Despite college degree, Andrew Bryant still the music man : GoMemphis.com

Andrew Bryant has something to fall back on now.

This spring the Mississippi singer-songwriter, who turns 29 next week, earned his degree in history from Ole Miss, some 11 years after he started college. With a wife and new child, Bryant is hoping the degree will lead to a teaching job, a more stable source of income than the life of a traveling troubadour and indie recording artist. But Bryant has no plans on giving up on music, just moving things around to accommodate it.

"I'm going to try and not get a job with that degree, but I'm sure I'll be forced to," he confesses. "I kind of picked that because I was thinking of teaching high school because you get the summers off to tour and stuff like that."

Bryant is on the road now, touring with friends the St. Louis Americana outfit Theodore, building up buzz before the July 9 release of his latest collection of kudzu-covered roots rock, Galilee, on Magnolia State Records. Theodore will join Bryant and his band -- bassist Jason Smith, guitarist Adam Hite, and drummer Jason Baker -- Wednesday for a record release party at the Hi-Tone Café.

A literate and eclectic batch of country and blues-inspired songs that recalls John Hiatt and J.J. Cale, Galilee is Bryant's sixth record in five years, an impressive run for any artist. He uses Memphis musicians and has played the area frequently since the days of his college band Never Cry Wolf more than a half dozen years ago. But if you've never heard of this prolific tunesmith, it may be because Bryant prefers to live far from the bright lights of the city in tiny Bruce, Miss., about 25 miles outside of Oxford.

The town of about 2,000 people is a comfortable fit for Bryant, who grew up around North Mississippi, though he admits its remoteness can be lonely.

"The hard thing about it is not being around people of like mind. I have like two friends who listen to the same kind of music that I like," says Bryant. "I have to drive to Oxford or Memphis to be a part of that kind of community."

But the isolation does allow Bryant to focus on his music. Galilee was written and recorded over the span of a year in his bedroom. A prolific musician, he already has another record in the can and recorded and discarded two others in between it and Galilee

"I write way too many songs. It's kind of gotten out of hand," says Bryant, who has taken up fiction and poetry to give himself further outlet for the flood of words. "One thing I'm trying out to keep me from writing so many songs is just trying to write words that are not necessarily for songs, just to give myself something else to do."

The songs come to Bryant in a rush. He'll go months writing only one but then write an entire album in a week. The onslaught lends itself to Bryant's habit of writing albums around themes that only reveal themselves upon careful listening.

"The album was very much constructed as an album," says Bryant. "Some of the lyrics reference back to others, and I try to answer the questions I posed in one song in another song."

Behind the fury of songwriting, though, is an anxiety that the well will run dry, that one day the words will stop, leaving Bryant holding his history degree and a guitar.

"I always have this fear in my gut," Bryant says. "Sometime you go so long without writing anything substantial, you start having this feeling that you're never going to be able to write a song again. So whenever I get the urge to start writing, I just kind of keep going. It's just like this fuel that I need to write as much as possible right now because I might not be able to do this ever again."

Andrew Bryant record-release party with special guests Theodore

Wednesday at the Hi-Tone Café, 1913 Poplar Ave. Doors open at 9 p.m. Tickets: $5, available in advance at hitonememphis.com. Call 278-8663.