Steve Gunn
Steve Gunn is a New York-based guitarist and songwriter. With a career spanning nearly fifteen years, Steve has produced volumes of critically acclaimed solo, duo, and ensemble recordings on labels such as Matador Records, Three Lobed Recordings, Paradise of Bachelors, and RVNG. His albums represent milestones of contemporary guitar-driven material, and forward thinking songwriting. Steve has steadily processed his inspirations into a singular, virtuosic stream. Close listening reveals the influence of blues, folk, ecstatic free jazz, and psych in his continually unfolding output. His most recent record Let the Moon Be a Planet (RVNG Intl.), a collaboration with pianist David Moore of Bing & Ruth, was released in March. Steve is currently somewhere working on new music.
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Spectre Folk
Pete Nolan was Spectre Folk before drumming and strumming in Magik Markers was his main gig, and will be Spectre Folk long after he shuffles off this mortal coil. The main benefit of ghost-folk is: you can play it way after you’re dead, and while you’re alive the Spectre can haunt any decent willing body with a gift for the unreal. This time around, fellow Abbey Road alum and cinematographer Eben Bull creates scapes of sound on keys to accompany Pete, Mellie Farris on bass, Magik Markers cohort John Shaw on drums, and daughter Violet Ray on guitar. The music they make takes a leisurely pace, like opening the cabin for the first time in the season, introducing all the ambient nature world funk that seeped through into the nose and lungs. They deal in righteous, stank Lazy Horse/CCCR type jammers and a general sense of “folk vacation,” the beer’s gone, what a time we had so let’s roll another number for the road. Fearless as a lemming, Nolan creates a private universe, a Society of the Spectre-cal, if you will, and his gift is his freedom. Let's have a drift. -Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers)