Selected Works: The Teddy Bryant Interview

A conversation with the Conway South Carolina-based musician, artist, songwriter, arranger, composer, producer and collaborator.

Selected Works is a regular newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell. Yes, that’s me. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

In 2021, my good friend Andreas Vingaard from Frederiksberg Records sent me a link to a red-hot modern soul album called In The Beginning. I was floored over by the songs on it and decided to tentatively started looking into the story behind it’s creator, the South-Carolinian singer, composer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Teddy Bryant. He’s one of those guys who sings like he’s a soul artist from the seventies, but was born in the eighties, and incorporates loads of touches from the nineties, two-thousands and twenty-tens into his work. Long story short, his music sounds fantastic.

A year later, Bryant teamed up with the brilliant Sudi Wachspress, an Oakland-based producer and DJ who records and performs under the alias Space Ghost. Wachspress has spent the last thirteen years turning out a spectacular collection of downtempo, abstract hip-hop, boogie, ambient, deep house and street soul records, but on Heaven Sent, his collaborative EP with Bryant, he really brought his A-game. Together, they turned out three of the best contemporary street soul songs I’ve ever heard.

Bryant has been writing, performing and recording music since the late nineties (or maybe even late eighties once you dig into the reeds). Although he works as a solo artist now, he also has a longstanding history in band and duo projects, including Urbyne and Moonlight Ora. That’s the thing about fully-formed talents. That might appear to have emerged overnight, but generally it took them ten to twenty years to get there.

In August, Bryant self-released his second album, Dinner For Two. It’s a glorious melange of hip-hop, street soul, neo soul, contemporary jazz, funk and house music, all stylistically and conceptually threaded together by Bryant’s glorious voice, accomplished ear for homage, and most his importantly, his love of his wife. Earlier today, we managed to get together on Zoom to chat for an hour. I thought I already knew a bit about Bryant, but as it goes, I had a lot more to learn. I hope you enjoy this conversation and his music.

Martyn Pepperell: So, Conway, South Carolina.

Teddy Bryant: Yessir, that's home. Both my father and my mother's parents were born in Georgetown, South Carolina, which is Geechee land. When things got worse during those times, the majority of them moved to New York. So my dad grew up in Queens, New York. A lot of my mom's family are still in Georgetown, but there's quite a bit in Rochester, New York. So we went back and forth quite a bit. We still do to this day. We're there pretty much every year.

Yeah, I’ve noticed a lot of New Yorkers have family in North and South Carolina.

Oh yeah, during the Jim Crow times, a lot of folks moved that way. My father's dad settled in the Bronx, and then his mother and the rest of the family settled in on Linden Boulevard, believe it or not, Q-Tip's land. Everybody else is Rochester up in Genesee. I love Rochester. It's like a second home, and it's really artsy.

What was growing up in Conway like?

Yeah, Conway is a very good place to say, raise a family. Visiting Rochester started becoming an every-year thing in around 2000. As a matter of fact, my wife is from Ithaca, New York, which is above Buffalo, New York. So it’s about thirteen, fourteen hours away from here. I met her at The Watchtower Forum, so that was pretty cool.

Growing up in the eighties was amazing, but you know that. I can only speak for myself, but for me, the eighties was a time that people will always try to duplicate that can’t be duplicated. Everything was authentic and original. Stuff was great, man. Especially music. For me, the eighties were full of going to my dad's gigs every other weekend, every weekend, actually. We would go to a practice on Friday, and then on Saturday, we were in another part of the town. Maybe we'd be in North Carolina this Saturday. The following Saturday, he'd be gigging somewhere in Charleston. So my entire family grew up on the road, watching my dad and his band play.

What sort of places did they play?

They played anniversary parties and weddings, you know, any kind of get-up. Folks in Conway, well, in South Carolina in general, there's not really a big music scene. The beat that mostly played was Motown, swing, and beach music. We're only fifteen minutes away from Myrtle Beach. So you know, they played a lot of that. My dad, he loves jazz. We grew up on jazz in the house. Everybody in my house plays a horn. My two brothers play trumpet. My sister plays the flute. I play the sax, well, the clarinet, the soprano sax, and I play some alto as well.

