Whether playing with music legends like “King of Bluegrass” Jimmy Martin or jazz/R&B giant Bubba Brooks, being
one of the prime movers behind the honky-tonk revival on Lower Broadway during the early 1990s, or confounding all musical expectations with the varied pretzel twists and turns of his career — like his 1997 hillbilly trip-hop album Alone — Greg Garing has poured pretty much every bit of his life, passion and soul into music. Now, back in Music City for the foreseeable future, he’s set up camp in the Cult Fiction Underground theater beneath Logue’s Black Raven Emporium in East Nashville for an extended residency of Wednesday night performances.
The fact that Garing can roll into town and instantly put a band together that includes such top-shelf musicians as Isaac Albright, Brad Alvin, Andy Gibson, Chris Scruggs and Kenny Vaughn speaks volumes for Garing’s ability to conjure honky-tonk-jump-and-jive magic out of the ether. Billed as “Greg Garing’s Hipster Apocalypse,” last week’s first official performance resulted in a small but dazzled audience of true believers leaving the venue convinced that they truly had seen humanity’s best and last hope for surviving the coming “bro country” Armageddon.
The hillbilly stomp starts at 8 p.m. tonight. Don’t miss it or you’ll be wandering the desolate post-apocalyptic landscape forever cursing yourself for what might have been.
