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Chely Wright Biography

By Steve Huey
After several years of hard touring, Chely Wright broke through to become a chart-topping star on the contemporary country scene. Born Richelle Renee Wright in Kansas City in 1970, she grew up in the small town of Wellsville, KS, and fell in love with country music before she'd even started school. She took piano lessons starting at age four and began singing in groups at 11, also playing trumpet in her school band. At 14, she started performing in local clubs with a backing band called County Line, which featured her father on bass. The summer after her junior year of high school, she performed in the long-running Ozark Jubilee show, and as a senior, she successfully auditioned for a job impersonating female country stars at Nashville's Opryland theme park. She moved there permanently in 1989 and spent the next three years working at Opryland and an assortment of day jobs. Eventually, she landed a publishing deal on the strength of her songwriting, and a record contract with Mercury/Polydor followed.

Wright's debut album, Woman in the Moon, was released in 1994 and attracted positive notice from some critics and the country music community, earning her a Top New Female Vocalist award from the ACM. Unfortunately, neither it nor its follow-up, 1996's Right in the Middle of It, sold very well. Wright asked for her release from Polydor and moved over to MCA, where she had the opportunity to work with the commercially savvy producer Tony Brown. Though it wasn't a smash, Wright's 1997 label debut, Let Me In, did make the country Top 40 and gave the singer her first Top 20 hit in "Shut Up and Drive." Moreoever(sic), her constant touring was paying off in the form of a growing fan base, setting the stage for her breakthrough with 1999's Single White Female. The album's title track became Wright's first number one hit, and the following year, she and Brad Paisley duetted(sic) on their co-composition "Hard to Be a Husband, Hard to Be a Wife." Her next album, Never Love You Enough, became her first to break the country Top Ten, and she reached the Top 30 with the title track and "Jezebel." ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide

Chely Wright Videos  hXXp://new.music.yahoo.com/chely-wright/videos/

Chely Wright Songs    hXXp://new.music.yahoo.com/chely-wright/tracks/

Chely Wright Comes Out
Posted Mon May 3, 2010 9:01am PDT by Wendy Geller in Our Country

Chely Wright has done lots of important things in her career: Released seven albums, charted numerous hits (including 1999's No. 1 "Single White Female"), started a charitable foundation for music education, and written songs for other artists such as Brad Paisley and Clay Walker.

However, her latest personal accomplishment just may be her most momentous to date. The 39-year-old singer revealed this morning that she is gay, making her the first major country star to come out publicly.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Wright explains why she was reluctant to discuss her sexual orientation for so long. "There had never, ever been a country music artist who had acknowledged his or her homosexuality," she said. "I wasn't going to be the first."

However, "Nothing in my life has been more magical than the moment I decided to come out," she says.

Wright, a small-town girl who grew up in a musical family and released her debut album in 1994, says she's directed her whole life around the dream of making music. Given the conservative bent of the country music world, she decided to put her career ahead of her personal life. "I hid everything for my music," she explained.

Wright will appear on NBC's Today Show Wednesday (May 5). She is also releasing her memoir, Like Me, as well as her first album in five years, Lifted Off The Ground, this week.

So far, Nashville at large has been quiet regarding Wright's announcement (to be fair–the city is in an emergency situation, experiencing record flooding), but my guess is they will be largely supportive. Despite not releasing new music for several years, Wright's been active in the community with her charitable Reading, Writing & Rhythm Foundation, which benefits music education in public schools.

It's another guess how country fans themselves will respond to Wright's announcement. Inevitable speculation is that a largely conservative group will be disapproving--which, in country music, can spell crippling disaster to a artist's career.

However, I'm not so sure criticism will come solely from her sexual orientation. Coming out after an absence from the music scene, right before the release of a new album, will undoubtedly smack of opportunism to some fans. We'll see this week what Wright has to say, and I'm very interested in reading her autobiography as well as hearing new music after so long.

Inevitably, though--I leave all of this up to you. Does Chely Wright's coming out affect your opinion of her as a musician? Let me know what you think.

By HILARY HYLTON / AUSTIN Hilary Hylton / Austin  – Sun May 2, 8:15 pm ET

D-I-V-O-R-C-E can be pure "H-E-double L," as Tammy Wynette sang, but what if the government decides to get in the act and puts you in a legal and relationship limbo that promises to last for months, perhaps years. That is what is facing two Texas couples - a pair of men and a pair of women - who fell in love and married in Massachusetts and then fell out of love in Texas.

Texas appellate courts must now decide a vexing question: can couples who marry in a state that permits same-sex marriage get a divorce in Texas where the state constitution expressly forbids it? In Dallas, the male couple, simply known as J.B. and H.B. to protect their privacy, saw their amicable divorce case stall last October and head to an appeals court when Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott stepped in to call a halt to the process. Now, a lesbian couple in Austin has been put on notice that their divorce is being challenged in a second appellate court.

