Garnet Rogers

FFWD Weekly
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Driving the night away
Garnet Rogers puts on the miles as he follows his own career path
By Martin Kemp

Drinking his morning coffee and preparing for another long day and night's drive towards Alberta, Garnet Rogers looks out his Minnesota hotel room onto the snow drifts below. He is speaking on the phone with yet another journalist, trying to describe his winding career path and the turn his road has taken with the release of his latest CD, Night Drive.

"I'd like to ask you about the new CD."

"Oh, you mean the loud one."

Putting the "sweet, pretty acoustic songs" away, at least for now, Night Drive sees a transformation of Garnet Rogers from traditional folk singer to electric guitar wizard.

The title track of Night Drive sums up a lot of things for Rogers. A 10-minute guitar epic which utilizes distortion, feedback, reverb and other fancy tricks, it signals his entrance into new musical territory, which is perhaps alien to segments of his audience. Lyrically, the song explores the part of his life which involves long, late-night drives from show to show, intertwined with his relationship with his late brother Stan.

"I kind of feel that I nailed that one, in terms of music and in terms of lyrical intent," says Rogers. Relating the personal importance of the song, he explains that, "Regardless of how long I play, or where I play, there is always in the background my association with my brother. I don't have a problem with that and am very proud of that whole part of my life."

"Night Drive" (the song) is an opportunity for Rogers to put the cards on the table, and to talk to his audience about what he has perhaps not really discussed since the death of his well known folk-singer brother in a 1983 plane fire.

"It kind of lets people know what's been going on with me, and I think they appreciate hearing me open up a bit about that. Also, I think just musically it is an interesting piece. It changes every night, where it gets to the point where I'm stomping on this minefield of distortion pedals, and by the end of the song, it's just this wall of feedback you're hearing."

Rogers, who has released all of his albums on his own Snow Goose Songs label, realizes that his lack of major label backing, combined with a refusal to travel by air, will likely stump any future chances at super-stardom, which is just fine by him.

In fact, Rogers sees the ideal career path as similar to that of British folk-rocker Richard Thompson. "He's able to do the acoustic thing by himself when he wants to and he's able to go out with a band when he wants to," Rogers observes. "And he's remained enough of an anomaly in the industry that he's able to pretty much do the kind of records that he wants to make and they remain firmly out the of canon of popular music."

Reflecting on what he's just said, Rogers laughs. "How's that for a career wish - 'I don't want to be very popular!' There are (artists like) Celine Dion going, 'Oh, I want to sell eight million records a week,' and I'm saying, 'Well, I'd like to be a cult figure that hardly anyone knows of.' That's my dream. I guess you're only as good as your dream!"