Ben Garnett
Born 1994 in Dallas/Fort Worth, Garnett studied jazz at the University of North Texas, majoring in jazz guitar performance (2016). Halfway through his studies, however, Garnett discovered a new calling. “I stumbled on this world of contemporary acoustic music and quickly went down a rabbit hole,” Garnett says. Soon, Garnett was chasing the music of Tony Rice, David Grisman, Mike Marshall, Darol Anger, Edgar Meyer, Strength in Numbers, Punch Brothers, Väsen, Grant Gordy, and more.
“It felt like a light switch,” says Garnett. “This was music at the nexus of jazz, bluegrass, singer-songwriter, classical, old-time, world-folk, that so clearly merged an array of values. These musicians were communicating things I had been craving in music from as early as I can remember. It was a calling, I knew from then on I wanted to be an acoustic musician.”
Ben Garnett has a beautiful, curious, deep mind. Given that he came to the stringband world after he had already formed himself into a sophisticated, accomplished musician, I feel like Ben has always approached stringband music from two different angles: one as a player/music-lover/student filled with true respect and awe for the earthy, simple power at the music’s core; and another as a person who clearly sees oceans of possibility waiting to be explored and tapped, unburdened by tradition-through-osmosis. From that angle, why wouldn’t we create an electronic soundscape to interact with an acoustic one recorded live by an extraordinary band in front of microphones? And once that question had been asked, then the question became: how do we holistically integrate the electronic and the acoustic together so that each element acts as a unique thread weaving together with these other seemingly antonymous threads to create a single fabric of music? I’m proud of Ben and what he came up with. The compositions are beautiful, the playing is rich and the fabric is original. Working on this album together was a true joy.
—Chris Eldridge