Few emerging artists have been able to bring the type of classic pop-rock showmanship to studio and stage like Gentry Bronson. The San Francisco-based musician is drawing fans back to the piano-driven niche carved out by artists like Billy Joel, Tori Amos, Ben Folds, and David Gray. The intersection of storytelling, theatrics, and melody in his songwriting have also earned him comparisons to Nick Cave and Tom Waits. Throughout his music career, however, Gentry has proven himself to be an original. 

Gentry’s seven CDs cross over many musical boundaries from alternative rock to indie pop, folk to jazz, and ambient to classical styles.  And his live performances are often passionate, electric and hilarious, keeping his audiences captivated from start to finish.

KEY CHANGES - THE EARLY YEARS
Born in Bemidji, Minnesota, and named after a hitchhiker, Gentry started playing when he was 4 years old. "I used to sit at my grandparents’ piano and make up melodies,” Gentry recalls. “The black keys were bad guys and the white keys were good guys, and I’d create battles and stories with the piano.  So my parents asked me if I wanted lessons.  They moved an old upright bar piano into the farm house I grew up in, but it never got tuned again.  You take that old out-of-tune piano, snow drifts, corn fields, telephone wires, marshland, factory smoke, plastic covered windows and pig sheds, on top of Mozart and Khachaturian pieces, and that's where my 'sound' comes from.”

Years later, in his teens, Gentry discovered punk, college radio, and his parents' collection of Hendrix and Beatles records, changing his music world. Soon after, Gentry became the lead singer in his first garage band, The Eviction Committee.  “I didn't play any instrument in the band, I just sang, rolled around on stage, and tried to act like a combo of Jim Morrison, Michael Stipe, Steve Kilbey and Axl Rose all at once.  I was...ridiculous.”

THERE AND BACK AGAIN - THE 1990'S
Gentry’s personal road to where he is today is painted with those colorful life experiences you often hear stories about from the mouths of true artists. After spending his first 18 years in Minnesota, Gentry headed off to the West Coast and found himself in Oregon, where he went to the University of Oregon for a year, but despised it. “I've always worked all kinds of outlandish jobs, but it was there, through making samosas for Jeff Pasternak, who's the son of late Universal Studios producer, Joe Pasternak, that I ended up in a music studio.  I got hooked on music production."  He then went to Alaska for several months and worked on the docks. Following that, he travelled down to Key West, Florida where he learned to bartend from an old “Queen” named Daisy.

Gentry moved back to Seattle and worked as a bartender at the infamous Off Ramp club, hobnobbing at the edge of the exploding music scene with the bands of the day. He fronted the bands Bastard Slide and Buried Child, started doing spoken word, composed the music for a Withered Wall film fest, and wrote the score for a dance piece called "Goddess."

In 1994, he moved to San Francisco and returned to university. There, he played piano in an avant garde jazz combo called The Partial Orchestra, and did more spoken word performances. Moving back to Prague, he was a weekly DJ at the famed Roxy Klub, worked for Yazzyk, an art and literature magazine, taught English and went to Karlova University. He discovered Middle Eastern music while travelling in Turkey for several months, then moved back to San Francisco again, where he finished a degree in Humanities and International Studies.  Afterward, he found work as a multi-media producer.  Between contracting as a producer and travelling to Central America, Mexico and Southeast Asia, he wrote songs.  In 2000, he won 3 Northern California Songwriters Association awards.

BAREFEET, FEDORAS & HARD WORK - 2001 TO PRESENT
In 2001, he started the band project the Night Watchmen, writing the songs and producing one EP and two LPs with them including the dark, cabaret-styled record Lost In California.  At the same time, he worked as a music director for Alchemia, a non-profit art and music program for disabled adults, where he co-wrote a musical. After releasing 2 low profile solo records, the acoustic LP Home and the instrumental LP Tranquillo, Gentry phased out the Night Watchmen and put his focus on his solo career.

Gentry recorded two LPs in 2006 - Santa Fe Sky, and No War.  On No War, 14 songs are divided into three parts, each with a different theme, with piano and vocals as the central focus but backed by a full indie rock band sound. This LP showcases Gentry’s broad sweeping range of songwriting prowess, from soaring beauties like the opener “Shine” to sweet soul-bearers like “Save Me” to the head-pounding piano punk of “Heads On Fire.”  He calls it, jokingly, his 'Star Wars Trilogy' record because of the 3-part concept format of the LP. The Santa Fe Sky LP is on the opposite side of the musical spectrum - an ambient, instrumental record, co-written and co-produced in New Mexico with multi-instrumentalist Dave Hoover - leading the listener through a enviro-soundscape of desert moods.

Gentry has done studio work for numerous artists and film soundtracks, including the films After Hours (2002) and Dark Crimes (2005) and records by Tragedy Andy (2006) and Don Gallardo (2007).  His songs are also heavily featured in the films Nature's Flesh (2006), Minnesota Ice (2007), and Hero (2007) directed by his brother, Kaleb Bronson.  

In 2007, Gentry continued his cross country U.S. tour, performing in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and throughout California.  He did 13 European dates in December 2007 & January 2008 and then toured through  Washington, Oregon & California as an acoustic duo with Jesse Brewster in February 2008.

In the spring and summer of 2008, he has put his focus into rehearsing a new band & performing in California.  Both his one-man solo and full band shows continue to be a theatric and dynamic experience.  “I love to tell stories, interact with the audience and put on a big show, even when it’s just me and the piano,” he says. “I'm not one to be pushed into a corner as background music. I'm never wallpaper."  And with his new band behind him, he is is anything but wallpaper.

A new album is in the works.

Photo by Nate Duran, 2007