Beth Garner Band:...
Charlie Richards on lapsteel...
Lyndah Garner on bass...
Jeff Botta on drums...
Influences
see previous, Jazz, Surf, The Queen of Spades, blues, honky tonkin’, Pakistani rock, banjo-ing, Thelonious Monk, Johnny Guitar Watson, James Brown, Wes Montgomery, Bob Dylan, Zap Mama, Doug Sahm, Aerosmith, The Breathers, Led Zeppelin, Homer Henderson, Count Basie, Jeff Botta, Fred Eaglesmith, James McMurtry, Ike Turner, Magic Sam, Freddie King, Etta James, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Billy Joe Shaver, Ray Charles, Merle Haggard, Bad Company, Kenny BurrellHot Premade Layouts - Music Bands - Animals - Movies
Beth and identical twin Linda were born in Feb 1978. Music was always around the house, whether it was her mother’s Pavarotti, country, 80s pop, and obscure backwoods banjo; or her two big brothers, Rob and Scotty, blasting Led Zep, AC/DC, Black Sabbath or Van Halen thru the walls of the garage, any sort of musical noise permeated her youth. Mom kept a beat-up acoustic she had found cheap on Beale Street around, Beth would steal her guitar books, learn a few basic chords and pluck each string and listen to them vibrate. When Beth was 9, big bro Rob was well into establishing himself as a gigging musician. Scotty was too shy to play publicly so she would sit and watch him at home learning note for note Paganini, Mozart, Beatles or Eddie Van Halen. Rob turned her on to jazz via Chick Corea’s Sea Journey at 11. Beth went to see Rob play live as much as possible, his gigs had a huge influence on her wanting to perform, with Beth becoming serious with the guitar around the age of 14. Twin sister Linda picked up bass shortly after. Rob taught Beth the major and minor scales, she started taking lessons and with her sister was accepted into Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, studying jazz guitar and music theory, with lunch and prom-buddy Norah Jones. Other Booker T. attendees include Erykah Badu and her band members, Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove. Beth was playing with young pros and gigging professionally by the time she was 17 at local blues clubs.
In the fall of 1996, Beth headed to San Marcos, TX for Southwest Texas State University, where she studied jazz, taught lessons, and began playing with local Austin-area groups like Teisco Del Rey and the all-female rhythm section The Del Reylettes. They opened several large shows at the Continental Club for Texas guitar picker extraordinaire Junior Brown and the South by Southwest Music Conference, where they were showcased alongside Grammy-nominated instrumental surf-rock band Los Straitjackets and also opened for Tito & Tarantula of Dusk till Dawn soundtrack fame. Thru this band, Fender electric guitar strings endorsed Beth.
By July 1998, Beth decided to move back to the Dallas-Fort Worth area to attend the University of North Texas in Denton, studying jazz and whoring herself out as a sideman, playing with rock-ska band Alligator Dave and the Couch Band for a few months at the ripe old age of 19. Later, she picked up a gig with a Pakistani rock band called Shor. They played various sites in New Jersey, Wichita Kansas, and Dallas, opening for Junoon at the now bulldozed, but historic Bronco Bowl. While going to school in Denton, Beth continued to freelance as a guitar player, until she got sick of backing up singers, deciding to front her own band at the age of 22. She flunked out of her last semester of college and started the Rattlesnakes, a female-fronted group with Beth on vocals and guitar, Cricket Taylor on guitar and vocals, sis Linda on bass and a male drummer. They played loud, down and dirty, roadhouse blues, packing places in a matter of weeks and the Rattlesnakes would back up the legendary Sam Myers every Thursday when he would drop by their weekly gig at the Lakewood Bar and Grill in Dallas, TX. During that fall of 2000, Beth also toured as a sideman for blues hottie Shawn Pittman, from the Midwest to the West Coast, onto Minneapolis then back to Dallas, until January of 2001 when the local blues DJ from KNON heard Beth and decided to let her budget a CD. Beth released Much Later For You independently to a few, but good reviews.
By the end of 2001, Beth had joined the all-girl rock / punk super-group Girl, a club packer on the Dallas scene, quitting around the end of March to push her own band, when she was the cover girl, along with twin sis and big bro, of Buddy Magazine. That same month, Beth was featured as one of six Women Who Rock on the Brook Mays Music website.
April of 2002 saw Beth doing a brief tour with Danny Federici of Bruce Springsteens E Street band, playing BB Kings in New York Citys Times Square, the famous Stone Pony (where Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi got their start) in Asbury Park, New Jersey and the Conduit in Trenton, New Jersey. With her band, Beth opened for Los Straitjackets at the Gypsy Tea Room in Dallas, and for Marcia Ball at the Sons of Hermann Hall.
In October 2002 Beth got a call to sing with the Reverend Horton Heat on the soundtrack of the Sony movie Auto Focus. They covered an old song Real Gone Lover, as a duet.
In March of 2003, Beth moved to Austin, picking up side gigs with Elizabeth McQueen (who now sings with Asleep At The Wheel), opening for Radney Foster. In August of 2003 she joined with Stephanie Urbina Jones. Opening for Roger Creager they did The Shiner Bock Fest with Terri Hendrix, Kevin Fowler, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Reckless Kelly, and NickelBack.
After Stephanies gig ended in December of 2003, Beth had more resolve than ever to focus on her own career. In January of 2004, she started rehearsing with a new rhythm section and writing more, also putting together the fun band shed always wanted to do, an all-girl surf/rock trio The Queen of Spades, playing locally in Austin with both bands at the Continental Club, Jovitas, The Saxon Pub and any other dive that would have them. Beths original group still played once a month or so around Texas, opening for Jimmie Vaughan, Joe Bonnamassa, Doyle Bramhall, Sr., and James McMurtry.
With the release in January 2006 of her second album ’Addictions’, recorded in Austin, Texas, to worldwide distribution on the British label Armadillo, Austin and the rest of the world are picking up on Beth’s skills and dense career contained in her 28 years. She continues to work and play in the States and tours overseas in Europe. Whats in store for Beth in the next coming years? As she has said before in a 2001 interview with Southwest Blues, "I’m ready for anything you’ve got."
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Hi Beth, how are things in Nashville? Can't wait to come on down to the music city once again. I love it there. My second home! Did you have a chance to hear the songs?
Hey soul sistah, you coming out to California like you said you were or am I going to have to steal a vehicle and start stalking you across the country?
Hmmm... now that i think about it, that sounds like fun anyway - but you still need to get your ass over here. Sunny California needs your love too. XOXO
THANKS FOR THE ADD GIRL AND IT WAS GREAT MEETING YOU A FEW YEARS BACK WHEN YOU WERE IN TOWN WITH RED ELVISES!xoxo PS: THAT HAS TO BE COOL TO HAVE A TWIN!
