Brad continues to spin his home grown yarns about bosses, love, and even takes a shot at an old Christmas favorite.

11 MP3 Songs
COUNTRY: Cowboy, HIP-HOP/RAP: Comedy Rap

Show all album songs: Lick It & Shove It Songs


Details:
Brad Nailer was born on May 7th 1975 in Colonial Beach Virginia.

His mother Elizabeth was a chambermaid at Doc's Motor Court and lived in a trailer at the edge of town. Brad's father was an oysterman and left shortly before Brad was born. His first name is not known, but Elizabeth thinks it might have been "Rusty".

Brad was an only child.


Simon Gray talks about Brad Nailer:

I first met Brad in 2001 at a bar called The Kom On Inn in West Duluth, Minnesota.

I have been working with him, writing and touring ever since.

We toured through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Tennessee. I drove the Hummer and Brad slept most of the day. But we would set him up in the corner of the bar and he played and sang through an old tweed Fender amp, and the effect was magic.

Brad was a big fan of hip hop music. He had a few old cassette tapes he used to listen to all the time. His favorites were - Tammy Wynette, Johnny Paycheck, David Allen Cole, Grand Master Flash, Tone Loc, Rapper's Delight, and Run DMC.


When I met Brad he was playing mostly covers. He had a couple of ideas for some dirty cowboy songs but nothing finished. We sat down and looked at his stuff. Within a few Miller High Lifes we both realized that we could make a pretty good team. I think in the first week we had written 17 songs, the entire first disc "notorious B.R.A.D." and a few more including our rewrite of Frosty the Snowman", which was supposed to be a part of a whole Christmas cd.

Brad is the voice and the presence, and I was supposed to be the brains. He was no good with business, and wanted me to hold the copyrights and be responsible for making money for him. He knew what he was good at, and what he was not. Our split of the profits was 50/50.

We recorded the first cd in Duluth Minnesota, with some friends of mine who have studios there, and at his spacious ranch house in Scottsdale Arizona.

Every time Brad played the excitement grew. At first, people would stand open mouthed at the edge of the stage and giggle behind their hands. Then they started to learn the songs and sing them with him. On the coast of Spain in Torremellinos, the audience drowned him out and he ended up playing the same few songs over and over to a steadily growing crowd. Those 2 nights we sold some 80 cds and 23 shirts. It was a golden night for Brad.

On the long drives between gigs Brad would talk about how hip hop got its start in western music. He talked about the first soldiers being black and sent out to kill the indians. The government didn't care if they lost a few black people in the process. The same way they sent black regiments into the Civil War and into World War Two.
But out west, these black soldiers, the "Buffalo Soldiers", settled down and became ranchers and cowboys. So early cowboy music could have easily led into early hip hop. Yippie Kai Yai Yo, get along little doggies, to Yo Dog. All they did was shorten the phrase.


And then one clear desert evening Brad Nailer walked off between the saguarro and vanished.

When he left, we were working on the Christmas album, and the next 2 cds. One was all cowboy hop and was supposed to be called "It Ain't Gonna Lick Itself" after the title cut. We had just shot the video, which I paid for out of my own pocket, Brad never was much good with money. And the other disc was an acoustic old school western sound called "Brad Nailer and Full Nelson", with the Nelson Brothers band.


We put out a missing person's report and searched for him.
2 days later I got a voicemail saying he was fine, heading in a new direction, and thanks for everything.

Did he find love and start a new life?
Had he had enough already and wanted to do something else?
Who knows.

We all miss him here, and wish him well.

If anyone sees Brad, tell him I have a royalty check for him.