By Dan FletcherThe Daily Northwestern
John and Ellen Wright are Northwestern faculty members by day and folk musicians by night.
Dressed simply, carrying just a banjo and guitar, the Wrights played a set on Saturday in the small basement of Cafe Ambrosia. Students and local residents crowded couches and tables, listening to the Wrights play the songs that are woven into the fabric of their lives.
“As we like to say, we like to do songs that we we’ve known so long we can’t remember not knowing them,” John said
Their set covered old-time standards such as “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” as well as original songs with titles like “I Shook Hands With Eleanor Roosevelt.” They said they pick their songs according to their humor, rhythms and the way they pluck at emotions.
John Wright, a professor emeritus in NU’s classics department, plays the banjo and sings. Ellen Wright, a lecturer in the English department, plays the guitar and provides backing vocals.
John Wright said he has played bluegrass music as far back as college, while Ellen Wright learned the guitar later in life. The couple has been playing together for more than a decade.
Saturday’s show echoed the format of a traditional bluegrass performance. After the first few songs, John Wright paused.
“This is the part in the show where the band leader introduces his support,” he said, proceeding to talk about his wife and her development as a musician.
A few songs later, Ellen Wright reciprocated, formally introducing her husband to the audience.
Adam Whittington said he had never heard folk music before the Wrights’ Saturday night performance.
“I thought the lyrics were exceptional. I thought it was great,” the Weinberg freshman said.
The Wrights blend their academic and musical lives. Both have written books about famous banjo players, and John Wright recently found lyrical inspiration from an old family history he discovered while doing research at NU’S Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library.
In a book called “The Biographical Dictionary of the Irish Quakers,” he stumbled on the story of how his great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents courted and married.
“The story was put in very dry encyclopedic type, as you might expect it to be,” he said. “Yet it was fascinating, amusing and sexy in a subtle sort of way.”