How did you find out about music when you were younger?

As far as music is concerned right here in Conway, my father made sure that our minds were full of all types of music. Like I said, the basis of everything was jazz. From there, he would play soul one weekend and something else the other. I remember when he first bought Big Bam Boom by Hall and Oates. It had ‘Method of Modern Love’ on it. It's just such a great album. He liked Anita Baker and Sade, but he would do older stuff like Heatwave, which is one of my favourite bands. I love Heatwave.

Quincy Jones was a big one as well. I made my first song when I was four years old, and I remember how excited he and my uncle were when Back on the Block first came out. The Dude by Quincy Jones is my favourite album of all time. The copy we had was an old grey cassette tape, and they played it so much that the writing on it was gone. Man, it was sacred.

You mentioned before how much you love the eighties. What is it about that decade that means so much to you?

Don’t get me wrong, the seventies produced soaps and great funk. Jazz was amazing in the seventies as well. What was different about the eighties for me is I feel like all of that music got compounded and perfected. Think about movie soundtracks from the eighties, like The Lost Boys, those songs went viral. I think it just lends a hand to how great of a time it was. The movies were great. The music was great. In my opinion, people were more unique and original.

Take The Cure for example, you knew who they were when you heard them. There were a couple of bands that sounded similar, but no one was actually copying them. You had The Lotus Eaters, you had Care, you had The Smiths. It was all similar music, but everyone had their own distinct style, and that’s just talking UK rock.

Something I love about the eighties is how the arrival of the TASCAM Portastudio, cheap four-tracks and eight-tracks helped enable a generation of independent musicians around the world.

Absolutely. I had one, it was a blue machine about the size of little mixer. It had one little cassette tape holder and you could dub. Man, I used the best out of that machine. I bought one in 2002 when I’d just graduated. Just at the point when I’d got good at using it, something else came out and took over, the double decker CD recorder. That machine cost me quite a bit of money. As soon as that came out, something else came out. People started using beat machines, and I just didn’t have the money for it then.

In 1998, you started the contemporary jazz band Urbyne with Corey Johnson and Nick Bethea. Later on Caleb Bryant, Darius Bryant, and Greg Gordino joined. You must have been pretty young at the time?

Yeah man. When I was in the tenth grade, my dad bought my an Optimus MD-1200 keyboard. I went crazy and played it every second of the day. We had a baby grand piano that I played on as a kid, but this was when I got really into it. Alright, time to start a band. My drummer Nick was only twelve years old. I was fourteen, going on fifteen. The bassist was fifteen. It was just us three at first. We started doing what my dad did, anniversaries, talent shows and that. Nick was a prodigy man. He was twelve years old sounding like ?uestlove.

Did you play covers?

Believe it or not, we only played originals. We never did anything that wasn’t ours. It was nuts, especially being where we are. In retrospect, that was a kinda dangerous road to take. I’m not trying to sound like an all-powerful musician, but in my little brain, I have to create. If I can make people move the same way Soul II Soul makes people move with my own music, I feel better about that. So that’s what we were doing.

It’s one of the blessings and curses of creativity, you really need to be able to believe you’re going to be the exception to the rule and beat the odds.

There you go.

What happened next?

By 2008, we’d bought a few bits and pieces of gear and were able to record our first album, Expressions of Love, which we put out the following year. The engineering on that album is terrible, it took us places, got us gigs, and even got us out first bit of radioplay in the UK. The UK has always down me love man.

The UK is a long way from Conway, South Carolina. So I’m wondering how young you were when you started using the internet?

I started releasing music on the internet when I was fifteen. Dad bought a computer when I was nine and the internet turned up here two or three years later. I have a real love/hate relationship with the internet right now. Everything my spiritual brother Prince said, actually came true. We’ve allowed so much fog. Dude, the internet is full of people who would play me under the table. Seven or eight year old prodigies who play a thousand instruments. It’s so full of talent.

