Life & Work with Robert Wright

Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Wright. 

Hi Robert, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
I started taking banjo lessons at Manolios Music in Huntington Beach California when I was ten years old. A neighbor had won it in a sales contest but no one in his family wanted to learn. I loved to sing so my father urged me to try it. It was all the old songs I liked more than the banjo so after a few years, I stopped taking lessons. I found practicing every day a bit tedious. When I was 16 my family went to a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor with a piano banjo duo. I told the banjo player I played and he invited me to sit in. So, I started driving on my own weekly to sit in. I found that playing with other musicians before an audience was really fun. 

I approached the band director at my high school and he gave me the name of a former student who had a small Dixieland band. We hit it off immediately. We formed a band named American Ingenuity and began playing for parties and even at the Orange County Fair. My family moved to Tucson, AZ after my first year of Junior College. The Gaslight Theatre was just opening up and they hired me to warm up the audience. That’s where I got to work with my first seasoned professional, Danny Griffith, who brought me up another level. I liked performing so much I dropped out of college and moved back to Huntington Beach to try and make it as a musician. I starved for a while working various odd jobs while I kept looking for work playing music. Disney and Knotts told me they did not need a banjo player but I finally picked up a nice gig at The Disneyland Hotel on the summer of 1979. A year later The New Christy Minstrels owner, Sid Garis contacted me through the musician’s union, and that was my big break, so to speak. There I learned how to sing and play at the highest level. We played forty-nine states and Canada over the next year. I left the group to get married and my wife and I bought a house in Big Bear. After touring the west coast for three years my wife went back to teaching third grade and I got a job at a ski shop. We decided to settle down and raise a family. I finished college and tried teaching for a year but did not enjoy it. After visiting my family in Tucson and seeing how much more house we could buy there, my wife, daughter, and I packed up and moved to Arizona. I took a job with Dean Whitter selling securities and figured my musician days were over. After several years I got a call from some music professors at U of A who were starting up a traditional jazz band and they were looking for a banjo player. They called it The Original Wildcat Jass Band. That was 2004 and we are still going strong. With eight CDs. I’m the only original member still in the band as we evolved from mostly music professors to all professional players. Along the way, I made several banjo CDs including The Great Banjo Summit with Howard Alden and Tyler Jackson as well as a few with Ray Templin and extraordinary piano player and percussionist. My friend and fellow bandmate Rob Boone even wrote some symphony arrangements so I could perform as the guest artist with the Tucson Pops and White Mountain Symphony. Now, after retiring from the securities industry, I play shows and concerts mostly in Arizona with the Wildcats and also a now group of folk singers called Just Plain Folk, singing and playing the great folk songs from the 1960s folk era. It has been a fulfilling lifelong musical career and I’m happy to say I’m going strong at 62. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It was very difficult starting out but those struggles prepared me for a career in securities, which was far more stressful yet far more lucrative. The difficult thing about music or any of the arts is you have to do whatever you can get paid for. The financial security of the securities industry allowed me to only take the gigs that appealed to me. 

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a very accomplished plectrum banjoist, singer, and comedian. An entertainer. I like to lift people up and bring joy through music and laughter. 

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Most people have far more in common than differences. We want to love and be loved. Treat people how you want to be treated. Forgive yourself and others for imperfections. 

Contact Info:

• Email: tradbanjo@comcast.net
• Website: www.wildcatjazz.com and www.greatbanjosummit.com