Nashville-based country artist and UW-Oshkosh alumnus Brady Lee recruited the help of the university’s music department to hold a recording session inside the Arts and Communication Center on Feb. 23.
UWO Director of Music Industry Nathan Edwards said that his students gained precious knowledge from Lee about navigating the current music landscape.
“It is a fast-paced and rapidly changing industry, so it is awesome of Brady to share what he has learned,” Edwards said. “I think it is highly valuable for students to see an outside perspective from someone who has played music around the country and has years of perspective to share with us.”
The university’s music industry operations and audio production classes helped Lee, a graduate of UWO in 2016, produce recordings and film music videos.
Lee also met with the student-run record label “Titan Gold Records” and will be collaborating with the group to create a marketing campaign around his music.
Edwards said he had followed Lee’s career after he graduated and was thrilled when he reached out to pitch a partnership between his music and current UWO students.
“Brady is great to work with because he has a deep understanding of the music industry and is also a very accomplished performer and songwriter,” Edwards said. “He absolutely nailed his live takes for the audio recording class.”
Lee was born in San Diego and moved all over the country growing up because his father was a Navy officer. Lee has lived in Pensacola and Jacksonville, Florida, San Antonio, and cities in Rhode Island and Kansas before finding his way to Oshkosh when he was 15 years old.
In an interview with Medium from 2023, Lee said he was intimidated when he first moved to Oshkosh.
“I was kind of into music before moving to Wisconsin, but when you’re the new kid so many times over you kind of need to ‘pick’ what you’re going to stand out with,” Lee said. “I wasn’t going to move to a new town halfway through high school and just be okay at a couple things, nor I was going to be really good at one thing … I just assumed I wouldn’t be the best athlete, so I hunkered down with my music and decided that was going to be me.”
Lee said in the interview with Medium that his music career took a turn during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was writing songs with a buddy up in Wisconsin and somehow we got linked up with producer Reid Shippen, who does Dierks (Bentley’s) stuff among a ton of other top shelf guys,” he said. “We just kept sending songs back and forth, he’d listen and give feedback, we’d rewrite them and send them back. After like four weeks of this, I just had to sit back and laugh. This just doesn’t happen in the biz. Like, I have this superstar producer who I must’ve caught at a perfect time because he was just so accommodating and helpful. I learned so much about songwriting in a commercial format from those four weeks.”
Lee released his debut album “Backyard Vacation” in June of 2020, which teamed No. 50 on the iTunes Country charts and was featured on Spotify’s New Music Friday Country and Fresh Finds Country playlist.
According to Medium, Lee grew up listening to Rascal Flatts and Tim McGraw, and his style has been described as radio-ready, pop-infused anthems that showcase his soaring vocals and smooth guitar playing.
Lee reached No. 1 on the charts with his single “Rewind” in 2022 and his debut album was voted the best independent country music release of the year.
Lee, who boasts 33 thousand listeners on Spotify, dropped his latest single “Clover” on March 17.
