Being raised on a farm in West Windsor has its advantages when you’re a musician trying to make a living in this economy. Just ask bass player-teacher-bandleader-film score composer and WPRB radio host Willard “Wilbo” Wright.
Wright still minds the family nursery in Dutch Neck. Yet he will team up with two other musicians Saturday, November 17, at the West Windsor Arts Center for a show for people who think they don’t like — or don’t understand — jazz.
Back in the 1960s and into the ’70s on his family’s farm on Conover Road, “It was all farm fields out here, and when you had a bad snowstorm, you were locked in for four or five days,” says Wright.
Fortunately, his parents appreciated music and had a piano, which they kept in the kitchen. He and his older sister both took piano lessons from the time they were old enough to sit on the bench and reach the keyboard.
Wright says being raised on his father’s vegetable farm-turned-nursery gave him a different set of skills. “It gave me a work ethic. It’s a lot of work. You just put your head down and go. My dad showed me it only takes a few minutes more to do a job correctly, so it’s the same thing, whether I’m working with trees or working like I did last week, on tour in Canada with [blues guitarist] Debbie Davies. I’ll work the hell out of those songs, so I would be inside of the songs; if you get inside them, then any curve balls you’re thrown, you’re kind of ready for them,” he says.
Wright, in his early 50s, has been an in-demand studio and bass player for the last three decades, and he has toured nationally with Davies, Princeton-raised singer-songwriter Chris Harford, Yo-La-Tengo, UI, Toshi Reagon, Marc Ribot, and other New York City and Hoboken-based groups.
About his early student days, Wright says, “I went to Princeton High School for one year and then our class was the first class to graduate from West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, what they now just call ‘South.’” He graduated as president of the class in 1976.
“I had been playing a lot of guitar in high school and somewhere along the line I’d bought a bass. Eventually when the string ensemble started, they asked, would you like to play upright bass, and one thing led to another,” he says. “By the time I got up to Berklee (College of Music) and had to declare, it was a no-brainer by that point.”
Wright’s non-musician parents encouraged his earliest forays into high school rock ’n’ roll bands. “They were incredibly supportive,” he recalls.
Wright’s father, Willard, worked for Princeton University on the grounds crew and eventually became a supervisor while his mother, Mary, worked outside the home as an accountant. In the musician’s youth, his father had a large vegetable farm before scaling it back to a smaller tree nursery. Wright grows trees and is an expert tree transplant specialist.
Wright says he started performing when he joined his first band during his first year at Princeton High School. “I think we were called the Sliding Door. I was playing guitar. We had guitar, organ, and drums, and our organist played bass with his feet.”
Today he mixes the work that has been with him most of his life. He sells maples, boxwoods, and Andromedas; transports and plants trees for area residents; and works with smaller landscape companies. He also teaches bass in private homes and one day a week at the Westminster Conservatory of Music, and goes on short tours with nationally known acts because he is able to close his nursery for a week or two at a time.
“The tree nursery thing is more like an avocation,” he acknowledges, adding, “Having a farm helps with taxes and things like that, and I don’t have to join a gym, but I keep it small.”
Wright lives on that small farm with his wife, arts administrator-artist and writer Tricia Fagan. She works at Mercer County Community College and the county’s cultural and heritage commission.
As if he were not busy enough, Wright’s music program “The Clothes Line with Wilbo Wright” can be heard every Wednesday from 1 to 3 p.m. on WPRB from Princeton University.
At the West Windsor Arts Center on November 17, Wright and his band mates will serve up a mix of originals and covers familiar to people who appreciate jazz. “We’ll be doing a combination of originals and jazz standards done our own way. I don’t want to say it’s jazz for people who hate jazz, but rather it’s go-go boot jazz.”
Wilbo Wright, West Windsor Arts Council, 952 Alexander Road, West Windsor. Saturday, November 17, 8 p.m. Go-Go Boot Jazz with Wing Dam featuring Wilbo Wright on upright bass, John Sheridan on guitar, and Claude Coleman Jr. on drums. Music includes original jazz by Wilbo, a West Windsor native. The band is known to write a catchy tune, get in, fool around, and get out. $20. 609-716-1931 or www.westwindsorarts.org.
