Slippery liquid guitar, earthy and soaring vocals, sweet and scary, melancholy and bright, folksy and rocking.

16 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Americana, FOLK: Folk Blues



Details:
Gary M Hall has written and performed music for 30+ years. He picked up a five-stringed Roy Rogers guitar at age 5, shook his head, and set it down for eight more years. He began playing violin at age 10, and was a member of the Omaha (Nebraska) Youth Symphony Orchestra in his early teens, but the call of "Day Tripper" lured him away. Tired of practicing violin for 1/2 hour a day, he switched to the guitar at age 13, which he played five hours daily for the next thirty years. Gary picked up the mandolin and banjo later. From the mid-70s to the mid-90s, he played up to 120 nights per year in a variety of performing bands, including rock & roll (Highway Call, Hot Lettuce), jazz/fusion (Opie), rhythm & blues (Groove Dudes), sixties (Raiders of Time), and blues (Too Smooth). It was in the 1970s that his Clapton-esque style and tendency to walk into walls led to his baptism as Slowhead.

In the mid-90s, Gary's love of music and theatre merged. He joined orchestras (occasionally with permission) at various theatres in Nebraska (Lincoln & Omaha), on and off-stage, with and without make-up. Gary rocked the house with "The Who's Tommy", "Grease", "Hair", "The Rocky Horror Show", and "Footloose", went jazzy with "Crazy for You" and "Hello, Dolly", and went mainstream Broadway with "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat", "The Civil War", "Pippin", "Godspell", "Children of Eden", "Grapes of Wrath", and other shows. He's directed music for several shows, and composed original music for others. As a result of working in and with these various musical styles, Gary feels very much at home on the wide musical range, and has been a guest speaker (History of Rock Guitar, Development of Road Music, etc.) at university and theatrical events.

Gary's composed hundreds of songs, instrumental and lyrical, in a variety of styles, though most commonly a combination of rock, blues, and folk, in the style the Grateful Dead, Mark Knopfler, or Eric Clapton. Young, old, and deceased listeners enjoy his unpredictable lyrics and flowing guitar.

Gary records digitally under his own name, and still under the name of "The Occupants" (which is another way of saying Gary M Hall & whichever musical friends are around at the moment), and recently released his fourth CD of original recordings, the upbeat "Occuparadise" from his home in Estes Park, Colorado. His first CD, "Occupantaloons", was released in early 2003, the second, the sometimes bittersweet, sometimes raging "Colonel Pecker's Homely Parts Club Orchestra", in October of 2003, and the third, the dark "Occupantional Hazard" in 2004.