Bri Murphy never really had a chance at doing anything other than making music. Born to pianist parents, Murphy started playing violin when she was four years old. Since then she’s picked up piano, mandolin, guitar, French horn, and a little bit of banjo. While growing up in northwestern Wisconsin, she spent her childhood summers eating okra and sweet corn in the Tennessee countryside. She draws on her young experience with drastically different cultures in her writing. Some of her favorite family stories center around Uncle Jimmy, proprietor of The Uptown Club in the notorious original Printer’s Alley.
After graduating from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Political Science, Murphy moved to Nashville in 2011 to spend some years dedicating herself to music. She began working towards her Master of Music degree from Belmont University during the day and gigging at night. Her virtuosity was quickly noticed, and Murphy has since shared the stage with artists such as Chris Stapleton, Kelly Clarkson, Vince Gill, and Tanya Tucker, and toured the world as a fiddle player and background vocalist for other artists.
Murphy graduated from Belmont in 2014, and went on the road full-time for two years. Some of her dues paid, she took a break from the road in 2016 to pursue her solo career and released her debut EP, Throw Down My Heart, produced by Eli Beaird (Shania Twain; James Bay; Ruston Kelly). The title track was chosen as a semifinalist in the 2016 International Songwriting Competition.
Murphy soon enough began work on a follow-up release. Determined to be particular and intentional in her work, she decided to take the project out of Nashville – and back to her hometown. She settled in at Pine Hollow studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and turned to studio owner Evan Middlesworth for co-production.
The magical sessions that culminated in Things We’d Rather Not Say got an extra dose of pixie dust at the hands of mixing engineer Jerry Streeter (Brandi Carlile, Vance Joy, Elephant Revival) and mastering savant Gavin Lurssen (Alison Krauss, Sheryl Crow, Loretta Lynn).
Since the 2018 full album, Bri has released two more singles. “Yellow Roses” (2019) tells the story of the women’s suffrage movement centered in Nashville. Her latest releases from 2020, “Where the Ocean Meets the Bay,” and “Let It Be,” mark the beginning of a new project with producer/guitarist Peter Ferguson (Lucie Silvas; Caylee Hammack; David Nail) that will be released over the course of 2020 and 2021. Bri is a proud Breedlove Artist.
