 |
 |
|
 |
|
Hi, my name is Paul Garner and this is my site. If you've found this page you probably already know me... you can read up on what I've been doing below.
(start at the bottom and work up!)
|
|
 |
|
 |
Love vs Blues
[ Tue 21 Sep 2004, 11:24 pm ]
While in New Zealand I've recorded a CD. I'm pretty excited about it! Love vs Blues features twelve of my original songs and three of NZ's finest blues musicians. And if you've read about my travels below, you could say some of the songs give a chance to read between the lines...
Also, I have a new website for the purpose of promoting my musical activites, proclivities and sensitivities: www.paul-garner.com
[ top ]
Pacificism
[ Tue 27 Apr 2004, 8:47 pm ]
On the way back to New Zealand I stopped in Fiji. It's a long story, but on our last night we wound up hanging out with the Nadi police force... who were just sitting around on the lawn in front of the station telling jokes and drinking kava. The most chilled-out cops ever!
[ top ]
Just like old times
[ Tue 27 Apr 2004, 1:25 am ]
Well, it's a while since the last post...
Had a lot of fun with Blueprint in the last two years and by the end there we were doing maybe 75% original material on a 4 hour gig. Got to play support for Jools Holland and jam with Duwayne Burnside of the North Mississippi Allstars too!
The band is kind of on hold at the moment while I'm travelling round the world (again!). At the moment I'm back in NZ and have taken the chance to do a few gigs with my Dad - he does some of his acoustic originals and I do some of my electric, then we do some together. We had a great time playing at the 42nd Montana National Jazz Festival a couple of weeks ago.
[ top ]
Blueprint
[ Sat 30 Nov 2002, 12:39 am ]
Could Paul Garner & Blueprint be the best new blues band on the scene? Don't ask me, I'm biased... What I do know though is we have a pretty good demo recorded, first gig lined up and a bunch of my original songs to play. Check out the site for more info.
[ top ]
...exterminate?
[ Mon 28 Oct 2002, 4:19 am ]
Had a wonderful time on a recent long weekend in Wales. It rained heavily of course so we switched our planned hiking and outdoors activities for a crawl round the village pubs. Ah Wales, where the place names have no vowels and you're always dodging dragons and daleks (!)
[ top ]
Jammin'
[ Fri 26 Apr 2002, 8:51 pm ]
Well, life in London is rolling along. Been working my job here for about 6 months now, still paying off my travel hang-over (i.e. Visa card). Good news is there's a couple of good jam nights a week to go to, such as Ain't Nothin' But... in Soho on Monday nights.
Jamming down at Ain't Nothin' But... blues bar.
Coincidentally, the harp player was an Aussie...
More photos from that night...
[ top ]
London calling...
[ Thu 31 Jan 2002, 11:56 pm ]
About time for another long overdue update I guess. I was still in Dallas when I wrote the last one, and now I'm in London!
After Dallas I travelled to Austin. Austin has a big reputation as a music city, plus I wanted to check out the famous Antone's blues club. There was plenty of live music available on 6th Street, the main drag, but after having someone in the know to guide me round the large D/FW blues scene Austin was a little dissappointing, from a blues point of view. I had hoped to show up at the Antone's jam night, but the drummer was sick or something - so the club was closed! I thought that was a bit lame.
I met a girl who needed a lift to New Orleans, so I skipped San Antonio and Houston and drove straight there in a day, through the Louisiana swamps, on the elevated freeway. It's hard to describe how great it felt arriving in New Orleans and suddenly being immersed in a totally different atmosphere. Not only was it very humid but coming from the West, as I had, it was the first old city encountered. It really did look and feel the part. Checked out some great music while I was there, including the Rebirth Brass Band (fantastic!) and Jason Marsalis. Got drunk a lot too and ate lots of gumbo. Then my car got broken into and my guitar, CDs, and in some ways worst of all, 6 or 7 rolls of film and my journal got stolen. Ah well, at least they didn't take the car!
From there I went and visited a friend in Baton Rouge, only an hour or so away, but a rather dull contrast to the sensory overload of New Orleans. From Baton Rouge I headed up through Mississippi, unfortunately without having time to explore, and arrived in Memphis.
B.B. King and the city's blues heritage is given almost as much importance as a tourist draw these days as Elvis and Gracelands. Although it has of course been touristified beyond any recognition it is still nice to find all the blues clubs on Beale Street. And despite being arguably the most touristy of the bunch, I've got to say I enjoyed hearing some great music at B.B. King's, including Little Jimmy King and Preston Shannon (who were playing there a couple of nights a week) and Eddie Floyd. Didn't do any jamming as I had no guitar, but met some fun people including some wacky locals, and had the chance to see a great gig by Robert Belfour in a neighbourhood bar away from Beale St.