The downside to that technology has made it easy for people to create "music," now everybody is an "artist," they can put out an album tomorrow with zero preparation. I've been playing instruments and making music since I was four years old. A lot of people that you see online, as talented as they are, if you put them in a studio full of instruments, a lot of them can't give you an album. I can. I pride myself on that, not being fat headed or jerkish. Just humbly I say that. I think that's the issue. Cutting through the fog of a gazillion artists has downplayed the art form that I love.

These things take time, and there’s some luck or magic involved as well, right?

You have to have a gift for it, and you have to have your hours of practice. Nothing ever comes easy, man. I remember there's a song I do called 'Dreamy Jazz.' The reason why it's called 'Dreamy Jazz' is that in my dreams, the song was playing. I'm like, this is amazing. And in my mind, I knew the song. I woke up three in the morning. I put on my headphones, plug it into that keyboard right there, and I learned that song that was in my dreams. That's how music used to come to me, bro. It takes time to to do that. A lot of folks don't want to go take the time to learn how to be what I like to say is shelf worthy. I think that's the main issue. It's not that people aren't talented. It's just that people are trying to take the easy way out and just become famous. It's not about the music anymore. It's about how popular a person is.

Three years after Expressions of Love, you released a neo soul album called The Light In The Sky as Moonlight Ora, your duo with Nick Bethea. Can you tell me about what else was happening in your life in the 2000s and 2010s?

By 2008, I’d been married for three years. My wife was pregnant with our oldest daughter, and I was out of work. That was the first of three years of being out of work. I was extremely depressed. I’m a huge P.M. Dawn fan, they’ve lifted me out of so much depression. So my drummer and I got together and started playing around to have fun. We were basically doing a P.M Dawn spoof. Well, not a spoof, but re-enacting stuff.

2008-2011 wee rough, but Moonlight Ora kept me out of that slump. Then in 2016, we put out another album called Woman. Matter of fact, I started making that the day Prince passed. I actually put out a song called ‘You Are Precious’ which was a Prince tribute. Prince was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I’ve been a Witness my entire life. The most important thing in my life is my relationship with Jehovah.

Once I got a job, I started buying better equipment. That’s when stuff started really picking up. We released The Fire Inside Of Us in 2019. That did well, and then COVID hit, I thought maybe I’ll do some solo stuff and In The Beginning happened.

Tell me about In The Beginning and how it ended up coming out on Onra’s Nothing But Net label?

It was an honor. It was one of those moments where you have all this free time. I never thought that I would do a solo album, because I just love playing with the band. Performing music is a different feeling. I connected with Onra through Devin Morrison’s music. I don’t know why, but I was just scrolling and I found his page. Devin does this thing where he takes old commercials or videos and makes songs out of them. He did this one using a Japanese liquor commercial. That joint was ridiculous.

Devin Morrison is a crazy artist.

People like that always humble me. I went to his page, looked for who he was signed to, so I could see if I could get in contact with them. I sent a message and Onra wrote me back. He was the first person to buy the album when I released it. Then he was like, I want to remaster this and re-release it. I was like, let’s go.

UK music seems to come up a lot in your story. When did that stuff all begin to figure in your interests?

Probably when I was six, I’ve listened to UK pop forever. I listen to a lot of Billy Idol, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys. I love those guys. I got into The Lotus Eaters because of the sound of Peter Coyle’s voice over that music. He’s a good friend of mine now. Shout out Peter. All that stuff, A-ha, I just found the music very adventurous during that era. Then I saw Five Star, Loose Ends and Soul II Soul was like, okay, I can do this. There was another Manchester group as well, 52nd Street.

Soul II Soul is pretty special, right?

Caron Wheeler, if you’re out there, can we just talk for five minutes? Jazzy B is such a creative person and the music they were making had such a wonderful feeling. I was like, this is what I’m going to do, because it’s the best.

