Courtesy of Berkley Burch Photography
Milwaukee singer-songwriter Bryan Cherry taps into soul music as well as poetry, balancing everyday responsibilities with an ongoing quest to go deeper into his creative process.
2019 was a full year for Cherry. He put out a record, Until the Rainbows, and played out a bunch with his funk band Mythic Mystics. He also had two books of poetry published. “It feels right that this year has been accompanied by the motif of slowing down,” he says.
How has the lockdown affected your creativity?
“At the beginning it was hard to find ways to be open enough to let creativity flow. That quickly changed once the new routine began to become routine. This situation has forced me to elucidate, for myself, why being creative is important.
“I have sifted through the complex layering that I had built around that topic. I found that the bedrock sediment that was left was that my creativity is an aid in my search for meaning. Art in its myriad forms is just another raft that I had constructed to explore what the word meaning even means.”
He feels that being isolated and not having the end game of playing shows has slowed him down.
“I feel like I’ve been able to clearly see that playing music or writing a poem is, in a way, a form of mystical meditation. There is a moment when I am writing something new where my rational mind dissipates and is given over to a trance state. I’m sure that I will always find myself returning to the harbor of creativity no matter how downtrodden or scary the world becomes.”
He adds that he has been through some heartbreaking, fear inducing circumstances like everyone else, but the one constant has always been the ability to view his creative work as a healing balm.
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“I’m sure it may sound silly to some people but at the base level I am interested in ego death, interested in being a hollow vessel for creation,” Cherry says. “Art is cleansing for me and that has never been truer than right now.”
Do you have a routine or schedule for staying in practice or working on new material?
“Now, more than ever, I have to fight to carve out time to be creative because with this pandemic I have become a stay-at-home dad to my two young children ages one and four.”
Cherry says he wakes up way earlier than would have ever seemed possible when he was younger to play music or write poems.
“I also do work when they take their naps and I do work when they go to sleep for the night. I know that I’m always thinking about things creatively. The time with my children is so raw and inspiring while also being good for letting ideas steep.”
He also seeks out friends to help bring more structure to practice life in both music and writing.
“For music I am diving deeper than I ever have into the technical aspects because my goal is to serve the song. To me, it seems like the best shot that I have at rendering something close to the elusive truth is to have as many tools as possible internalized so that I can get out of my own way and create. I’ve always been going on a certain amount of luck while writing songs.”
Cherry recognizes Bill Withers who famously said, “I don’t have any particular technique. I don’t know an F-sharp from Ninth Street.”
“Music was always a glorious mystery,” Cherry says. “And I was afraid that I would somehow mess that up. But I now see that, for me, more knowledge somehow deepens and makes the mystery more impactful.”
Are you making plans for when you can resume playing in front of people again?
“I love playing in front of people and there is of course a very specific energy to that atmosphere. When it is time to return, I’ll have a fresh outlook on playing for crowds. Outside validation is fun, it can be exhilarating and intoxicating but it can also devolve into just another trap along the path.”
He says he has “a new crop of songs that needs tilling and I feel strongly that they are coming from a place of honesty. I’ll get them recorded somehow, some way, someday should the fates align. There’s also a new manuscript of poems that is ready to go. I’ll get them out into the world in some capacity because sharing is important for me.
“My life is about real alchemy,” Cherry concludes. “That is, the complete transformation of good and bad parts of being alive into a new creation. I can’t wait to share that with folks again in person.”
To read more stories of what musicians are doing to beat COVID-19, click here.
To read more stories by Blaine Schultz, click here.
