Artist description Ellen Wright (guitar) and John Wright (banjo and vocals) like to take time out from teaching at Northwestern University to play and sing old-time music.

Music Style bluegrass+oldtime+folk

Musical Influences Carter Family, New Lost City Ramblers, Ralph Stanley

Similar Artists New Lost City Ramblers

Artist History "I had a gut feeling that you and Ellen would put on a good show, and you proved me right. Your show had the largest crowd and was by far the most successful overall."So wrote Jim Moran, producer of the "No Depression" alternative music series held in Evanston in the summer of 1997, as he recalled the August 1 debut appearance of Ellen and John Wright at Borders Books and Music with their guitar and banjo show "Songs and Stories from the World of Bluegrass."Banjoist John Wright had already been performing for many years, appearing at bluegrass festivals in Kentucky, Virginia, Michigan, and Ohio, as well as locally. The recordings he made with Junior Blankenship, a veteran lead guitarist and harmony singer from Dickenson County, Virginia, received airplay across the United States and around the world from Guam to Estonia. Of his first cassette, the reviewer for Bluegrass Unlimited wrote, "[E]very tune is a raggedy little treasure of old-fashioned rural directness, honesty, and feeling," and Nashville songwriter Tom T. Hall said, "This is going to be a collector's item so you might as well get one now. Great stylistic banjo and real-life vocals."Bluegrass Unlimited also said of one of Wright's original songs, "'I Get So Cold' gets my vote as sweetest, most innocently touching love song of the year."More recently, Wright's "The Emptiness Inside" won a songwriting award at the Santa Fe Bluegrass and Old Time Music Festival, and his "We've Heard The Chimes At Midnight" was selected for inclusion on the first Acoustic Rainbow compilation CD. His book, Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music, earned him the International Bluegrass Music Association's Print Media Personality of the Year award for 1994.In the spring of 1996 Ellen Wright decided that she wanted to play the guitar. "We dug up an old student guitar our daughter had learned on," her husband recalls, "to get her started. I literally had to tie a knot in one of the strings before she could play it. She took it up to her study and worked on it every evening. When she came downstairs a month later she was a guitar player. Everything we've been doing since then is just details."Unbeknownst to his wife, John Wright subsequently sent a short demo tape of her playing to a couple of professional musicians. Charlie Sizemore, a bluegrass bandleader whose rendition of "That's How I Got To Memphis" was Number One on the bluegrass charts for months, called and said, "Sounds like you've got a guitar player," while Murphy Henry, probably the best-known bluegrass music teacher in the country, wrote to say, "Those bass notes are right where they ought to be."A couple of weeks before their Borders debut, the Wrights recorded an hour-long program of music and talk for radio station WLUW in Chicago which was broadcast later that month. Craig Kois, WLUW program director, who engineered the recording, called them "a great duo," and added, "I really felt privileged to be present for such a creative and entertaining hour of music and stories."Ellen and John Wright have subsequently continued to take time off from their day jobs at Northwestern University (where she teaches Writing and he teaches Classics) to appear to large and appreciative audiences in a string of return engagements at Evanston Borders and at theaters and festivals throughout northern Illinois and northwest Indiana, as well as at the Wellfleet Public Library on Cape Cod. (Their most exotic booking yet? Brooklyn, this September.) They have done a second hour-long program for WLUW Chicago and have had guest appearances on WNUR Evanston, WOMR Provincetown, Mass., WRVG Georgetown, Ky., and WYEP Pittsburgh. They have been featured performers on the Woodsongs Old Time Music Hour, a nationally syndicated program originating in Lexington, and Rik Palieri's Burlington, Vt., television program, "Songwriter's Notebook." In the Fall of 1998 they completed a recording project which yielded two cassettes with a total of twenty-seven songs. They are currently working on a new CD.For recordings and bookings contact Ellen and John Wright, 1137 Noyes St., Evanston IL 60201; (847) 475-1615; jhwright@northwestern.edu""John Wright is a clawhammer-style banjo picker who's probably best known as the world's #1 authority on Ralph Stanley; his wife Ellen took up the guitar a year or two ago and has come along extremely well in a short period of time. They do some really nice duets, including some of John's excellent songs."Jon Weisberger"Ellen is also unselfconsciously funny, sometimes hilarious. She teaches writing at Northwestern and can spin a fine yarn form almost nothing. It should be a really fine show."Linda Ray"I can second this. John Wright and his wife did one of the Evanston-Borders shows sponsored by Linda's cookbook and WNUR's Southbound Train a year or so ago. I have never seen such a crowd at Borders: people of all ages, kids dancing, and some entertaining stories and great sing-along songs by John and his wife. They now do regular gigs at that Borders store and I'd highly recommend their shows to all old time music fans."Jim Moran"Two of our very favorite performers honor us with another evening of sweet country music. Their performance in Café Espresso last May was standing-room-only, so get here early & say hello to your neighbors, & be ready for some of the best bluegrass in Evanston." [Borders News & Events]Larry Wilson

Group Members Ellen Wright (guitar) is a College Lecturer in the Writing Program at Northwestern University; she is known to the bluegrass community for her for her detailed BGRASS-L accounts of the bluegrass scene in Japan. John Wright, who teached Classics at Northwestern, is the author of the award winning book, Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music.

Instruments banjo (drop-thumb), acoustic guitar

Albums Ellen and John Wright I (cassette), Ellen and John Wright II (cassette), Promises (CD), Traveling the High Way Home (cassette), Everything She Asks For (cassette), Old Time Music for a New Millenium (compilation, one song)

Press Reviews Tom T. Hall said of "Everything She Asks For" : "This is going to be a collector's item so you might as well get one now, and Bluegrass Unlimited called "I Get So Cold" the most touching love song of the year.

Additional Info Book: Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music, Univ. of Illinois Press. Available at the usual retail stores, Amazon.com, etc.

Location Evanston, IL - USA

Copyright notice. All material on MP3.com is protected by copyright law and by international treaties. You may download this material and make reasonable number of copies of this material only for your own personal use. You may not otherwise reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, or create derivative works of this material, unless authorized by the appropriate copyright owner(s).