GAUNT, LONG-HAIRED and clad entirely in black, Greg Garing looks exactly like you d expect him to: a cross between Hank Williams and some long-lost Sister Of Mercy. However, the emaciated opium-eater appearance belies a soft-spoken individual, one more than happy to discuss the circumstances that shaped his debut album Alone.
Marrying torch n twang, crisp trip-hop rhythms and Appalachian/Irish melodies to a state-of-the-art production job, Alone is a record that reeks of genius one minute and FM radio the next. Just as Garing s music ascends to the heavens inhabited by the likes of Roy Orbison, Alice Coltrane or Miles Davis, some polished nuance will suggest a slick stylist like Chris Isaak, bringing it all back down to earth again.
All the same, it s a serious statement of intent. And, having left the hellish honky-tonks of Nashville for the tenements of New York, Garing is adamant that his future projects will employ a more pagan approach.
I was very into bluegrass and traditional American music, he admits, but what got me into that was trad music, bands like Planxty and De Danann. But to be totally honest, it was almost like a masquerade doing what I was doing before, because it s not 1954 and I m not from the South. I guess I ve changed my singing a lot since I made the album, but I tried to make a record that would go to all formats. In Canada it s back to back with Trent Reznor and Sonic Youth.
Indeed, Greg professes himself a major fan of not only U2/Nine Inch Nails producer Flood but also Polly Harvey: She is my God, he enthuses. If I had to name a favourite artist she would be the one. Down By The Water was a big influence on me.
According to the singer s press clippings, one major influence behind Greg Garing s metamorphosis from bar-room bawler to futuristic troubadour was none other than BP Fallon.
BP did one thing, Greg explains, he played me the Garbage record. And I went Oh my God, what is that? I thought it was so beautiful, particularly that track As Heaven Is Wide . I had been making these demos and was having my guitar player write very repetitious parts and getting the rhythm section to play the same thing over and over again. BP heard what I was doing and suggested doing it with grooves and beats.
But I was really confused at one point. I was listening to these demos we had made with just me playing over beats, but they weren t it. Then I was riding down the road one day and I heard that song Wandering Star by Portishead, the only time I ve ever heard it on the radio in the States. I made whoever was driving pull over to the side of the road and I cranked it up and sat on the hood I knew that was what I wanted to do. We went into the studio the next day and recorded I Found An Angel which we kept for the album. I think that s when I figured it out.
Although he had little time for the Nashville establishment, Greg did befriend some of that community s more celebrated fringe figures; artists like Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams and Townes Van Zandt.
I met Townes right before he died, the singer recalls. I came up two weeks short of somewhere to stay in Nashville and he was the only person who offered me a place to stay. And I didn t take him up on it because I used to be a little wild, and Townes was still a little wild, and I was afraid of the combination. To be locked out in the woods with him for two weeks I figured one of us would be dead!
I ll never forgive myself for not going; I know we d have written a song. He heard the record the day before he passed away, he told a friend of mine to pass the message on: Good work and good luck. He died on the same day of the year as Hank. n
Alone is out now on BMG Records.