Meet your Maker: Alex Wright

“I don’t believe in the hobby as a hobby. This is a problem because sometimes it’s not relaxing. But, for me, it’s not about relaxing; it’s about the missed opportunity. It’s about that 17-year-old kid who said, ‘Hmm, maybe I should do this and not that.’ And I wonder, I always wonder, ‘What if I had chosen differently?’”

How did you get started as a maker?

Playing music is my absolute earliest memory. My father started a family gospel group and we traveled two to three nights each week. I always loved music and thought it was what I was going to do. Then I had a real, as they would say around here, “Come to Jesus moment” with myself that, if I pursue music, “I’m going to be poor.” We grew up poor, so I knew I had to do something different to get out of the situation.

I grew up in Morgan County, which is three hours east of here. It’s about 80 miles outside of Lexington, near Cave Run Lake. In terms of natural beauty, it’s beautiful. However, ideologically, it is different than the person I was, even back then. Not to belittle it–I think Eastern Kentucky gets a bad rap of being poor and ignorant. It’s not, and more complicated than that. There is poverty, but there are lots of other good things there. For me, it was very clear early on that my worldview was not in line with the predominant one there and it set this stage for me to be uncomfortable.

So what was your way out?

I decided to go to school farther away and went to the University of Kentucky. My first year, I started as a materials engineer. I remember that I had to write a paper on aluminum and, in my mind, there was a cutaway scene of me sitting around with my unnamed wife and children in the future. ‘How was your day, dear?’ ‘We talked about aluminum. Aluminum.’ So I decided to go undeclared. I took karate, tennis, French, physics, classics, and the history of Greek and Roman art. It was the closest I could get to bumming around while still staying in school. Then I had a vague notion to become a doctor because I discovered that I understood biology.

I got into medical school sort of accidentally. As long as you’re in a pre-medical program and taking classes, there’s no worry about the future. Then, suddenly, you’re about to graduate and you actually have to try to get into medical school. So I signed up for the test [MCAT] and, a week before, I realized that I should probably study for it. I didn’t even know what it covered, so I got a book to get familiar with the sections of the test. It was a blessing because I was stressed out only one day. My results weren’t too bad. Not good enough for Harvard, but not too embarrassing for UK and the University of Louisville, the only two schools I was interested in applying to.

During my interview at UK, I was asked most of the standard questions, including, “What do you do in your spare time?” At the time, I was in a couple of non-music major choirs in school. So I told her that I sang. Then the interviewer asked me to sing what I was singing in the choir, as if she was calling my bluff. So I went ahead and sang my second tenor part for “Ave Maria.” I came to find out later, besides a certain minimum MCAT score, the thing that gets you one of the less than 100 spots is, if out of the pool of 1,500 applicants, you make a good impression. In application review process, she said, ‘I remember him; he sang.’ Thanks to UK’s rolling admissions, I was accepted two weeks later. Singing got me into medical school.

Pursuing a career in medicine, including a residency and private practice in New York, meant that you didn’t have time for music anymore. How did you find your way back to it?

For about 15 years, I didn’t play music.It wasn’t until I got a job that I had the time. My problem with medicine is that I am not creating anything. I guess there are people who create things like therapies or new devices, but for me it didn’t feel like creating. I always felt that my job in medicine was to preserve what should be, to fix what was, but not to create. It left a big hole.

So the New York Subway became my best songwriting friend. I had about an hour commute each way. I’m a person who sometimes writes a line and builds a song around a line and the music comes later. Or sometimes it’s the music that comes first and the words fit later. My commute was opposite of everyone else. I lived in Manhattan and was going to the Bronx for work. In a mostly empty train, I had all this space and time to myself. I listened to music and thought about music. I was able to process my day.

What really prompted my return to musical performance are some very supportive friends in New York who are total music buffs. After having a huge meal for three hours, we played music together, sometimes with professional musicians. So, from then on, I worked to redesign my life. It took a couple more years to get down here. Now I work a week and I’m off a week, which in the world of medicine is unheard of. The rhythm is important because I know what to predict.

I think what’s interesting about Louisville is that there’s a very healthy local music scene that hasn’t quite gotten its due. How did you get vested with the community?

You reach out to the big players, the people who have been in the business the longest. I met Danny Flanigan while I was slinging coffee to get myself through college, and he knows everybody. I met Dewey Kincade just one time in New York. I remember Tara (my wife) said, ‘I have this friend from high school who is playing at the Dark Star.’ They had a trio–Dewey played bass–and they were great. So one month after we moved to Louisville, we were at the Barnes & Noble at the Summit, and there he is, with his wife and his baby. Coincidentally, he had moved back within a month of us moving here. We had him over for dinner and I told him that I wanted to get out and play. He recommended that I record an album and helped me produce the CD. It forced me to get all those things I had been working on for 15 years to finally coalesce.

And within a year, you performed at a WFPK Live Lunch with your new band. Tell me about that experience.

It was amazing. About two months before [the Jan. 6, 2012 show] I sent them my CD. But Laura [Shine] was inundated with CDs at the time, so it sat on a pile on her desk forever. When she finally got the opportunity to listen, she said that “This is strong stuff. And we like it.” So Glen Howerton, our drummer, called and emailed Stacy Owen [WFPK’s program director] every day. Initially, she said that they were all booked until March. Then, out of the blue, she told us that Jan. 6 was available. It helps working with Dewey: she knows someone in that situation has a clue. So I told Danny that I needed a keyboard player for the WFPK show. With him, you got a first call, second call, and third call in town: first call is Bob Ramsey. Danny texts him and there he was, picking it up right away. So after that show, the band started to unite. The Alex Wright Band and The Dewey Kincade Band were getting kind of old because they were the same band. We would joke ‘And now we’re going to make new bands.’ And I would hang him the guitar and he would hand me the bass. So we’re The Navigators, Dewey’s old band name. I’m grateful–these are all really solid guys and they let me play with them.

The Navigators are scheduled to play next at Clifton’s Pizza on March 6, 2012.

–Grace Simrall

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