From Memphis I drove up to Chicago, another long slog up the interstate. I kind of needed a local blues contact show me round in order to get the best out of it I think. I saw two blues gigs while I was there, ironically the one I enjoyed most was Mem Shannon (who's not from Chicago) in a small, packed blues bar. I went down to Buddy Guy's Legends club to see Billy Boy Arnold expecting great things, but the club didn't quite catch the atmosphere, and Arnold played a relatively short set with some cruddy white southern rock band as his backing group. Other than that I caught a very lo-fi, low budget gig by my Chicago friend's brother's Fugazi-inspired garage band which was actually kind of fun. I was running out of time and money by this stage so it was onward...
I had planned to stop in Pittsburgh overnight as it is a LONG way from Chicago to New York, my next stop. However I ended up picking a rather 'scenic' route from Chicago to Pittsburgh (it looked shorter on the map!) and by the time I got there the hostel was closed. I ended up stocking up on gas station coffee and black chocolate and driving through the night, grabbing a few hours of fitful shut-eye in a New Jersey rest stop around dawn before arriving in Manhattan. I was staying in the East Village, and yeah it was great. There were some top jazz clubs in walking distance, and I saw Joshua Redman (whose fantastic drummer almost stole the show) and John Scofield (playing material from his then forthcoming Uberjam album, which I'm not sure I liked) while I was there.
Time and money finally ran out and I had my flight to catch. I discovered I didn't have ownership papers for my car so I couldn't sell it. Remarkably I didn't even manage to give it away, so I ended up leaving it at the airport with the keys in. My flight was delayed for four hours due to traffic jams on the runway but I eventually left at 11pm on September 10th.
I got a big shock watching the news, safely in London the following afternoon!
[ top ]
So much for good intentions
[ Sun 29 Jul 2001, 8:00 am ]
Well, I intended to be updating this regularly while I was away, but I soon found that when you're paying by the minute at a public internet terminal and running short of cash it's hard to find time to do anything more than check your email.
So here I am now, nearly two months into the trip and I'm going to have to cram it all into one quick update. I spent a couple of weeks in LA, just hanging out around Santa Monica and on the beach. Then I headed up the Pacific Coast via Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo - both nice places. I stopped in Monterey for the Monterey Blues Festival which was a lot of fun, hanging out, eating soul food. Saw Little Charlie and the Nightcats and they were great!
Got up to San Francisco for a couple of days. Looks like a cool city, though by this time I was feeling a need to get out of the cities, so I headed back down to LA via the spectacular granite outcrops of Yosemite valley. Back in LA I got stuck in Venice Beach for nearly a week while I tried to buy a cheap car to get me the rest of the way across the country. I eventually found one and started heading East along Interstate 40, which follows pretty much the old Route 66 trail.
The aircon in my car broke down as soon as I got to Arizona, which was a bummer considering I was driving through the Mojave desert at the time. I ended up spending nearly a week in Flagstaff AZ trying to get it fixed, but at least that gave me time to do some hiking in the Grand Canyon, which was breath-taking.
|
Jamming with Ernie Johnson down at Gregg Smith's Celebrity Club (BBQ joint by day, soul-blues bar by night) in Fort Worth, TX.
 |
I never did manage to get the aircon fixed. Flagstaff was at a high elevation so the temperature was pretty mild, but I was soon sweating again as I headed further into the interior. Stopped a couple of nights in Albuquerque, which is a hot and dusty but otherwise pleasant city. The Rio Grande runs through it, but this far upstream it's fairly unspectacular. I replaced the duff stereo in my car, as I can stand the heat but it's no fun driving all day with no sounds. Stopped a night in a motel in Amarillo, which is a nice enough city, and then another night in Lubbock, which isn't, then I eventually arrived in Dallas, or rather in Euless, one of the suburbs between Dallas and Fort Worth.
I've been here two weeks now, staying with a blues DJ friend who's been taking me out to the blues jams and gigs around town. I'm having a ball! I've played with a lot of great folks on the scene since I've been here, including Holland K. Smith, Hash Brown, Robin Banks and many more.
I'm heading to Austin on Monday, for a couple of days, maybe more. Then on to New Orleans, via San Antonio and probably Houston.
Well that's all for now... who knows when I'll have time to update this again though!
[ top ]
Anticipation builds...
[ Sat 9 Jun 2001, 10:07 pm ]
Well, sitting here at my computer sipping a coffee in Hamilton, New Zealand, it doesn't seem quite real... but this time tomorrow I'll be half way to LA!
[ top ]
|
|
I'm primarily a blues guitarist; for sounds and other information, check the blues page.
For originals and other experimental stuff that I record at home, check out my garage music.
|
 |
Okay I don't update the diary very often, but the writing page is growing and growing.
|
I'm an experienced web site designer and developer with skills in ASP, XML, DHTML, Javascript, Photoshop etc. For a CV or more info, contact me.
|
|
