Let’s see, what should you know about me? You’ll find the traditional nuts and bolts bio stuff on the music and speaking pages of this site so, with your permission, I’ll take a bit more of a playful approach here.
If we've never met before, my name is Brian Perry I have the great honor and pleasure of tooling around the country serving as a singer/songwriter, speaker, and coach. For all the ups and downs of this kind of “work,” it sure feels more like play to me and I find the whole journey unreasonably amazing.
I like to think that what I do is about celebrating life in its many shades: darkness, light, laughter, tears, dancing, playing, screaming, hoping, hopping, dreaming, love, heartbreak, drunken, sober, sacred and profane and all points in between. I love people and things that are REAL, ya' know, warts and all. My life philosophy in a (perhaps overused) phrase is simply "it's all good" because, well, it is. Oh, and I'm deeply in love with the road, my friends, the mountains, and the magnificent city I call home - New Orleans.
Hmmm...this is starting to sound like a Match.com profile or something :-)
Some basics: I was born up north – Rochester, NY to be specific – but, though I love many places up there and certainly my family and friends, I resonate with the Indigo Girls’ line “when God made more born a Yankee he was teasin’.” True ‘dat. And though you have to be born in New Orleans to be “from” there, I proudly consider myself a born-again New Orleanian and I will happily talk your ear off about our soulful city at the slightest provocation.
So I was born and we bounced around a good bit before my folks settled in the Atlanta area where they remain and where I went to high school before rolling down to Loyola University of New Orleans. After that there were several majors before dropping out (I’d return to graduate 14 years later in Human and Organizational Development), more jobs than I can count, Americorps, a marriage, hundreds of thousands of miles spent traveling and serving through the music and message, hundreds of songs, and a pesky little wind named Katrina.
I’ve had my own storms too, more personal though, from the typical music business related trials and tribulations to depression, anxiety, divorce and the like. In the end, all roads have always led me back to who I am and who I strive to be in the world even when I was at times determined to be someone else.
I played piano, french horn, mellophone, and trumpet growing up. I picked up the guitar when I was 20, had my first gig at 21, and - for maybe the first time in my life - felt like I was truly home. We put an addition on that home a few years later when I started speaking too which fills up a whole other part of me.
I believe we are more than what we do, but, if you want a crash course in understanding who I am, what I do turns out to be a pretty darn good place to start.
My life’s work is about serving others by stepping into the best me I know how to be and sharing that journey through song and story. Getting out of my own way and, perhaps, helping a few others do the same in the process.
So dig around the rest of the site and read a bit more, download some songs, watch some videos, or – better yet – come to a live concert or speech. I’m told that’s where I’m most myself and it sure feels that way from my side of the microphone. Anyway, if you do you’ll be sitting among a beautiful community of real folks you might find are just like you.
Thank you for you. You are a gift. Be good to you.
Brian
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