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Artist Bio

Survival, celebration, justice and adventure are the big ideas that drive the music of John Bruce. Grown out of Modesto, California's independent music community, Bruce's songs have spanned the genres of punk rock, pop, and post-grunge to Americana, folk, and electronic roots. With close to home influences like Grandaddy and Willy Tea Taylor, Bruce has kept his own version of the Central Valley aesthetic and ethos at the heart of his craft, captured in his 2005 full length release titled "Staying the Night in Clearwater." The album, engineered by Lucky Lew (Grandaddy, Built Like Alaska), chronicles Bruce's experience living in and departing from the Central Valley in his early adulthood.

Bruce's 2019 single release "Hetch Hetchy" is a collaboration with Braden Hamilton and Ryan Wolfgram of his first band, Hetch Hetchy, which came to an untimely end after the death of Anthony Forakis, one of its founding members, in 2004. The band's story is commemorated at hetchetchy.weebly.com. "Roscoe," which was released for the first time in 2020, is a tribute to war veterans who return home misunderstood by their civilian countrymen. The song was performed by the band Redwood Fur in the late 2000s, and it's release as a single is thanks again to collaboration with Lucky Lew.

Bruce's second full length album, "Forms," is a forthcoming release. The album is a collection of five original songs that illustrate an intertwining of the magical and the pragmatic. "Ring Around Us" is an ode to the self in which creativity and realism admit to being a part of the same whole. "California Runaway" closes the album, a love song of longing and nostalgia to a California that has changed drastically and quickly at the beginning of the 21st century. The track echoes inspiration from Brian Wilson and the sounds that came out of Laurel Canyon in the 1960s, engineered again with the help of Lew.

In 2020, Bruce's song writing was featured by fellow song writer and recording artist, Drew Monson. Monson's cover of "We Only Walk This Long Road Once" was released as a single.

Bruce is currently working on finalizing "Forms" before starting work on his third and fourth full length albums which will focus on his original solo acoustic material. He currently lives in Monterey, California.