I'm Trace Bridgen. I'm a local musician from Oval Ike, Alabama and I'm the lead singer of the Trace Bridgen band.
I started with music. My grandmother maybe take piano lessons when I was five and I hated it.
When I got to college, I decided I wanted to pick my guitar up and ever since then I've been going as absolute hard as I could and loved every second of it.
There's a lot that inspires me. Anything from my teachers that have instructed me, Paul Gross, that's taught me guitar and has never proved that's given me vocal lessons.
Even down to other local artists like Adam Hood, bands like Sister Hazel.
Sister Hazel is my favorite band but to listen to them and to break down their lyrics and to break down their songs and their progress from album to album.
Even listen to their harmonies and their solos, their breaks and the bridges in their songs.
It's fascinating just to hear people like that and see how they do it and what they've been able to make up themselves makes it inspirational.
Big stage in front of big lights, in front of a lot of people. It would be a huge accomplishment I feel like and I feel like that would be awesome.
But to be able to play at local places like the Irish Spread Pub and to watch people enjoying our music and enjoying what we've been working so hard at.
To see people dancing to stuff that we've written is so awesome to see and it's such an accomplishment in itself I feel like and that makes it worth every bit of it if we go no farther.
When we changed the name from a drift to whatever to the Trace Bridge and Band it was immediate name recognition and that helped us out a lot.
But it does have its downsides like often known for being a good music city.
And it's tough to make a start here and that's why a lot of the local musicians have branched out and moved away and stuff like that.
When it's good around here it's good. I found a piece of paper that I'd written one of the first songs I'd ever written years back on and it was absolutely horrendous and I thought it sounded terrible.
But being able to write more and more and being a little bit more pleased every time you write a song or not every time you write a song I still write stuff now that I don't enjoy.
But to be able to be a little bit more pleased with the stuff you write now is this huge progress I feel like.
Reaching that mountain top once you're able to figure out and it finally starts clicking it is what makes it worth it.
So I would say don't stop. You're going to hit holes in the road and you're going to hit stops but don't ever quick.
Keep going. Keep pushing and if nothing else you've got something to devote your time into that you enjoy doing.
