Wooldridge Brothers

The Wooldridge Brothers have attracted enough attention with their brand of country/Americana since the early '90s to earn national airplay and have several of their songs featured in films and TV shows. Yet, the Wisconsin-based duo has never truly broken into the national mainstream.

Scott Wooldridge writes most of the songs, sings lead vocals, and plays keyboards, acoustic guitars, and drums. Brian Wooldridge plays electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, and sings backup vocals. They left their home state of Indiana in the late '80s to settle in Milwaukee. There, they released three albums with the band the Squares, for which the brothers contributed most of the songwriting. In 1991, they started working on their own as a side project, and when the Squares broke up a short time later, that became their main focus.

The brothers' first work under the Wooldridge Brothers name was a cassette-only release. It drew enough attention to get them invited to several music festivals. In 1995, they released their first CD, Skeleton Keys, on indie label Don't Records. That album earned them a publishing deal with Windswept Pacific in Los Angeles. The following year, their second CD, Star of Desire, became a bit of a breakthrough album for the duo. The title track gained national airplay and made the top ten list on Wisconsin's biggest FM radio station. The song was featured in the movies Contact and Some Mother's Son, and the TV show Party of Five.

The brothers' next release was Uncovering the Sun in 1998. The album was produced by Walter Salas-Humara of the Silos. It also received some good reviews and had songs featured on TV. In 2001, the brothers followed up with The Unreel Hits, a compilation of songs unused on their other albums, as well as a couple of alternate takes of songs which were previously released. An alternate take of "Everthing is Different," originally released on Star of Desire, features Victor DeLorenzo, formerly of the Violent Femmes, banging on a metal music stand.