The Blues Report E-Zine
A Blues Underground Network Presentation
May 2008 Issue #79
Featured Canadian Blues Artist
Amos Garrett
Guitar Player magazine calls him "one of the most lyrical and original guitarists playing today...his single note solos and melodic figures are so distinctive that it is virtually impossible to mistake them for anyone else’s."
A Stony Plain artist biography
"ACOUSTIC ALBUM" FEATURES AMOS GARRETT'S DRY WIT, LAID-BACK VOCALS AND STUNNING GUITAR PLAYING. ON STONY PLAIN, IT'S HIS FIRST ACOUSTIC
RECORDING IN MORE THAN 25 YEARS
Let's get this straight right off: They don't make musicians like AMOS GARRETT any more.
He may not be in the public eye like, say, Stevie Wonder or Bonnie Raitt or Maria Muldaur (and he's recorded with all of 'em, and close to 200 more).
He's not a high-energy performer with a lot of flash. Instead, he substitutes a wicked dry sense of humour and understated guitar licks that sound simple but need 40 years of hard work to pull off with the class that he always delivers.
He likes to stay close to home (in Turner Valley, Alberta) but he tours in unlikely places like France and Japan and Scotland. He's known for his electric guitar work - but his latest album is entirely acoustic.
That's AMOS GARRETT for you. Always a surprise, always worth your time and attention (on record, or in live performance), and always playing those six strings in a way that leads listeners to unexpected musical conclusions.
"Acoustic Album" is the title of his ninth Stony Plain release (SPCD-1299) and it's fresh, funny, and widely varied. With a skilled cast of collaborators, and Ken Whiteley's sure hand as producer, Garrett's sly vocals tackle old pop tunes like "Sam's Song" and the whimsical "Small Fry" and then gives you the definitive version of Hoagy Carmichael's "Hong Kong Blues." When he takes on "Michigan Water Blues" he delivers a stunning solo that is, in fact, a guitar transcription of Jelly Roll Morton's original piano part, recorded almost 80 years ago.
Songs like "I Hate Myself," "You've Always Got Your Hands on That Guitar" and "Some Musician Was to Blame" is Amos at his best, and you're aware that underlying the jokes are sly moments of self-analysis. And, to reach out to his touchstone, the blues, he does a perfect version of Leadbelly's "Grasshoppers On My Pillow."
In addition, this is his first all-acoustic album in more than 25 years, except for an independently released side project called Cold Club of Canada that was released back in 1996.
AMOS GARRETT has been playing for more than 40 years - and his list of credits is exhaustive. Born in the United States, he moved to Canada with his family when he was four. After playing with various local groups in Montreal and Toronto, and an attempt to study English literature at university, he chose a music career.
His first fully professional gig was with a JFK impersonator called Vaughn Meador (and was at Carnegie Hall to boot). As his career unfolded, he took part in the sessions for Anne Murray that gave the world "Snowbird," went on the road with Ian and Sylvia and the Great Speckled Bird, played the classic solo on Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis" and was her bandleader for six years, was a member of Paul Butterfield's legendary band Better Days, and won a Juno Award for his work on a classic Stony Plain album called "The Return of the Formerly Brothers" with the late Doug Sahm and pianist Gene Taylor.
Today, as laid back as he is, AMOS GARRETT is busy. There was a made-for-TV film shoot in April this year, a tour of France (and Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Belgium) in May. He'll be back in Canada for the festival season (he's led the "house band" at the Edmonton Folk Festival for two decades, accompanying everyone from Solomon Burke to Ruth Brown,
not to mention Rick Danko, Richard Thompson, Jay McShann, Johnnie Johnson and Rosco Gordon). And there'll be a tour of Britain in the fall, and a trek through Ontario later in the year.
In between, there will be some fishing and some time to tell road stories. And there will be time to haul out the guitar and make music and sing those songs in his honey-buttered voice. "The acoustic guitar is a very different instrument from the electric; it makes you 'think' songs in a different way," he says. "But ,this is a CD that's really for my vocals. I just love to sing, and this record puts the spotlight on that. The guitar stuff? Pretty good. But check the vocals."
That's one of the best players in the world talking. As we said, they don't make artists like AMOS GARRETT any more.
Amos Garrett "Carolina Sunshine Girl" Japan
Tour 2007
Newest CD
"GET WAY BACK" (A Tribute to Percy Mayfield)
