Darrin Bradbury is set to perform in Paducah on Thursday at Barrel & Bond in Paducah. Hosted by guitarist and singer-songwriter Nathan Brown, the show also features musicians Alicia Gail, Alec Lang, and Melanie A. Davis.
Bradbury, a seasoned songwriter from Nashville, shares his journey from starting music at a young age to touring for 20 years and eventually starting “The Beat”, a charity that helps the homeless. The nonprofit provides essential services like emergency shelters and rehab placements. The performance will partially raise funds for this cause. Bradbury describes his music as a mix of humor and sadness, and he is part of a three-day tour titled "Darrin Bradbury's Traveling Word Circus."
“When people ask me and they've never heard of me before, I tell them I do sad songs about funny people, and funny songs about sad people, whichever way you want. I started doing it when I was eight years old, didn't stop, and somehow ended up becoming a professional along the way,” said Bradbury. “I was born in New Jersey, outside of New York City, but I spent half my life in the south and half my life in the north… This is my 20th year of touring. I moved to Nashville 11 years ago, living out of my car in the Dickerson Pike Walmart parking lot, and I played until I became professional and got a record contract, and for about 10 years, I toured as a pretty successful supporting artist for a lot of national acts.”
After a long music career Bradbury said he reached a crossroads where he felt he had to decide if he wanted to spend the rest of his life touring and playing music or finding a new way to make a living.
“I felt really good about what had happened in my musical life… I was approaching the age of about 35 or 36 and I decided that I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend the next 20 years of my life doing this. Do I quit music? So, I became a janitor, and then I started working with the homeless in my neighborhood,” said Bradbury. “And then I figured the best way to raise money for a nonprofit and work for the homeless in my neighborhood, instead of kissing rich folks' butts or trying to work with very red tape government money, was to go off pages and honestly put on a show and sell a T-shirt. And so far, it's been three years, and I haven't bankrupted us yet.”
Bradbury said that his passion for fighting for the homeless was personal to him. Madison, the neighborhood in Nashville where he lives has one of the highest homelessness rates in Nashville.
“The neighborhood that I've lived in for the last 10 years, which has been Madison, has the second highest population of homeless folks, and I can tell you from personal experience that our organization is the only four people that are consistently out there with those folks every single day. During the blizzards last year, we ran an emergency warming shelter for two weeks while the snow cleared, while simultaneously distributing $1,000 worth of propane each night to over 500 people per night that were stranded in camps,” said Bradbury. “All of that was crowd sourced on the internet because people just saw what we were doing and chipped in on it. This year, we've run three or four emergency shelters. We've put a couple dozen people into rehab. We found folks housing, and this winter, we run climate-based outreach. If it's hot, crazy out in summertime, we'll make sure people are cool and get food and cold drinks and ice and their coolers are full.”
The show Thursday evening at Barrel & Bond will support The Beat in its efforts to fight poverty and homelessness.
“The show we're doing at Barrel and Bond is a way for us to raise money as part of a three-day tour that we're doing, which we start in Paducah… and I'm calling it Darren Bradbury's traveling word circus,” said Bradbury. “When I get back into touring, it's got to be fun, so we have a good time. We travel in the big old school bus that we use for outreach. We'll try to roll into town and make it feel like a circus.”
Bradbury said that he was excited to be performing with Nathan Brown, Melanie A. Davis, and the talented group of musicians he has assembled for the Paducah stop.
“Alicia Gail is a fantastic vocalist and a fantastic storyteller and lyricist. Whole package. Amazing. Alec is a bit of a student of John Prine and Silver Jews, very sardonic, very dark. Dan Reeder as well, puts on one heck of a show with his songs,” said Bradbury. “You got to come to the show. If you're going to come to the show you’ve got to listen, because it's a word circus. If you ain't coming to listen to the words, then you’re missing the point.”
Darrin Bradbury & his Traveling Word Circus will be performing live at 7 p.m. at Barrel & Bond in downtown Paducah. More information can be found here.
