Brent Fraser
As his family moved
around a lot he ended up the new kid once again, his senior year.
He took a drama class on a whim and found solace there, with
all the other kids on the fringe. This was the birth place of
the idea that he would one day combine all of his artistic passions
and make them work together, just as his heroes had done. After
High School he moved to Seattle where he began working in semi-professional
theatre and singing and playing guitar as a "street musician"
in the Pike Place Market. He auditioned for and was accepted
to The North Carolina School of the Arts but stayed only
long enough to wet his appetite for theatre design/production
and acting professionally. He hurried back to Seattle and began
working immediately as a paid actor, receiving rave reviews,
also playing local clubs as a singer/songwriter. He even started
his own theatre company, Annex Theatre, with friends,
but it wasn't until he landed his first feature film role in
Keith Gordon's, The Chocolate War, that Los Angelinos
began to take notice of his talent and encouraged him to move
south. He did and quickly landed a string of starring roles in independent features such as, Blue Movie Blue-Wild Orchid 2, The Dark side of Genius (in which they placed two of his songs) and The Little Death. He did a strange cameo in David Lynch's,Wild At Heart and a brutal supporting role in New Line's Book of Love. His chameleon talents were most recently utilized as "Jed" the socially inept, criminal drug-chemist in the gritty, Broken Vessels, which is currently garnering film festival success. Fraser has also appeared in television series' such as, FoxTV's The Tracy Ullman Show, NBC's Dark Skies (as Jim Morrison) and Showtime's The Outer Limits. Last year he landed a very challenging role as a recurring character, combining his talents as an actor and singer, on the show Fame-L.A. Though the show's ratings hit their high points on his episodes, television was not where he ultimately envisioned himself. They also placed some of his original material on the show and two of the songs Fraser sang can be heard on the show's compilation CD, available in stores now. Fame-L.A. is still in syndication.
Throughout his time in L.A. Fraser has been fortunate enough to demo some of his songs with artists such as, Warren Zevon and Don Henly's band, as well as holding the front man postion in the L.A. based band,Will, which he left, citing "artisic differences". (Of course) He wrote three songs with Italian artist Elisa Tofoli, for her album Pipes and Flowers and was propositioned to front The Kenny Wayne Shepard Band, but decided to hold out for a deal as a solo artist.
Motion City Records caught him reverting to his roots in a coffee house, playing acoustic gigs and offered a record deal, which he accepted, hoping that with an independent label he would get to make the album that suited his artistic vision.
Albion Moonlight and the Sea of Troubles is the result. It is a "concept album", on which Fraser makes use of poetry, theatrics and all of the influences he has ever known. It's the mythical story of a boy, Albion Moonlight, who grows up in relative solitude on the Sea of Troubles and shortly after breaking away to find humanity, by his own defects and addictions, finds himself more alone and desolate than ever. He rediscovers his true self through music and comes to know the promise of new life if he can endure it. The end of the story is left open. It's live show will be a mission to revive the theatre of large venue rock. Fraser is writing Albion moonlight... into script form for a film, found on the spectrum some where between Pink Floyd's, The Wall , and Tim Burton's, A Nightmare Before Christmas. It is scheduled to shoot mid 1999.
