within me. The primal need to run, run, run. From my captivity.

Hence the title.

Coincidentally, my Nashville band, The Feels, has recently made its debut album (“There’s Somebody In There”), which I am simultaneously releasing with the memoir. Nine songs influenced by the blues, rock, jazz, R&B, and a smidgen of prog. It features two songs I wrote in prison that are mentioned in the book. I write and produce and play guitar. My wife writes and sings.

I am also now releasing a new solo EP called “Country Clubbing”, triggered and inspired by my new digs in Nashville. Also I published the libretto (book & lyrics) to a prison musical I wrote during my recent ten years living in NYC. It’s called “Permanent Record”.

Lastly, I am re-publishing a children’s book that my mother wrote and I illustrated from a prison cell. It’s called “Tales From Ittybittyville”. All these can be found on my new website “bartbryars.com”, along with other albums and videos and stuff from my catalog that can be viewed, heard, and downloaded for free.

Since my release from prison in 1992, I’ve lived in New Orleans’ French Quarter, a houseboat in Perdido Key, Florida, Atlanta (where I met my wife and singer, Jen), New York City’s West and East Village for 10 years, and finally in Nashville for the past 3½ years, where Jen and I continue our adventures and making music.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The first part of my adulthood was marked by the seven years in prison, so obviously it wasn’t smooth.

I lived the first couple of years after I was paroled in the French Quarter, which was basically a blur. New Orleans was like an oasis after I had been in the desert for seven years, and the French Quarter was my water.

Then I lived on a houseboat in Florida that I bought with the money I got from suing the prison that ran over my leg. A few months later, a hurricane sank it, taking my fledgling studio, drums, and guitars to the deep six. I took the FEMA payout and went to Nashville and made my first record (1995).

I put together a band to back the album in Atlanta (1996 Olympic-era), and from there I found my rudder and I have led a life of music and adventure and true happiness ever since.

In Atlanta. I stumbled into a lucrative career playing 80s music to college kids for ten years, so I got to do what I love, performing over 1000 shows and traveling all over the southeastern US, playing every college frathouse, nightclub, and venue from Virginia to Florida to Tennessee to Mississippi and in between.

Being in a “note-for-note” cover band, (which commands the most money), and developing an unhealthy disdain for the repetition of “Jessie’s Girl” “Safety Dance” and “Come On Eileen”, my wife and I moved to New York City and got out of the cover business for good.

We had a rock band there for the first few years and a funk band the last few years, and we played all the iconic bars on Bleeker Street and The Village.

Fast forward to Nashville. We love it here, so far. The musical talent level is very high and you can feel a collective creative vibe everywhere you go.

I would say the road hasn’t been easy, but it’s a small price to pay for blissful happiness.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
It’s been a long musical journey for me. Along the journey, I’ve played and written many genres and styles of music.

I’ve always naturally loved music, like everyone in the world does, but the first thing that really drew me into music was lyric play. The cleverness with a phrase.

When I heard “A Boy Named Sue” on the jukebox at the Tiny-Diney on Halls Mill Road when I was 8 years old, it was over. I went straight from Cash to Roger Miller, Ray Stevens, Mac Davis, and ultimately into the funky-funness of Jerry Reed.

Then, I pivoted into Dylan, Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Charlie Daniels, John Prine, David Allan Coe, Cohen, and Sting. All very literate and lyric masters.

The first songs I wrote, when I was 13 or 14 years old, were comical romps about frogs and mosquitoes and getting drunk and smoking weed. I mean, after all, it was the 70s. Writing lyrics is fun and challenging for me. I’m really drawn to words and rhymes and the matching of syllables with notes and rhythms.

I’ve written and recorded hundreds of songs. Most would be considered some form of rock, even though I rarely use the distorted guitar. If I had a signature element to my style of making songs, I would say that the first and foremost thing I emphasize is beat and groove. And then I just go from there. Songs often take me and guide me through writing them, sometimes with just a one-word focus.

Some are stand-outs and some aren’t. But they’re all my babies. I picked 50 of them in total on the website.

When we moved to Nashville, I thought, “Man, I gotta write some country songs. I can’t be in Nashville and not represent”.

Much like when I moved to NYC and thought, “Man, I gotta write some musicals. I can’t be in New York City and not represent”. So, I wrote two musicals and an opera. Here’s a video I made called “New York City”, which is the opening number to one of the musicals: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNDXdh-ZzxI).

Thusly, I have a new 5-song EP culled from that batch. It’s not really full-on “country”, but it is “Nashville inspired”. I wrote all these on acoustic guitar, just like I did in my teenage years. I played bass, and guitar, and sang lead on all of them. Jen, my wife, sang some backup for me.

As it turns out, this style of music has been bubbling just under my skin all these years. My Alabama gulf-coast roots. As such, they practically wrote themselves.

And then our Nashville band, The Feels, is a true band. Everybody contributes. A real group and our new album is sure to move your feet.

Oh, and then there’s the book. The memoir is called “The Rabbit In Me”.

Everything I’ve mentioned is on my new website, “bartbryars.com.”

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Well, I got lucky stumbling on to my very beautiful and talented wife at obviously the exact right time, 25 years ago. I was 35 and she was 18. So, yes, in life I have been very lucky! Business?