Aaron Garner

This all started with a Mars bar commercial. I'm not kidding. Well, the seeds were planted long before that in my family tree many branches ago really. I was informed some years ago that relatives on my father's side were Vaudeville performers. My dad is also a musician, and my mother has her Grade 8 piano. But the real intent started with a Mars bar commercial when I was about 12 years old. The guy in the spot was jamming out on his acoustic guitar on his front porch playing to a pretty girl. That looked like a pretty good angle.

I have to concur with and paraphrase Billy Joel, any musician who says he got into music for really any other reason than to meet girls is lying.

Of course the sheen of the prospect of an enhanced social life began to dim in comparison to what I started getting out of the music intrisically. Music and playing guitar became this wondrous headspace to explore, limited only by my imagination. I became a sponge, soaking up everything I could. My first guitar-oriented record purchases were Paul McCartney's "Flowers In The Dirt", a Doobie Brothers record from around the same time, and Stevie Ray Vaughan's "In Step".

The first two gathered dust after a couple of weeks, but "In Step" was the first album that really spoke to me on a level that defied description. When I first heard the solo in "Tightrope", everything inside me just went YEAH!!!. I dedicated myself to learning that album inside and out; I haven heard the album in probably over a year and a half but I could still play the solos note for note on it.Stevie sent me chasing down all kinds of other leads to fuel my fire to learn: Albert King, Buddy Guy, Lonnie Mack, Muddy Waters and Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Old R&B artists like Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Little Milton, and Booker T & The MG's became a parallel education. Blues guitar and those rhythms became indeleble on my soul, and the music sent me on an academic journey through the south and the culture that this music came from.

From the blues and R&B, I explored went on to explore the pantheon of rock guitar: Clapton, Hendrix, Page, Beck, Santana, etc. I dove in futher into jazz and fusion, Miles Davis, Coltrane, John McLaughlin, Robben Ford, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Smith, Eric Johnson (anyone remember UZEB? :) ) At this point I was performing with guys twice my age, sometimes much older, not many kids of my generation were into the music I was. I was fortunate to learn from a lot of these musicians who seemed to like having me around. Some became very respected artists in Ontario and Canada, and their encouragment and advice are, in golf parlance, "swing thoughts" for me to this day.

Over the years, I've had the good fortune to meet quite a number of musicians whose music I've had a great deal of repect for, and even been lucky enough to share the stage with a few. Some I can even call good friends. A friendship rooted in a shared musical experience runs deep, there's an unspoken bond that develops between people who are involved in creating a moment on stage. The kind of connection that can make you feel like you haven't missed a beat, even if you haven't seen them for years.

It's a long way off from a Mars Bar commercial at this point, thank god. But this life I've got, well......it's still a pretty sweet way to go.

If you like these tunes and want to support yours truly in the digital age so that more music will come your way, visit

Cheers, G.