"Jerry Giddens, the singing, songwriting former Baptist youth minister from North Louisiana and former Austin denizen, has been calling the Hollywood area home for a couple of years.
With fellow folk rockers Michael Packard, Luis Ruiz, Dale Daniels and young steel guitar ace Chris Lawrence, Giddens formed a band called Gaucho Gil, named for an iconic gaucho outlaw-turned-saint from Argentina.
The band has released a new CD, "The Ballad of Gaucho Gil."
Prayer :
“Oh! Gauchito Gil, I ask you humbly in an interval before God. The miracle that I ask you, and I promise you that I complied with my promise and before God you are here to see, and I offered you my faithful gratitude and demonstration of faith in God and in you Gauchito Gil... Amen...”
Geoff Pearlman
Originally from Omaha, NE, songwriter, singer, guitarist, producer and engineer Geoff Pearlman began his musical journey by starting guitar lessons at age 9. After years of lessons and practice, Geoff attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating in 1991.
Since leaving Boston, Geoff has toured as a guitarist with Grammy winner Shelby Lynne and producer/songwriter Linda Perry. Relocating from Sand Francisco to Los Angeles in 2000, Geoff currently plays with many of LA's local favorites including Quincy Coleman, AM, Acadamy Award® nominee Bird York, Buck Johnson, Jill Sobule, Walk the Line co-star Waylon Payne, Dead Rock West, Zack Hexum and Heather Waters to name but a few, and has even jammed with Laurie Morgan, Norah Jones and John Waite.
In the studio, Geoff’s guitar playing has appeared on the multi-platinum records Disney’s “High School Musical” and “Hannah Montana” as well as recordings by Island recording artist Jon Mclaughlin, and singer Joan Osborne.
Geoff is also a busy studio engineer/producer/composer having worked on various projects for television and music. He has composed for the Travel Channel, the Food Network and Mattel and several independent projects and his own original songs have been used on television programs such as Jag.
As an independent artist, Geoff has released a full length CD "Anything at All" and an EP entitled "Someplace Like Nowhere", containing the songs "The Man with the Unbreakable Heart", “Caroline and "Nightmare Waiting to Happen". Working with a cast of fabulous musicians (including drummer Bryan Head, keyboardist Michael Bluestein, bassists Dave Meshell and Jon Evans), Geoff has self-produced this new EP in the sonic shadows of classic records such as Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" and the Beatles' "Rubber Soul", once again mixing and co-producing with Tori Amos' bassist Jon Evans at his studio San Pablo Recorders in Oakland, CA.
Gerry Beckley
Gerry Beckley is a founding member of the rock band America. Born in Fort Worth, Texas on September 12, 1952 to an American father and an English mother. He began playing the piano at age 3 and the guitar a few years later. By 1962 he was playing guitar in The Vanguards an instrumental surf music band in Virginia. He spent every summer in England and soon discovered British invasion music.
In 1967 Beckley's father became the commander at the U.S. Air Force Base at West Ruislip, near London. Gerry attended Central High School in Hartfordshire where he played in various school bands and met his soon to be band members, Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek.
Gerry has continued success with the rock band America as well as his solo releases Van Go Gan , Go Man Go (a re-mix of Van Go Gan) and the brand new album Horizontal Fall.
Gerry has worked with a wide variety of musicians on many projects. One of the most notable is the recording Like a Brother done with Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys and Robert Lamm of Chicago. Beckley-Lamm-Wilson released Like a Brother in2001.
Ghost Town Trio
Andy Cook, Garyn Jones and Ryan Tyhulski make up the earnest, hard working punk-rock band, Ghost Town Trio.
Based out of Cleveland, Ohio, Ghost Town Trio has been making their way into people’s hearts across the Midwest and East Coast through months of recent touring and have left a lasting impression in southern California after spending a year out there perfecting their craft.
The Trio has played big venues, small venues, bars, basements, art galleries and just want to play wherever someone is willing to listen to their blend of music.
There’s no need to dive into their past or tell you where they came from, just listen to their songs and you should be able to figure it out.
The Good Intentions
"Poor Boy" is the debut album of The Good Intentions, recorded in Liverpool and California in a transatlantic collaboration between the band and Charlie McGovern at Boronda Records.
Liverpool based band The Good Intentions are RP Davies, Gabrielle Monk and Frank Roskell.They have all played many different types of music over the years from classical to rock. Their musical paths have crossed before and The Good Intentions were formed from 3 members of the band Quatrain, and more latterly Q, back in 2003.
Their music has been called alternative country, Americana, folk, roots, but they are happy for listeners to make up their own minds. The songs of RP Davies are worked around three and four part harmonies with the bands latest recruit Sian Davies who plays fiddle.
The songs and the music are influenced by the rich musical history of Liverpool, the port from which so many displaced people from the plains of Europe left to travel to the Americas, seeking a better life and taking their songs and musical legacy with them. This music would form the base for American folk, bluegrass and country music and eventually rock and the modern forms of music we hear today.
www.thegoodintentions.co.uk
www.myspace.com/thegoodintentionsmyspace
Gordie Tentrees
Yukon roots music songwriter Gordie Tentrees has just released his 3rd album, 'Mercy Or Sin', produced by Juno Award-winning producer Bob Hamilton. Joining Gordie (dobro, guitar, harmonica) on the CD release tour is legendary multi-instrumentalist Ken Hermanson (banjo, lapsteel, guitar).
Gordie Tentrees is from the cold and rustic Yukon Territory and writes like a doppelganger of the preeminent Texas storytellers on his third album, 'Mercy Or Sin'. “Alfred” leads off the record, a darkly poignant acoustic tale, that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Guy Clark-album. (“Walks with a hitch, right side hip, reads a dirt palm, right before he spits, thinks on the rain, hollers for the end, Alfred is old his blood ain't thin”).
But don’t settle in for a languid country/folk songwriter album, because he brings on resophonic guitar and stomp board on a roaring “No Integrity Man”.
He was selected by CBC’s Song Quest in 2009 as one of Canada’s top songwriters and hosted the prestigous SOCAN songwriters circle at the 2009 Western Canadian Music Awards. The song "Mercy Or Sin" was a finalist in the 2009 International Songwriting Competition out of 15 000 entries.
He also performed at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver for the New Songs New Voices Show. Tentrees was selected as the best of Canada’s songwriters to perform during the games.
'Mercy Or Sin' is the much-anticipated follow up to critically-acclaimed 'Bottleneck To Wire (2007) and '29 Loads Of Freight' (2004). This album finally captures the bands dynamic live show and unique growth of songwriter Gordie Tentrees. There are 12 tracks delivering story-driven songs, edgy foot-stompers and heart-worn odes that can only be cultivated by a road warrior.
Gordie has toured relentlessly in North America, Europe and the UK, building an international buzz in the roots music world. He has toured with Fred Eaglesmith, Kelly Joe Phelps, Ray Wylie Hubbard and shared stages with the D-Rangers, Rick Fines, Blackie & The Rodeo Kings, performed a CBC Saturday Night Blues concert, and showcased at North American Folk Alliance, Western Canadian Music Awards and South by Southwest.
Gordie will be performing 200 shows in support of 'Mercy Or Sin all across Canada, US, Europe and the UK.
www.myspace.com/gordietentrees
www.sonicbids.com/gordietentrees
Grand Atlantic
Every now and then, critics and music fans look nostalgically back and the ‘golden era’ of pop, somewhere around the mid-60’s to early 70’s, and sigh ‘why don’t they make those kind of records any more?’. Why indeed? Perhaps because in the rush to shove mass-produced filler down the kids’ throats via video and mobile phones, making quality music designed to last didn’t seem important. Grand Atlantic, however, have managed to do what seemed impossible – created a lush, melody-drenched set of songs that combine minor-key melancholy with killer pop choruses. By ignoring the rules, they have drawn elements from the past and made them seem new again. This is the album that the major-label show-ponies would have given their right arms to make. You see, you have to be outsiders to pull this off – the kids that sat in the bedroom obsessing over who played on the second Kinks album; the dreamers who analysed every lyric on ‘Pink Moon’; the Edie Sedgwick fans. The thinkers. The romantics.
It was the release of their debut EP ‘Smoke & Mirrors’, that saw Grand Atlantic soar into Australia’s national consciousness. Released in November ’06, ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ created a storm of approval locally and overseas. The ‘2006 Drum Media Writers Poll’ listed it as one of the top ten 'EPs Of The Year' and the title track’s superb stop-motion video, which screened nationally via Rage and Channel V, gained the band high rotation at venues all across Australia, NZ and USA on the Nightlife rock channel.
“Bands can sometimes do the big guitar pop-rock thing and sometimes do the orchestral pop thing, but somehow Grand Atlantic can do them both equally well and resolve them into an enthralling package” The Courier Mail.
2007 didn't prove any slower for Grand Atlantic and the praise continues. Throughout the year they toured the East Coast of Australia three times, and were handpicked to perform at the internationally renowned Adelaide Fuse Festival and BigSound conferences. In April they placed 3rd in the ‘Rock Category’ of the 2006 International Songwriting Competition (ISC) with their track "Coolite", while "Wonderful Tragedy" also garnered an ISC Honourable Mention in the main ‘Performance’ category; both are tracks from the album. The lads shone above over 15,000 entrants from nearly 90 countries, which merely hints at the breadth found on ‘This Is Grand Atlantic’.
It’s there from the ambitious opening track, "Prelude". Piano, gentle horns, impeccable strings, and Phil Usher’s vocals lull you into a kind of reverie – just enough to set you up for the 1-2 sucker-punch of Coolite and Smoke & Mirrors, which rocket from the speakers to grab you by the throat and demand you pay attention. You getting the picture yet? "Chaos Theory" unloads some good old-fashioned psychedelia in a haze of guitar feedback and opium-slow drums, building to the sweet release of the chorus – “it’s all coming together now”. Yes, indeed it is. "Wonderful Tragedy" is ambitious, bittersweet, resigned but never beaten – it’s as if the band is in on some secret that the rest of us are left to guess at. It’ll cut you to the bone. And there are still eight more tracks…
‘This Is Grand Atlantic’ was released in Australia in June 07 through Popboomerang/MGM and has been heralded as one of the year’s best pop/rock Australian releases. Conjuring up the wide-ranging sonic textures and songwriting smarts of the Beatles and the Beach Boys but wrapping it all in a beautifully-produced modern sound, this is one that any fan of intelligent, melodic pop rock will need to investigate... this is Grand Atlantic.
Grant Peeples
"Grant Peeples latest release is a clean but brooding Americana sound from a finger-in-your-eye songwriter. A biting, edgy, irreverent southern leftneck. Articulate twang. Thinking-man's songs. Part Prine, part McMurtry, part Che Guevara.
Grant Peeples calls his music “Alternative Southern.” Though this is not a genre or sub-genre that one finds on song manifests, it fits this unique songwriter well. It is implicitly political, cultural and relevant.
These are songs about a South that wheezes in the shadows of ruinous real estate developments and suburban sprawl, and the steeple of the staid Episcopal Church. It is bad teeth, pit bulls and body odor, dirt under the fingernails, fast-food obesity, chain smokers, tattooed faces, shady county sheriffs. There are meth labs and racism and guns. A fearless guy on death row and a guy who ties his cheating girlfriend to the railroad tracks, only to console her with sips of whiskey as the train comes chugging around the bend. “This is real country,” explains one of these hard hitting songs. “Man, and it ain’t pretty.”
It is Flannery O’Conner set to music. Songs that almost gloat on the ugly underbelly of a class divided society, while sticking their collective tongue out at the lame sentimentality of today’s neo-country (a Peeples term) music. The sound is classic, sparse, twangy, and guitar driven, and cut from the same cloth that songwriters like Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams and Ray Wylie Hubbard knit their own tunes.
It’s all sung with Peeples’ commanding, seasoned voice. It’s a rough, edgy voice that works like a bucksaw on his recurrent themes of poverty, class struggle, hypocrisy and environmental ruin. From one song to the next, the mood shifts quickly from dark to comedic and back again. The dark is foreboding; the comedic is ironic, and always at the expense of one convention or another: church, state, the Executive branch, or the rural landscape from which Peeples himself hails.
Greg Copeland
Singer-songwriter Greg Copeland is a Southern California native whose depth of feeling for music – and natural ability to conjure it up with spare,graceful melodies and lyrics that are plainspoken poetry – has been in inverse proportion to his body of work. That balance tips with hisnew album, 2008’s 'DIANA & JAMES', an earthy, folk-flavored collection of 12 original songs produced by acclaimed musician Greg Leisz, a pedal steel master and ace guitarist who plays on every track. The disc follows uphis1982 Jackson Browne-produced debut album 'Revenge Will Come' (Geffen), which allmusic.com calls “a first-rate singer-songwriter affair”and was included in Time Magazine’s 1982 year-end 10 Best list (along with Bruce Springsteen’s 'Nebraska' and Richard & Linda Thompson’s 'Shoot Out the Lights').
Copeland and Browne have been friends since they attended high school together in Fullerton, CA, and then entered the L.A. music scene in the late ’60s. For a time, they lived in a compound of duplexes and triplexes in Echo Park, near Dodger Stadium, where J.D. Souther and Glenn Frey were also neighbors. In addition to collaborating on 'Revenge Will Come', Copeland co-wrote the song “Candy,” which appears on Browne’s album 'Lives In The Balance'. His credits also include the song “El Salvador,” which Joan Baez recorded in 1989, and David Lindley covered “Revenge Will Come” on his 2008 album 'Big Twang'.
During Copeland’s long hiatus from music-making, he and his wife raised two sons. He started songwriting again in 2000 – “I could feel it coming. The odometer clicked over and it was like I came out of a deep freeze. Songs just started pouring out. It took me a couple of years to really trust it. After a while, I was leaving one job and starting another, and I decided to give myself a hundred days to do nothing but write. Most of the songs on this record appeared in a rush of bits and pieces during that period, and it took me nearly four years to sort them out.”
The title characters, Copeland says, “recur throughout the songs. They’re the same two people moving through different lives, almost like three-dimensional chess. It’s not a concept album, but a lot of little interconnections link the songs together.” For example, the character in “I Am The One” was responsible for the death of the woman in “Muddy Water.” Listeners might also recognize the character in “The Only Wicked Thing” as Hank Williams on the night he died.
Throughout, Copeland’s warm, plaintive vocals and lilting melodies come alive against the backdrop of his novelist’s gift for narrative and a pragmatist’s sense of unadorned emotion. 'DIANA & JAMES' was recorded at Groovemasters in Santa Monica and Winslow Ct. Studio in Los Angeles. Copeland is accompanied by a stellar group of musicians that include, in addition to Greg Leisz on guitars: Jennifer Condos and Bob Glaub (bass); David Piltch (upright bass); Jay Bellerose, Danny Frankel and Don Heffington (drums and percussion); Patrick Warren (keyboards); Phil Parlapiano (keyboards and horns); and Gabe Witcher (violin). Carla Kihlstedt – a founding member of groups including Tin Hat, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and 2 Foot Yard – is also featured on violin and delivers a gorgeous co-lead vocal on “Palace Of Love.” Rosie Flores and Heather Waters appear on harmony vocals.
Reflecting on his return to songwriting, Copeland says, “It’s like that saying, ‘if you build it they will come.’ If you offer yourself to it, if you show up, the songs will come to you. But first you have to show up. You do your best and hope another one comes, but you never know.” As for offering up his first album in 25 years, Copeland says, “it’s like putting a baby in a little reed boat and pushing it out into the river.”
'DIANA & JAMES' sets sail on Inside Recordings on October 7, 2008.
"Diana & James" available here.
Greg Koons
One month before the U.S. release of his critically acclaimed debut album, “Welcome to the Nowhere Motel”, Greg Koons, an epileptic since the age of 24, was driving his truck alone on a U.S. solo-acoustic tour and suffered numerous complex partial- seizures. As a result, he streamed in and out of consciousness and inexplicably managed to drive his vehicle 644 kilometers in the wrong direction. After his vehicle ran low on gas, he walked the streets of Dedham, MA, alone, incoherent, and severely disoriented, side effects of his medical condition.
He was spotted having a Gran Mal seizure in an empty parking lot and was transported for treatment at a local Boston hospital. After a handful of cancelled gigs and a dubious future for his debut album, Greg was back on the road in only one week but this time with a new driver, his 68 year old father. An ex-truck driver and Vietnam veteran.
Together the two disappeared into the fabric of America traveling over 40,000 kilometers and through 35 states. Greg played 120 gigs en route to his album being named “One of the Top 10 Americana Albums”, all while living off the dollar menu at McDonald’s and mainly camping or sleeping in their 1996 two-door, GMC pick-up truck.
"Welcome To The Nowhere Motel", co-produced by Adam Lasus (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Army Navy) and Matt Keating, epitomizes a labor of love and showcases Greg Koons’ poignant and melodic songwriting. In collaboration with a slew of critically acclaimed musicians, such as Jason Mercer on bass (Ani DiFranco, Ron Sexsmith), Jordan Richardson on drums (Ben Harper & Relentless 7), the late Duane Jarvis on dobro (Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam), Kirk Swan on guitar (John Wesley Harding, Dumptruck), and indie great Matt Keating on keyboards and guitars. The result of this endeavor in the words of C.M.T. is, “A hidden gem for the adventurous listener”
Born in Harrisburg, PA, Greg first started playing guitar at age fourteen and has never looked back. After receiving his GED, he moved to Hollywood, CA, where he was a housekeeper at the notorious Chateau Marmont Hotel on the Sunset Strip. It was there, between doing laundry and taking out trash, that Koons first honed his skills at matching melodies with words, covertly done on the lobby piano at night. It would be the beginning of his gritty songwriting described by Roy Kasten of 881.KDHX in St. Louis as “having the same hard fought, wise and worn narrative forms as Steve Earle, John Prine, and Townes Van Zandt”, and “creating vivid portraits of people and places that make it through loneliness and loss, and emerge stronger and more alive for it”.
Greg recently finished shooting a video in Hollywood for his song, “Los Angeles Looks Prettier On TV" and is currently holed up in Pennsylvania writing his second album, planning a US tour this fall.
www.myspace.com/gregkoons
www.sonicbids.com/gregkoons
Groove Corporation
Groove Corporation is an established Canadian funk/blues/r’n'b band that includes an interesting mix of excellent players hailing from the Golden Horseshoe area of Ontario (near Toronto). Their legacies include bands like legendary Canadian band Crowbar, King Biscuit Boy aka Richard Newell, Trailblazers, Kaya, and many more.
With a front man who delivers pure energy and emotion 110% of the time, and the combination of congas, horns, and a killer rhythm section, Groove Corporation tackles all kinds of material (including their own), and adds their special touches to it, making it unique.
The band has been gaining momentum through performances at festivals and concerts in Canada, and audiences and media alike are responding to the original approach to their repertoire, and the amazing showmanship and musicianship displayed at each and every performance. Accolades include the winning of the 2007 London Music Award for Best Blues/R’n’B band, and a 2008 Jack Richardson Music Award nomination.
Band members include Kim Campagnaro on lead vocals and congas, Steve Hilbert on bass, Alex MacDougall on lead guitar, Lily Sazz on keyboards, Frank Vignanello on drums, and the amazing horn section, featuring Rob Gellner on trumpet, and Cole G Benjamin and Pete McFarland on saxophones.
www.groovecorporation.com
www.myspace.com/groovecorporation
Guy Tortora
From Pasadena, California, but now living in the UK, Guy Tortora is a singer, guitar player, and a writer of songs that are snapshots of life delivered with wry humour. UK Radio 2 DJ (and ex-singer for Manfred Man and Blues Band) Paul Jones has praised his skills as both a songwriter and performer.
He combines in his work the traditions of the varied elements of American music - jazz, folk, blues & country - both in his original compositions and in the standards and traditional songs he chooses to "cover". In solo or duo performances, or with the Guy Tortora Band, he has carved out a singular niche on the Roots 'n' Blues scene in the UK & Europe, from small acoustic stages to folk & blues festivals.
His musical adventures have been described as postcards from a personal Storyville, delivered with conviction and passion. He plays both acoustic and electric guitar, is a fine bottleneck player, and works solo, duo, and with his band, and has performed all over Europe and the USA.
“Living on Credit” is Tortora’s most recent release on his independent Turtledove label. His mixture of superb original songs and interpretations of music by other writers in the americana and roots genres has collected a clutch of rave reviews and breaking airplay. From the title track, with it’s wry critique of the free-money lifestyle, through the grown-up love song of ‘Like It That Way’, the wide-screen and cinematic ‘Cotton Was King’ and the freefall gospel-tinged ‘God Don’t Change’, to the country heartache of ‘Falling’, Tortora’s own songs are mixed with his highly original arrangements of songs by Blind Willie Johnson, J J Cale, Curtis Mayfield and others.
As one Dutch reviewer has memorably put it: “His songs have a high IQ.“
www.myspace.com/guytortoraband
Gaucho Gil
Geoff Pearlman
Gerry Beckley
Ghost Town Trio
Good Intentions
Gordie Tentrees
Grand Atlantic
Grant Peeples
Greg Copeland
Greg Koons
Groove Corporation
Guy Tortora
