“Cameron” seems to be a name made for changing around. At home, my folks call me “Cam,” but “Roonie” is a kind of pet name my mother uses for me. School names included Roon, Cami, Cameroon, Looney Tune, Camcam, Ham, and so on. As I started speaking other languages, “Camille”, “Camillo,” “Kemo,” “Kamil,” and “Kamran” have all made an appearance. Brother Wren is a play off of a special name my cousins had for me, Brother Ren. Musicians or writers who yearn for a pen-name may spend ages going over the various possibilities before settling on a name that simultaneously conveys the “real me” and the persona they want to project to a public. Brother Wren seemed like a good choice: odd, rather meaningless, yet nonetheless deeply tied to my own childhood experience of never having a single name or identity I could fully depend on.
This shifting, unsettled sense of identity may also reveal itself in my music, since it, too, is rather incongruous as a body. I grew up playing Texas fiddle, an old American genre that, as blues did for rock and roll, provided the foundation for western swing and modern rock and country. Fiddle introduced me to rhythm guitar, tenor guitar, and subsequently bass, all of which I performed on my two fiddle albums, Going Places (2000) and Salt River (2005). In 2001 I had my first experience in a professional band, playing violin with the Denver-based group Xiren. At the same time, my interest in electronica and experimental music grew, leading to my first batch of eccentric rock tunes recorded with my friends as Afternights. After a short break, I started getting more interested in playing live rather than working solely in front of a computer with my instruments surrounding me, and by good fortune I met some people interested in the same thing. This let to the group Tastes Like Burning, which lasted for about a year before I moved to Chicago.
Chicago has kind of killed music for me. It’s hard to find places to practice and school is so overwhelming I rarely have time. However, I mess around from time to time on the computer or with my recording gear and at this point I have quite a number of songs more or less ready to be released, once the final touches are added. For the time being, I’ll be publishing myself as a solo artist (Brother Wren) until the next thing comes along.
