Snyder native Sydney Wright to perform at South By Southwest

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival slated for March 13-22 in Austin will feature artists from all over the world, and one of them is from Snyder.
Sydney Wright grew up in Snyder, graduating from Snyder High School in 2007. She said that she started playing music at a very early age because her mother, who played the piano, wanted her children to learn as well.
“It was something about all the ladies taking piano lessons as, like, some kind of social thing,” Wright said. “Me and my three sisters all learned piano when we were really young, but I was just playing music that was written on the page. I didn’t really realize that I could make up my own songs, but I did love playing music.”
She said that she took piano lessons from Snyder piano teacher Lynn Baldwin until she was 16, at which point she began learning to play the guitar.
“I bargained with my mom. I was like, ‘Let me quit piano lessons. I’ll start guitar, and I promise I will learn it and I’ll still be learning music, but I get to choose my instrument,’” Wright said.
Wright said that even once she began learning her new instrument, she still was mostly only playing covers of songs that she already knew, though at this point she was playing public gigs in Dunn.
“I would play at Dunn Right Barbecue. Those were my first gigs,” she said. “I would go there and play for a steak, but then I would also get tips and stuff. It was really fun.”
Wright said that she enjoyed playing the guitar because the music wasn’t quite as strict as the music she read when she played piano. She felt more free to do what she wanted with the music, which is when she began writing her own songs.
“My friends that had boyfriends and breakups would come over and we would have a little therapy session and then write a song about it,” she laughed. “It was cathartic and awesome.”
She described being in agriculture competitions in high school and said that her love of music permeated those experiences as well. She said that David Frasier, the agriculture teacher at the time, entered her as their area talent for the annual state convention several years.
“It was awesome, because I got to go there and experience what it was like to play for, like, thousands of people on a professional stage with actual sound guys and it sounds really good, and you’re comfortable,” she said. “It was really scary, but also a goal and a high of sorts.”
Wright attended the University of North Texas in ethnomusicology, the study of music across cultures, which she believes influenced how she approaches her own music. 
When she began writing, she said she wrote rather vague folk music because she wasn’t sure where to go with her craft, but she later began experimenting with different styles and learned to use live loopers to create songs that were a one-woman show. She now lives in Austin.
She said that she began her career as a sound technician and has slowly began building up the musician part of her career, playing gigs in Austin and going on tours. A
fter creating her first album, she stalled a bit on the release.
“I sat on it for a few years because of self-doubt and different things that make it scary to release things,” she said.
After making a plan to release the album, she was then involved in a hit-and-run, which pushed the release back even further. During her recovery, she was supported by a gofundme, and said she was very grateful to all who donated to help during that time.
In addition to her performance at SXSW, Wright is also planning a tour to Nebraska, and is looking forward to continuing her musical career.