- Connect the Stars Jeff Gutman 3:25
Jeff Gutman is a prolific songwriter from San Francisco. For the last several years, he has been performing headlining shows at dozens of clubs all over the west coast. Jeff’s songs are filled with memorable stories and melodies.
Jeff released his first album “The Mindfire Tapes” in the Fall of 1999. The album was a collection of experimental songs and sound collages. The album went into second pressing after six months, and Jeff embarked on a tour of the Pacific Northwest. Songs from this album were featured on KUSF, a college radio station in San Francisco, in the summer of 2000.
In the fall of 2000, Jeff recorded the controversial “Hellfire Vampire.” The album was totally different from the first in that all of the songs were performed live with no overdubs. The instrumentation was sparse, with only an acoustic guitar and vocals. However, the songs were far from folk material. They were more raw and aggressive than the first album with some shocking subject matter.
In the Spring of 2001, Jeff formed a full group to better accentuate the compositions he was writing. Full of energy and intensity, the Jeff Gutman Band toured the west coast before recording an album in the fall of 2001. The album “Cold Cold Town” was tightly produced by Mark Love at Polk Street Studios and released in the summer of 2002. The album was a straight forward rock album filled with complex chord structures and intense rhythms. The songs focus on stories of survival in the city during recent economic decline. The group toured through the summer of 2002, with media coverage from local television and newspapers.
In the Fall of 2003, the song “You Were On Your Way” was featured on a benefit CD compilation for the AIDS Walk Organization. The album “Sounds for Hope Vol.1” was designed to feature top acts from the Bay Area. The entire proceeds went towards funding AIDS research and education.
In early 2005, Jeff started recording his fourth album “No Way Back.” The album was complex and densely layered, combing multiple genres into each song. Jeff spent hundreds of hours by himself laying down each track separately, starting with multiple guitars, pianos, bass and drums and expanding the songs to include a full orchestra and four part vocal harmonies. After two years of work, the album was finally finished and released in December of 2006. Songs from this album were used in independent films and featured on KLLC Alice-97.3 FM in San Francisco.
Jeff first started writing the album “Through the Night” in 2008 when he had a series of music themes and melodies which had come to him in dreams. After he experienced the loss of his daughter, he became very inspired to write words for these songs, finishing them at the pace of one a day. For “Through the Night,” Jeff set about writing songs that spoke honestly about this traumatic event in his life. Rather than dwelling on the more negative aspects solely, he wanted to make an album where the songs when taken together would give a more complete picture showing the highs and lows of an emotional journey. The songs would be extremely varied stylistically, taking elements of power pop, acoustic rock and multi-sectional suites alongside with quiet confessional piano songs with full string arrangements.
Jeff’s sixth album “Arrive” was four years in the making. One of the overarching themes of the album deals with how we connect (or fail to connect) to each other in our current technology-driven world. The songs serve as a reminder that the world around us is not how it seems on our smartphone screens, and that we can easily spend so much time connecting online that our virtual life replaces our real one. The songs are a reflection of our modern world and all of its overly-connected yet somehow disconnected feelings. The songs applied a full symphony orchestra giving them a rich, full sound. The album was finished in 2016, and the tour to support the album followed in 2017-2018.
SOURCE: Official Bio
LINKS:
http://www.jeffgutman.com
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nqJTFEC_2Os5AlzkR4euHynfJ0y4nBsLc
https://open.spotify.com/album/3wOENcsRRqZF9o86UUX6pQ
