Patrick Brayer

Patrick John Brayer is an American singer-songwriter within the Inland Empire music scene.

Brayer is the son of Raplh W. and Eleanore Brayer.¹² In 1958, his family relocated to rural Fontana, California, where they operated an egg ranch,³ and where Brayer attended Fontana High School.⁴ Brayer's elder brother, Michael Brayer, also sings.⁵

In the 1970s, Brayer played in bands including Lost Highway, which he formed with Walden Dahl and Dave Dickey,⁶⁷ the Town and Country Boys, also with Dahl,⁶ and the High Window Boys.⁷ Brayer plays guitar, fiddle, mandolin and other stringed instruments,⁸ and has collaborated with bluegrass, country, and folk artists including Alison Krauss, Alan Jackson, Ben Harper,⁹ and Stuart Duncan.¹⁰

In the early 1980s, Brayer founded Starvation Cafe in Fontana, as a coffeehouse with scheduled musicians and open mic sessions.¹¹⁹ Performers included Ben Harper,¹² Mike McClellan,¹³¹⁴ Blind Joe Hill⁸ and John York.¹⁵ In a forward to the book Always a Song, Ben Harper noted that a performance at the Starvation Café served to solidify his decision to transition from playing as a band member for Taj Mahal to becoming a signed solo artist.¹⁶ Brayer also hosted a radio program, Starvation Café Radio Archives, from the University of California, Riverside, and was the first signing on Ben Harper's Inland Emperor Records label.¹⁷¹⁸

Three of his songs were recorded by Smithsonian Folkways records as part of the Fast Folk Magazine, including Bourbon as a Second Language (2002),¹⁹ Straight Life, No Chaser,²⁰ and Funeral Town (1995).²¹ Brayer co-wrote the song So Long, So Wrong with Walden Dahl, which was covered by Alison Krauss on the album of the same name in 1997.⁹²² His song Lonely Moon was covered by Stuart Duncan in 1992²³ and by Northern Lights on their album New Moon in 2005. He also wrote the song, (Good) Imitation of the Blues, which was covered by Larry Sparks & the Lonesome Ramblers in 1983, John Doe in 1990, Chris Darrow on Slide On In in 2002, Orville Johnson in 2004²⁴ and Alan Jackson in 2006 on the album Like Red on a Rose.²⁵²⁶ The album went Gold in 2007.²⁷

Brayer released a series of cassettes and CDs, entitled The Secret Hits of Patrick Brayer some of the songs were recorded in the kitchen of Dennis Hopper.²⁸²⁹ In providing guidance to aspiring song-writers, Jeffery Pepper Rodgers of Acoustic Guitar magazine described Brayer's underground song-writing and production style in this series as one way to focus on the process and work of songwriting rather than final products.³⁰

• 1979 - Cold Feelings,³ reissued 1993 by Eye of the Scarecrow Records³¹
• 2000 - Sinner Songwriter, AIM³²
• 2001 - Catholic And Western Fabuli, Inland Emperor Records³³
• 2022 - Cabbage and Kings: an Inland Shrimpire Anthology, Shrimper Records³