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis did a lot of that stuff too. Matter of fact, they worked with The Human League. The reason why I found that out is because those chords on that song 'Human' is the same chords for Ralph Tresvant's 'Sensitivity.' If you listen closely to the chords in the background, especially on the remix, that's The Human League. They would do that quite often. That's why I was like, Yo, I think I can do a knock off of what Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are doing. That's when I just started just really getting heavily into street soul. It's kinda like my bread and butter. I really love doing that kind of stuff.

Why do you think you were so receptive to UK sounds?

For me, it was the authenticity and adventure. Let’s not forget the music videos either. They had Top of the Pops and we had Night Tracks. When I was four and my older brother was six, we would sneak out of bed to watch Night Tracks on television. That’s what it was about, putting this music to the adventures I was seeing on screen in the music videos. I always felt like the scenery in the UK and European music videos were better than ours.

In my opinion, A-ha’s videos are some of the best videos ever made, but I remember when I first heard Sade. That’s the music I hear in my head when I go to sleep. Her sound was street soul, but it has a bossa nova type Brazillian jazz feel to it. It’s a very unique sound and I’ve always been enarmoured with her as a musician.

Last year, you released the incredible Heaven Sent through PPU with Space Ghost. People everywhere loved that EP. How did that all come together?

He had some ads going online for a mixtape he’d just done of songs I liked. It was out of this world great. I told him how great it was and then he messaged me about some of my older stuff. He really liked Expressions of Love and he liked a few songs on the last Moonlight Ora album. I was like, dude we have got to work. Maybe six months later, he sent me four or five songs. That EP ended up being the first three songs he sent me. Space Ghost is a genius.

Let’s talk about your new album, Dinner For Two. You’ve got 2-step/garage, house, street soul, jazz-funk, hip-hop and RnB songs on there. The palette range is great. You’ve got all these different flavours, but you tied it together really well.

Yes sir, I appreciate that. Initially I wanted to release it with Nothing But Net, but it didn’t work out timing wise. They’ve still been behind me 100%, so I set up my own label to release it, Stormy Weather Records, which is my LLC anyway. I mirroed that record after Quincy Jones’ album The Dude. I wanted it to have all these different genres, but congeal and have one theme. I mirrored the adventure part of it after Prince’s film Under The Cherry Moon and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. That’s why the cover art looks the way it looks, it’s like an Indiana Jones poster.

There’s some nice homage going on there, but it’s also a very personal album as well isn’t it?

Yes, sir. 100%. My wife, Andrea Bryant, I love her to pieces. You know, besides Jehovah, my second love is my wife. All my music is about my wife, but I wanted to do something that was directly in line with that. Just the whole romance thing. I think that's whats missing in music: the romance and love. I wanted to do something for the listeners, but also for the DJs, because I get so many messages from them. People who are super musical always have suggestions for me, so I wanted to play around with some of their ideas. I was blessed to work with some amazing people on this album as well, like Stimulator Jones, Morris Mobley, and Stella Zekri Ouiddir.

I also wanted people to to hear what I was listening to as a kid when it came to jazz, the mixture of jazz and hip hop. When I heard when I first heard A Tribe Called Quest, I was like, Yo, this is it. They found the way. Q-Tip is just a genius. I want them to hear on 'Wrapped Around Your Finger' the Dilla kind of inspiration pieces, the Bilal's, the D'Angelos. Just little tidbits of all those different inspirations. House music, man, don't even get me started. House music is beautiful. Especially deep house when you add soulful vocals on top.

You have this real generosity when you talk about music. Interviews like this could be a time to just talk about yourself, but you always share your love for other musicians. Why do you think you’re like that?

It's because of my father. Just growing up around so many musicians, and listening to the music they actually listen to when they're not playing. That's always an eye opener. I remember the keyboard player, the stuff he listened to outside of what he had to play for the band. What made me want to be who I am today is just being around so many different influences. We had an ice cream truck. When we went out in the PJs, delivering ice cream, my dad didn't play jazz, he played Anita Baker. For me, I want to be one of the guys that brings music back to its core, where everything kind of crossed each other.

Dinner For Two is out now through StormyWeather Records (order digital here)

FIN.