Over the past 15 years Brady has been quietly building a solid reputation as a songwriter's songwriter. His moving, literate, and often humorous songs have been compared to those of Paul Simon, Nick Drake, and Joni Mitchell. Acoustic Guitar magazine's Elizabeth Papapetrou calls his 1998 debut After You "one of the ten best contemporary folk CD's of the 1990s." Cville Weekly music critic Keith Morris calls Brady's 2003 release Manalapan "a fully realized, mature album . . . the most subtly poetic, skillfully crafted and all-inclusively human stuff I've heard in years." Named for a tiny south Florida snorkelers' destination, Manalapan extended the emotional landscape of the earlier album with a series of character-driven stories set off by innovative arrangements of strings, horns, and guitars.
Brady’s newest album, so few things (2010) continues to meditate on love, friendship, and American history with twelve songs that deliver the lingering dramatic impact of fine short stories or one-act plays. Among them are “Wild Nights” (his setting of a poem by Emily Dickinson, draped in horns reminiscent of Chet Baker), “Daniel” (in the voice of a gay soldier about to ship out to Iraq), “As You Were” (about an Irish officer at the Battle of Fredericksburg in the Civil War), and “Everywhere” (a ballad tracing a proud man’s sad passage into humility). A year and a half in the making, so few things is lofted by Earnhart’s own guitar and voice and by inspired guest performances on cello (Rebecca Maxon and Andrew Gabbert), trumpet (John D’earth), baritone sax (Bobby Read), drums (Todd Wellons), upright and electric bass (Bob Bowen and Randall Pharr), fiddle (Cleek Schrey), and tabla (Nitin Tripathi). Co-producer Paul Curreri (who also plays electric guitar on “As You Were”) and Devon Sproule add atmospheric background vocals.
Brady's song "Gargoyle" won the gold medal in the folk category of the 2002 Mid-Atlantic Songwriting Contest and appears on Charlottesville radio station WNRN's Station Break. Acoustic duo Nickeltown's cover of "After You" is included in NPR station WMRA's compilation CD In the Shadow of the Blue Ridge. ("Get Right Back" and "Arlington" from the new CD are due out soon on sequels to these collections.) In June 2002, "Car Repair" aired on NPR's CarTalk. Three Earnhart performances appear on King of My Living Room, a live singer-songwriter showcase released in 2001.
A proud member of the City Salvage Records label (along with Paul Curreri, Matt Curreri, Andy Friedman, and Devon Sproule), Brady is a 2002 Mountain Stage New Song Festival finalist and has performed at such venues as Starr Hill, Acoustic Charlottesville, Acoustic Muse, the Shenandoah Coffeehouse Series, and the Florida Folk Festival, as well as pubs, bookstores, and coffeehouses throughout the eastern U.S.
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