Bridget Kearney

Bridget Kearney (kə́ːnɪj, car'-nee) is an American musician and songwriter. She is a founding member of the band Lake Street Dive and winner of the 2005 John Lennon Songwriting Contest in the Jazz category.
Kearney's solo recording work began with her debut solo album, Won't Let You Down, released by Signature Sounds Recordings in 2017 followed by a number of singles and her second solo album in 2022/2023 released on streaming platforms and social media sites such as Spotify, YouTube and Instagram.
Early life, influences and education
Kearney was born and grew up in Iowa City, Iowa. Her mother played flute. She started her journey with music in the Lutheran Church's Cherub choir. Kearney took piano lessons at the age of 5 and began playing bass in the 4th grade. She listened to her parents' rock and roll records from the 1960s and gained an appreciation of the Beatles' music. In high school, she played in the school orchestras and jazz bands and was in a rock and roll band. At 13, Kearney and her band, Metro Pilot, won a songwriting contest for a song called "Live" about the dangers of tobacco, where the prize was to perform the song in front of a live audience including keynote speaker and former United States Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. Bridget fronted the band playing electric bass and singing lead vocals.
Recalling playing bass in the fourth grade, Kearney said, "I just thought I would go with the bass that year and switch instruments the next year, but after I started playing bass and got to know it, I decided to stay with it. The cool thing is that if you’re a bass player, there’s always demand. There were points at which I was in 12 different bands." In interviews she recalls how her jazz band director in high school, Rich Medd, always made class fun saying, "I was always excited to go to jazz band rehearsal and that is one of the reasons I’m still playing music." Lake Street Dive's early 2023 "Gather Round Sounds" concert tour found Kearney returning to Iowa City for a sold-out show at the University of Iowa Hancher Auditorium on January 24, 2023 with Mr. Medd and other local music educators joining as the horn section.
Already an accomplished and devoted bass player at a young age, Kearney played electric bass through junior high school, after which she moved to jazz music and switched to an upright or double bass until age 35 when Kearney began to acquire a number of electric bass guitars and other gear which expanded her sound.
Kearney's knowledge, skills and innate capacity for creativity took her to a much higher musical level while studying with Mark Urness, a versatile bassist, composer, and educator in Iowa City at the time who later moved to teaching at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. Her early bass influences were Paul Chambers, Charles Mingus and Charlie Haden.
In college Kearney double majored, studying jazz bass at the New England Conservatory of Music and English at Tufts University. As a sophomore, she played with two bands she helped found: Joy Kills Sorrow and Lake Street Dive.
Personal life
Kearney likes to play tennis and run to stay fit and raise money for her favorite charities. She often seeks adventure on the road, like bungee jumping in New Zealand, and is a master of chipology. Her first job, during college, was selling souvenirs at Fenway Park. She once held the one-game record for selling the most (105) foam fingers during a Boston Red Sox game and humorously refers to this early career as her "fall-back, in case the music thing doesn't work out."
Songwriting
As a songwriter/composer she has registered over 85 songs as a member of Broadcast Music, Inc. Of those, at least 25 are held solely by her, and the rest with different songwriters/composers and artists including Lake Street Dive, Cuddle Magic, Joy Kills Sorrow, Benjamin Lazar Davis and Margaret Glaspy. She credits some of her song writing acumen to authors such as Ernest Hemingway, having once been quoted as saying "A lot of my ideals as a songwriter come from novelists and poets, like Hemingway's idea that to start writing a story, all you have to do is write one true sentence. A song works that way too. You just need to find one seed, the rest will grow from there."
Teaching
Kearney is a skilled songwriting and instrumental instructor who taught private lessons online for charity and also taught songwriting to larger classes online with "School of Song", a community-concept based songwriting school with rotating instructors where she was also a student. She co-taught a songwriting class with Paul Muldoon at Princeton University. Of her love for teaching she once wrote about her students, "...a joy to witness how practicing a creative act can bring the world around us into sharper focus, drawing our attention to little wonderful things that may have otherwise gone unnoticed, while simultaneously softening some of life’s rougher edges and making the big things that dominate our attention seem less daunting. What an insanely powerful force!!"
Bands
Lake Street Dive
Kearney is a founding member of Lake Street Dive, which started touring in 2007. She has appeared with Lake Street Dive on many national shows: The Colbert Report, The Late Show with David Letterman, Conan, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, National Public Radio, Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor and in the first show hosted by Chris Thile, now called Live From Here. The band has uploaded numerous videos, including their annual, humorous Halloween covers, and T Bone Burnett asked them to perform on the Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of "Inside Llewyn Davis". The band has traveled and performed in almost every state and over a dozen foreign countries. Originally with Signature Sounds Recordings, in 2016 the band signed with Nonesuch Records and subsequently released their "Fun Machine: The Sequel EP" on Fantasy Records in September of 2022.
