With money from his parents, Gordon Mayer bought his first acoustic guitar, a Silvertone from Sears. The Beatles had just released Rubber Soul, and he immediately attempted to learn all of the songs. He started writing original tunes, too. They weren't that good, but he was having fun creating them.
Gordon kept writing songs as he played rock, folk-rock, pop, country, blues, and soul-music covers. He listened to jazz: big band and small combos. He was drawn to great musicianship and harmonic complexity.
Gordon's songwriting had become a bit muddled when he discovered the lead sheets of the songs from the '20s, '30s, and '40s. He had heard many of them before. The Tin Pan Alley era. Strong melodies. Lyrics mostly about love. He put sets of these songs together and started playing them acoustically with his friend Barrett Nelson. Throughout, he kept writing original tunes.
Then a few years ago, Gordon's life changed in a big way, and he stopped playing covers completely. He began to write songs at a pretty brisk pace. Finally, he had a couple of sets of original songs. The lyrics seemed more thoughtful, and the music complimented the lyrics not his need for complexity.
So, imagine Donald Fagen and John Sebastian writing a song together. Or, Curtis Mayfield writing with Bob Dylan. Elliot Smith with Baden Powell. Gordon's songs explore those disparate notions of songwriting with lyrics based in introspective reflections and the parts of life we all share.
