Few emerging artists have been able to bring the type of showmanship and songwriting 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 Tom Waits, Billy Joel, Tori Amos, and Ben Folds. The intersection of storytelling, theatrics, and melody in his writing have also earned him comparisons to Nick Cave, Michael Stipe and "Hedwig's" Stephen Trask.  Throughout his music career, Gentry continues to prove himself to be an original. 

Gentry’s multiple CD releases 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.  A troubador, a vaudevillian, a pirate, a clown, an entertainer.

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.”

From 1982 to 1987, Gentry won 5 Minnesota Music Teachers' Association awards for classical piano perfomance.  He began winning so much and was advanced so many times above his age level, that he was competing with college age students by age 15.  As he won his final award, Gentry discovered punk, college radio, and his parents' collection of Hendrix and Beatles records, changing his music world forever. 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 rock star.  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 a series of 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 put his focus into rehearsing a new band & performing in California at some of his favorite venues.  Joined by Dean Cook on drums, Dave Fairchild on bass, and Jesse Brewster on guitars, Gentry put on some great shows showcasing new songs like "Beautiful Ghost", "Hometown Heroes" and "Walked Home Alone".

WHATS NEXT
In October 2008, he disembarked for a 14-show series of live solo dates in Europe with several radio and television appearances along the way promoting the release of his new song, "Avond", an English version of the famous Dutch song written by Boudewijn de Groot & Lennaert Nijgh.  The release of the 2008 "Avond" single was also Gentry's first collaborative release with guitarist, singer-songwriter, Jesse Brewster.

"Avond" was released internationally in October 2008 by Zjelva Records and Gentry's own independent label, Stolen Hat Records.  Shortly afterward, Gentry collaborated with filmmaker, Courtney Angermeier, on a short film to accompany the song "Avond", and it debuted on YouTube in October 2008.

Gentry, Sacco Koster, of Zjelva Records, and Daniel Dugour, of Anitime 3D computer animation, worked together to launch Avondsong.com, a site dedicated to the amazing international history of the song Avond.  The site went live in December 2008.

In November 2008, Gentry performed at benefit concert in Minnesota for the Central Minnesota Sexual Assault Center, and three days later he disappeared on an adventure down in the Mayan Riviera.  He returned to the U.S. in March 2009 and performed a concert at the Pioneer Theatre in the town where he grew up, Saint Cloud, MN.  In April 2009, he returned to Northern California.  Gentry is now in early discussions with Boudewijn de Groot to do more English versions of Boudewijn's songs, and he's talking with music collaborators and friends, Jesse Brewster and Alex Aspinall, about recording new original songs in 2009.

Gentry says about songwriting, "A good song will always stand on its own, no matter who sings it.  To me the best songwriters tell a story, with characters, plot, and a conclusion that continues to bring you back to the hook, the chorus, with simplicity and honesty.  I hope I'm able to achieve that with my songs."  

Photo by Nate Duran, 2007