Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how your childhood impacted your musical direction?
A: I was born in Denver Colorado, sounds nice but I do not remember it. I was very young as a child. My parents we casual music lovers who had played a little in their youth but had put that behind them by the time I came along. My brother and I had a Fisherprice record player when we were very small and at the same time I was learning to stack blocks I was also learning to drop the needle. I enjoyed singing along with the family on long car rides and soon found that I could easily remember lyrics to songs I had heard a few times. I remember singing Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle on a playground and listining to the reverb created under a metal roof. I must have been six. I grew up in the suburbs, and did not have much exposure to live music, but loved records and the radio. My Dad sold books and maps, after leaving TWA to start his own company. One year he came back from a business trip with a book that came with a harmonica, County and Blues Harmonica for the Musically Hopeless, by Jon Gindick. I carried that harmonica everywhere, playing in stairwells and and bathtubs, listening to the sound coming back to me. When I found that you could listen to records for free at the public library I would camp out there and listen to everything they had. That’s where I first heard the music of Robert Johnson. There was something different going on in those early recordings, something preserved in the scratchy analog transmission that would be scrubbed clean in the ascendence of the recording industry and manufactured image that dominated pop radio. I was chasing this free spirt in the punk rock that started to seep into the basements of Kansas City in the 80’s in clubs like the Fool Killer. But it was not until a friend told me I should check out John Hammond who was playing at the JazzHous in Lawerence that I really got bit. John played the music of Robert Johnson, along with the rest of the Blues cannon on a National resonator guitar, a harmonica racked around his neck, and a foot pounding rhythm. He sang like he had something to lose. Here was all the pain and disillusionment that the Punk that I loved had but with out lost energy spraying in all directions. It was focused as a razor, serious as a heart attack. I have been chasing this ever since. Later, I got a job doing singing telegrams and moved in with a stripper in a cheep apartment downtown in KC, and discovered the music of Tom Waits, that was my sound track wile changing into grass skirts and tearaway cop outfits in brick allays and 7/11 parking lots. After a half year realizing that college was not going to work I hit the road working Renaissance Festivals as a stuntman playing Robin Hood in a slapstick comedy show that traveled around the US, sort of like running off with the circus. I worked for tips getting beatup by a succession of Little Johns. Eventually I made my way down to Austin Texas where I found Sixth Street, where bands were playing every night, often just for tips. I figured I could do that, and I wouldn’t have to spend the week healing up from a weekend of gigs. How wrong I was!
Q: How are you planning on growing your fan base and sharing your music with the world? What message do you have for anyone who is about to discover “Guy Forsyth”?
A: By singing loud! I love getting to sing, I feel better when I do. I have sang on top of the Cho La pass in the Himalayas, on the Streets of Shinjuku, beneath the bowsprit of a clipper ship in the Caribbean, in a basement designed by Leonardo da Vinci, a lock up in Florence, the middle of the Rio Grand, you have to chase it. I am putting music out and into the web of the digital world so that the media spider might feed, and so that those who are not near enough to hear might partake. But music is not just content to be consumed. Music is a tool for transcendence, and is much more powerful in its naked form, in person, in range. So let this recording open new doors, and pave new roads to places not yet seen, to meet people I have not yet met. So the new songs can be found and a new harmony made.
Q: Who is the most inspiring artist for you right now? And where do you find inspiration for making music?
A: There is a guy who brings his plastic bucket drum set to the on ramp getting on I-35 and plays in the heat of the day, and he is the heart that we need now. Banksy lurks in every child, waiting to adorn a world made plane by HOAs and corporate decree. Pussy Riot fights for you, and so does everyone who tries to do a good job at something simple. John Fullbright makes me happy, although he seems like he is in pain, it is a real type of pain, an honest pain.
Q: Can you tell us about the story or message behind the EP, “Rider.”?
A: I am dealing with my own ghosts, and hopefully I can help you deal with yours too. The ghosts who whisper in your ears when you try to dream at night. Music can shut them up if it’s honest enough.
Q: What is your favorite track from the EP, and why does it hold special meaning for you?
A: I can’t like Armalite even though I had to write it. It’s not something you like. Rolling Blackout Blues is very personal, and is a way of telling my friend Gean Taylor’s story. He died in the blackouts in 2021 in Texas caused by the failure of the power grid. It didn’t have to be that way, but it made some folks very rich to be cheep. Do I sound bitter?
Q: Did you face any challenges while writing or recording “Rider”?
A: Mark Addison, who produced Rider challenged me to write personaly, and Rider and Get Up came out of this. Rider is about being haunted, and Get Up is how to deal with it.
Q: What drives you to continue making music and exploring different genres throughout your career?
A: Because if you are paying attention there is great reward. But you have to be present for it to work. You have to be thankful and have your hands open to receive.
Q: Who is your dream artist to collaborate with? (dead or alive)
A: Willie Dixon! Sylvia Plath! Shakespeare! Carole King! Sam Sheppard! Ry Cooder! Tom Waits! Lucinda Williams! William Gibson! Too many to count.
Q: With your extensive list of Austin Music Awards wins and nominations, can you reflect on your journey in the Austin music community and what it means to you to be part of it?
A: Even when I got to Austin on January 10, 1990, people where already saying “oh, you just missed it!” so you proscribed a grain of salt to go with this answer. Austin has been a great place to be since I got here, and has been one of the fastest growing cities in the US for all of that time. It has changed a lot, and what made it a great place for Live Music has changed so much that it’s future as a art incubator is in jeopardy. When I moved here it was a cheap place to live, and people could focus on their passion and spend little effort paying for a hovel and tacos. That has changed. People and money have poured into Austin, and money acts like a solvent on culture. If it can not compete it is dissolved. Live music was never a great way to make money, and I have watched to clubs that I learned in be replaced with apartment buildings and retail. The gentrification of Austin has removed it’s contribution. It’s not a new story, and the art will go elsewhere and find another chink in the concrete to force it’s way through. In the mean time the best of us struggle on, fighting for space with those who have deeper pockets or move on to the next place. I have worked with the City to find ways to try to protect the music scene. The players, venues and workers still make up the prime reason that people visit Austin. But Music is hard to monetize, and art is always going to need to be on the edge.
Q: If you could go back in time and give a younger you some words of wisdom, what would they be?
A: Understanding the music biz is self defense. People will take advantage of the desire to do good and treat you like a natural resource to be strip-mined. Keeping your love of music is more valuable than money. Don’t forget to enjoy what you get to do, there is no finish line.