"The laws and constitution of the State of Texas define marriage as an institution involving one man and one woman," Abbott said when a district court judge ruled in October that the Dallas divorce case could go forward. Abbott said the "ruling purports to strike down that constitutional definition - despite the fact that it was recently adopted by 75% of Texas voters," and added his office would appeal "to defend the traditional definition of marriage that was approved by Texas voters."

The amicable split was a private matter between the two men, says J.B.'s attorney Peter Schulte, but it has now become public spectacle, attracting the attention of the Liberty Institute, a Dallas-area conservative advocacy group, which filed a brief in support of the Attorney General's position. Waiting in the wings is a second case involving a lesbian couple in Austin. Sabrina Daly, 41 of San Antonio, and her spouse, Angelique Naylor, 39 of Austin, who were granted a divorce in February by District Judge Scott Jenkins, who approved a plan to unravel their complicated, intertwined financial relationship growing out of a home restoration business. "We didn't ask for a marriage; we simply asked for the courtesy of divorce," Naylor told the AP. Daly has declined to speak publicly, as have J.B. and H.B. Since the appeal filing, Naylor also has withdrawn from public comment.

Divorce procedures offer rules that allow couples to play by and reference as they move through the process, says Bob Luther, Daly's attorney. "If same-sex couple are not allowed a set of rules to apply to their dissolution of the relationship then that leads to unmitigated havoc," Luther says. Havoc ensued for his client on March 31. The divorce had been granted, the decree signed and the last legal step - the final order - was imminent when a representative of the Texas Attorney General's Office arrived in court to object on the grounds that the marriage was never legal in Texas. Judge Jenkins posed several questions to the AG's office: Did the AG really want to pursue this action since the state was already litigating a same-sex appellate case in Dallas? Had the AG's office given any consideration to the impact of the appeal on the couple's adopted four-year-old son and the custody arrangement included in the divorce decree? "The wise and merciful thing to do in this case is to simply leave these parties alone." Judge Jenkins told the Austin American Statesman after he signed the final order over the AG's objections. (See more about the gay-marriage lawsuit brought by an unlikely duo.)

In both cases, the AG's office has argued the marriages should have been voided under Texas law. "By pursuing an action for voidance, instead of divorce, the parties can quickly resolve this case and move on with their lives - without raising any unnecessary constitutional questions, or attacks on, the Texas Constitution, Family Code and the federal Defense of Marriage Act," according to a court filing by Abbott's office. But voiding the marriage, attorney Schulte says, does not allow the couple to adopt a legal property settlement. J.B.and H.B. had married in Massachusetts in 2006, J.B. later was transferred to Texas where the couple shared community property and developed the sort of intertwined financial relationship most heterosexual couples have.

The AG's office also suggested voidance would be appropriate in the Austin case, but Luther says it is vital in custody cases to give divorced parents a legal framework and recourse to a judge's oversight to address often mundane parenting issues. For example, U.S. law now requires children traveling overseas, even to Mexico and Canada, to have a passport and divorced parents must seek permission from their ex-spouse, or the judge in the divorce case before obtaining a passport - rules designed to prevent kidnappings in custody disputes.

The question of gay adoption by same-sex couples exposes an interesting fault line in Texas public opinion. Led by conservatives in the state legislature, Texas voters rejected same-sex marriage in 2005, but a later move by the same leaders to ban gay adoption fell short, notes Houston lawyer Mitchell Katine who was local counsel in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Lawence v Texas that struck down the state's sodomy laws. (Katine and his partner are the parents of two adopted children.) Only Florida bans adoption by same-sex couples, Katine says, and Texas laws are silent on the issue. Texas does not allow the names of two parents of the same sex to both be on the birth certificate, which is hurtful to the family, Katine says, and gay couples must go through a two-step process, first one parent adopting the child, followed by the second parent. "But it is not controversial," Katine says, "and there is not really any outcry."

Public opinion has softened on the issue, according to Rice University professor Stephen Klineberg, director of the longtime Houston Area Survey. In 1991, 19% supported gay adoption; by 2010 that had grown to 52%.

Luther, whose client is trying to cope with the prospect and likely six-figure costs of the appellate fight, says he has been surprised by the support he and his client have received from unexpected quarters. "I've got a whole lot of support from people I didn't expect," Luther says, people like his own father who is adamantly opposed to gay marriage. "But when you sit down and think about it these two people are hurting and they need to be able to get their lives settled so they can move on."

Meanwhile, just last week Luther received notice from the appellate court that the Austin case had been placed on the docket. For inside players, the dual track appeals may just complicate matters: one has been argued before the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Dallas, a conservative panel; the other will be heard at the Third District Court of Appeals in Austin, a panel that is less conservative. If their rulings - likely to take anywhere from three to nine months - come down and conflict, or if one party appeals, the case then goes to the Texas Supreme Court. "There is a great intellectual discussion going on among us lawyers and judges," Luther says, "but these [couples] are hanging on our every word."

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"If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom."

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

There are more of these pics if this is received well…...

"A man's face is his autobiography."

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

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