Reggie Garrett & Christine Gunn

6/14/24 REGGIE GARRETT & CHRISTINE GUNN

House concert Tumwater, and Open Mike Tacoma, WA
These two have devised a superb and unique collaboration: Reggie Garrett, a Black contemporary singer-songwriter with smooth vocals and flowing guitar performing his original tunes; backed by Christine Gunn’s superb cello backup, looper, and vocal harmonies. The cello delivers a unique musical perspective; not only can it supply a bass line, but the sonorous weaving with the vocalist adds a unique creative enhancement to Garrett’s expression. Garrett is a talented songwriter, often taking ideas, moods, or feelings from books he reads and translating them into lyrics. Garrett is a voracious lifelong reader and has performed in book reading and performing clubs in Seattle. I initially knew him as a regular at the Victory Music open mics at the Antique Sandwich Co. I first saw Gunn at a Victory open mic and then numerous times with Gravity Quartet, a group from Olympia. Garrett had been working and recording for a long time with the Seattle acoustic/electric band Snake Oil Peddlers. Besides recording with Snake Oil Peddlers, Garrett has several solo CDs/LPs of his original songs. He had a small window to fame with his song “York’s Lament” (about a Black slave guide for Lewis & Clark) that was featured on the PBS News Hour when they featured snippets of local performers across the country. Garrett moved from Seattle to Olympia (where Gunn has lived and performed for decades). This last year they have been developing their duo, and now are working on a recording of the two of them, and I can’t wait after having seen them twice. They appeared as one of about 15 open mic acts at the Antique Sandwich playing two original tunes, and though we had a packed house, one could hear a pin drop during the performance, and there was a collective roar at the end of their set. In the Olympia house concert, they got to develop and talk a bit about the songs’ history. Garrett explained he wrote Stagecoach Mary after reading about a Black stagecoach driver, and sent chills up our spines with the ghostly “So Far Away.” Garrett articulates what it means to be Black through his songs and stories. As the weaver of mood, Gunn’s cello accents the pain, the joy, the striving, the setbacks described in Garrett’s songs. She will quietly accent, then soar and drive deep into the excitement, celebration, or pain of Garrett’s songs. You would hear the stagecoach driver in her playing or experience the strange mood of “Nature Boy,” Nat King Cole’s famous hit. Three times, Gunn was set loose soloing on her own compositions and adding in her toe-operated looper. She could set up a bass line on the looper and then soar on the cello, dive down in deep almost guttural tones. She is an exquisite, expressive, colorful player with concert, classical, jazz, and world music chops. Garrett’s songwriting is spot on, and Gunn’s added harmonies bring even more diversity to this colorful, accomplished duo. This is a musical experience outside the norm. At this house concert, the audience leaped to their feet at the end of the concert. You have to! They are that accomplished, entertaining, and challenging in their music.

(Chris Lunn, Editor Publisher of Ancient Victorys News, Founder of 50-year-old Victory Music, one of the first 124 Founding Members of the International Folk Alliance and its first paid member and later member of the Board of Directors) - Ancient Victorys (September 2024 News issue)