Wink Keziah
The Biography
“Sometimes in life you just need a new beginning,” says singer-songwriter Wink Keziah describing exactly where he is in both his life and his career right now.
Hard Times marks a new direction for Keziah musically as well. It’s his first solo record without longtime band, Delux Motel, the first project recorded in Los Angeles and perhaps more significantly, Keziah’s exploration of wider avenues in his songwriting, with a conscious shift from a honky-tonk heavy vibe to one that is more balanced between the raucous and the spiritual.
“Even though I’m rough and tumble around the edges, I have a very firm foundation in my faith and what I believe,” he says.
Keziah penned all 11 songs on Hard Times that range from the spirituality of “Sweet Jesus” and “The Hands of God” to the autobiographical “Chain Link Fence” to the rollicking ode to redneck romance “Honky-Tonk Rendezvous.” The album’s mid-tempo opener “Sometimes You Win” is a testament to Keziah’s relentlessly positive outlook. It is a gentle reminder that while “things are tough sometimes, you’re gonna win sometimes, too.”
Keziah’s decision to record "Hard Times" in Los Angeles proved to be professionally and creatively fulfilling with the contributions of a stellar list of musicians who have toured and recorded with Steve Earle, Dwight Yoakam, Lucinda Williams, Waylon Jennings, and the Rolling Stones. Keziah's strong Texas influence is apparent through the entire album, particularly on the track “San Antonio” with other Lone Star references interspersed throughout.
Mark Stuart of the Austin-based band, Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash, produced the CD and lends his vocals to the rough-edged, confessional duet “Sweet Jesus.”
Keziah has found a musical soul mate in Stuart, calling his friend and producer “a visionary with an incredible set of ears. He has an uncanny way of hearing the bigger picture.”
The new album’s title, "Hard Times", refers partly to the economy and partly to the state of the music industry. But for Keziah, it’s an apt description of his life.
He’s been permanently shaped by a turbulent, hardscrabble childhood. When he sings, “I met my Daddy through a chain link fence” on the song of the same name, he means it quite literally. In fact, the singer’s first memories of his father, “a bootlegger and a hustler,” are of visits to prison where the senior Keziah was doing time for shooting Wink’s maternal grandfather.
As a child Keziah found solace in music and picked up his first guitar at age five. He played in bands throughout his school years and earned a partial art scholarship for college. Unable to fund the rest of his education costs, Keziah enrolled in cosmetology school, hoping to eventually earn enough money in that field to attend art school. But his life soon took a different turn. He opened his own salon and became hugely successful in the cosmetology field. One salon became three, and Keziah found himself overseeing 49 employees, while still continuing to tour and make music.
After a second divorce and a decision to turn down a major-label record deal, he took five years off from playing music to try to live a “normal” life. But like the songs in his head, music just wouldn’t leave him alone. It was his current wife who pushed him to reconnect with his passion for music.
“Hard times make changes. The good thing is they give you the strength or the momentum to get on with a new adventure in your life,” Keziah says. “I know it’s going to be tough for the next couple of years. It’s going to take a lot of hard work.”
But hard work has never concerned Keziah who has toured extensively for years. In 2009, he was on the road a total of 200 days and he will continue to tour behind "Hard Times" with his Austin, Texas based band and doing solo shows including a Texas Radio Tour in support of his single release of "Sometimes You Win".
“People are probably going to identify with the honky-tonkers, because that’s what they’ve been most used to hearing from me,” Keziah says of the project. “But with this record, they’re going to get a taste of a different side of Wink. Hopefully it’ll be a side that they’ll embrace.”
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