Barnaby Bright's music has been featured on television shows such as ER, Days of Our Lives, and PBS Roadtrip Nation. Their song, "If I Came Back as a Song" was voted 3rd place winner by a notable panel of judges including Tom Waits, in 2007's International Song-Writing Competition. Last November, their song 'Gravity' was chosen as a finalist out of thousands of entries in the New York Songwriter's Circle Competition.
They were featured as an "Emerging Artist" at the legendary Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in upstate NY this summer, and are returning to Europe this fall for a month-long tour.
Originally from Kansas, Nathan and Rebecca Bliss were introduced by a booking agent in the small town of Prairie Village, and began playing cover music in bars.no one listening.a football game playing on the TV right over their heads. It was a humble beginning, but both were writing original music in secret and longed for a different life. Best friends, and also hopelessly in love but unable to be together for a multitude of reasons, they stopped playing music together a year later. Rebecca moved New York where she completed an EP of original songs dealing with love and loss, while Nathan stayed in Kansas and recorded an EP of his own.
The two were reconnected the following year in NYC, and the emotional reunion that followed resulted in marriage just 10 months later, as well as their first full-length studio album, "Wake the Hero" a year after that. Mixed by Bryan Cook (Beck, Jack White, Meiko), "Wake the Hero" was released in January of 2009, and quickly generated buzz throughout the NYC music scene, with it's beautiful acoustic guitars patterns, lush harmonies, rich string arrangements, quirky instruments and subtle electronic tweaks.
Playing throughout NYC in some of the city’s top clubs and venues, this duo continues wowing packed audiences with thoughtful lyrics, intricate melodies and unexpected instrumentation.
Rooted in folk, but pushing the boundaries, Barnaby Bright's unique brand of lush, indie folk is a warm and welcome wind of change.
What people are saying:
"Rebecca’s smooth, melodic vocals are reminiscent of Karen Carpenter or Shelby Flint.and Nathan’s incorporation of his jazz background into Garfunkel-y acoustic compositions bring diverse styles together to the folk in the road: a marriage of minds and hands and music." -The Deli Magazine
"Nathan and Rebecca Bliss make up the sweetly melodic folk-ish duo Barnaby Bright, whose songs have soundtracked heavy emotional moments on Days of Our Lives and ER"-Time Out New York
"Whether Simonizing their Garfunkelisms or living up to influences like Nick Drake and Mason Jennings, Barnaby Bright is making a mark in places that are most assuredly not Kansas anymore."
-Bryan Baker (Mid Point Music Festival)
"Brooklyn-based Barnaby Bright, fronted by creative leads Rebecca and Nathan Bliss, don't really do things much differently than any number of acousti-pop bands shuttling around the pass-the-hat clubs on New York's Lower East Side. They just do them better. The key elements at play: Rebecca's lovely classically trained voice, able to conjure both the sweet and sultry, and the duo's fine songwriting. Comparable at times to The Weepies, Barnaby Bright find that special place between sophisticated and down home pleasures, an alt-folk/jazz(ish) merger that still bows to classic pop influences."
-Dave Curtis (Direct Current Music)
*Photo by BJ Barratt
You can purchase the entire album on iTunes here:
