Nashville, Tennessee
Singer-Songwriter

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"it's just thumb and walk and wait..."

BIOGRAPHY

Recorded at a mountain studio in east Tennessee and released independently, Garner's is a sound definitely grown from the ground. Earthy, honest and plaintive; Mourning Birds beckons back to the folk ballads of a simpler time and at the same time casts a shadow of unease on its own mirth. Compiled with a handful of friends giving sparse and simple accompaniment to his guitar, Garner's first effort includes six tracks that display the enigmatic range of moods that make this burgeoning songwriter and storyteller a haunted soul not soon forgotten. Songs like 'Bury the Hatchet' and 'June and God' usher the listener into the quiet moments of human longing and the subterranean rage that either break our spirits or make us whole. These stories of squandered love and utter desperation place us as near voyeurs in the midst of lives unraveling and eroding before us. Idiosyncratic yet empathic, the images conjured up by Garner's characters evoke a time and place hauntingly too near. Other songs, like 'They're All Gone', move hesitantly out from the shadows. In his way, Garner captures a glimpse of hope's somber release, the silent joy of discovering that some of life's darker doubts and questions cannot be answered, not yet. Son to a life-long and road-weary Country 'n' Western picker, Garner comes by his music honest. While not too concerned with slaying the forefathers of his genre or recreating the wagon wheel, Joe Garner has been able to move in and inhabit the best sensibilities of a songwriting once known as Country Music, but upon its exit from the country now labeled 'Roots'. May his roots grow deeper; we'll sit and listen.

Contact

Management: Taylor Worley
Publishing: Zombie Fox Publishing
Label: Zombie Fox Records
Music Supervisor: Taylor Worley
Booking: Fritz Malcome
Administrative: Lisa Garner

P.R.O.

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INSTRUMENTS

bass / acoustic guitar / piano / vocals

INFLUENCES

old country writers - buddy holly - gram parsons - not much lately

DAY JOB

college admissions

I AM INTERESTED IN

in networking with songwriters
in getting a record deal

I WRITE:

When I have time

I Also Write:
by myself

I Prefer To Write:
lyrics
melody
music

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Cadillac Sky

Cadillac Sky should be a lot more tired. It’s early Saturday afternoon at MerleFest and the band–Bryan Simpson, Matt Menefree, Andrew Moritz, Ross Holmes and newest addition David Mayfield–has already logged two performances on the day....

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Sessions: David Bazan

It was pretty slow. I mean, I played [the songs] on acoustic guitar for a long time, but I didn’t know how to transfer them to the other format. I didn’t want it to be a solo acoustic record. I wanted there to be bells and whistles and full band arrangements even if I didn’t want it necessarily to be electric guitar rock....

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Sessions: Vetiver

“It’s always slightly confounding to me whenever Vetiver is depicted with the same tropes that people have read off of press sheets,” says Andy Cabic. “The same sort of milestones get mentioned but then no one really digs to find out that there are those other things going on.”

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Behind The Song: “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing”

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell sang, it has been remarked, like lovers, although they weren’t. Similarly, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, the team behind one of Marvin and Tammi’s most enduring hits, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” wrote as if under the influence of amatory forces; even if, in the spring of 1968,