BB Wisely
Kearney launched the band BB Wisely with Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe in August 2022. The trio had been writing songs, recording and touring as a trio and alternating duo pairs for a few years prior to deciding on BB Wisely as the name of the band. The band name is a fusion of Bridget, Ben, and "Chime Wisely", a band created by Davis and guitarist Will Graefe.
The Bridget Kearney Band
Kearney has worked with a varying array of other musicians, producers and performers to create her own recordings, videos and tour, solely performing her own music under her own name. Other tours were designed as collaborations with varying musicians each taking the lead role in arranging and performing their own songs with the other members backing and exchanging instruments. These appearances were sometimes referred to under the name of each, or all, performers.
Bridget Kearney and Benjamin Lazar Davis
Bridget Kearney and Benjamin Lazar Davis began making music together performing as "BbGun" from the time they were students together at the New England Conservatory of Music. In 2015 the two alumni teamed up to create original works which are in part a fusion of music from the west African country of Ghana and Kearney and Davis' music. Various artists, including Stevo Atambire and Aaron Bebe Sukura as well as musical instruments and cultural elements from Ghana were used by the artists from Ghana, Kearney and Davis in the making of these recordings. The results of these creative efforts are contained in two recorded music releases: "Bawa" in 2015 and "Still Flying" in 2020.
Joy Kills Sorrow
Kearney was also a major songwriter and stand up bass player for Joy Kills Sorrow from 2005 to 2012. Joy Kills Sorrow was a Boston-based, indie pop, American roots, string band formed in 2005. This band released three albums before Kearney left the band to join Lake Street Dive full-time.
Cuddle Magic
Cuddle Magic is a chamber pop collective that varies in membership. Kearney has written songs for and played with Cuddle Magic.
The Fundies
The Fundies was another part-time band collaboration featuring Margaret Glaspy, Rachael Price, Brittany Haas and Kearney. Their first performance was in 2010, and they self-released an EP called The Fundies in 2012. It has been mentioned that, in retrospect, the Fundies was an all-female Super Group. Each member has gone on to launch their own, successful musical career. Each of the Fundies has played with at least one other Fundie since they parted, while some continue to do so on a regular basis. Glaspy and Haas played a Fundies reunion gig in 2015. There have been rumors of a reunion show with all of the original members.
Other Groups and Musicians
Kearney has played live and recorded with a host of acts, including concerts with the likes of Ed Sheeran in April 2023 and playing bass on Sheeran's song, "When Will I Be Alright".
Discography
Solo
Albums
Won't Let You Down (2017)
Snakes of Paradise (April 21, 2023)
Singles
I Bet UR (Nov 2021)
So Badly (Dec 2021)
Diary Fire (Feb 2022)
All This Time (Mar 2022)
With Lake Street Dive
In This Episode (2006)
Promises, Promises (2007)
Live at the Lizard Lounge (Video) (2011)
Lake Street Dive (S/T) (2011)
Fun Machine (2012)
Bad Self Portraits (2014)
Side Pony (2016)
Free Yourself Up (Early 2018)
Freak Yourself Out (Late 2018)
Obviously (2021)
Fun Machine: The Sequel (EP) (Sep 2022)
With BB Wisely
Right Time (Dec 2020)
Sam (Dec 2022)
Coal Canary (Aug 2022)
Vegas Nerve (Mar 2023)
Voice of Reason (Jul 2023)
How To Get Better (Aug 2023)
With Benjamin Lazar Davis
BAWA (2015)
Still Flying (2020)
With Joy Kills Sorrow
Joy Kills Sorrow (2006)
Darkness Sure Becomes This City (2010)
This Unknown Science (2011)
With The Fundies
The Fundies EP (2012)
References
External links
Bridget Kearney Instagram
Bridget Kearney Webpage
Bridget Kearney Facebook
Lake Street Dive Instagram
Lake Street Dive Webpage
BBWisely Instagram
Living people
1986 births
New England Conservatory alumni
Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences alumni
American multi-instrumentalists
American double-bassists
21st-century American composers
American women composers
People from Iowa City, Iowa
21st-century American women musicians
Signature Sounds artists
Iowa City West High School alumni
21st-century women composers
Lake Street Dive members
The Fundies members
Nonesuch Records artists