Reeves Gabrels
Encyclopedia
Reeves Gabrels is an American guitarist
Guitarist
A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...

, known for virtuosity, versatility, and originality. His compositions and improvisations defy genre and "explore sonic extremes with a great, adaptive intuition for what each song needs most."

Gabrels' performance, songwriting and recording credits range from "hard-hitting blues rock to 21st century electronica," to quote Guitar World's characterization of Ulysses, a solo album.

Gabrels works independently and in collaboration with musicians worldwide. He is best known for his long partnership with British singer David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

, with whom he worked regularly from 1987 to 2000. Before and during his association with Bowie, Gabrels built an active performing and recording career in Boston, London, and New York; from 2000 to 2006 he was based in Los Angeles and today he works from Nashville, Tennessee.

Early life and education

Reeves Gabrels was born in Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...

, New York in June 1956. His mother was a typist and his father worked on tugboats in New York Harbor. Gabrels started playing guitar at age 13, and the following year (1971) his father arranged for lessons with the father's friend and contemporary Turk Van Lake, who lived in the neighborhood. Van Lake (1918–2002) was a professional musician who had played with Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...

 and others.

After high school, Gabrels attended the Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...

 in New York City but continued to play guitar. Through some session musician
Session musician
Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...

 work he met noted jazz guitarist John Scofield
John Scofield
John Scofield , often referred to as "Sco," is an American jazz guitarist and composer, who has played and collaborated with Miles Davis, Dave Liebman, Joe Henderson, Charles Mingus, Joey Defrancesco, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Pat Martino, Mavis Staples, Phil Lesh, Billy Cobham,...

, from whom he took a lesson or two. Gabrels moved to Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 to attend the Berklee School of Music, which he left several credits short of a degree in 1981.

Career

Gabrels had an active performing career in Boston before and after his professional association with David Bowie began in the late 1980s. During the 1980s and early 1990s Gabrels was a member of such Boston bands as The Dark, Life on Earth, The Atom Said, Rubber Rodeo
Rubber Rodeo
Rubber Rodeo was a Boston-based band active in the 1980s. The band fused Roxy Music-influenced new wave music with country and western influences, and dressed in 1950's-vintage country & western clothing...

, The Bentmen and Modern Farmer. Modern Farmer (Gabrels, Jamie Rubin, David Hull
David Hull (musician)
David Hull is an American bass guitar player.- Biography :He is most notable for being the substitute bass player for Aerosmith during a portion of their 2006 Route of All Evil Tour , while the band's regular bassist Tom Hamilton was absent while recovering from throat cancer...

, and Billy Beard) issued a self-titled record on Victory/Universal in 1993.

Gabrels first met David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

 in 1987 during a Bowie tour for which Gabrels' then-wife, Sara Terry, worked as publicist. Gabrels later (1989–1993) joined forces with Bowie and the Sales brothers (drummer Hunt Sales
Hunt Sales
Hunt Sales is an American rock and roll drummer who has played with Todd Rundgren, his brother Tony Sales, Iggy Pop and Tin Machine.- Personal life : Hunt Sales is the son of 1950s/60s television comedian Soupy Sales...

 and bass player Tony Sales
Tony Sales
|Tony Fox Sales is an American rock musician. A bass guitarist, Sales and his brother, Hunt Sales, played with Todd Rundgren, Iggy Pop and Tin Machine with David Bowie.-Early life and career:...

) in the rock band Tin Machine
Tin Machine
Tin Machine was a hard rock band formed in 1988, famous for being fronted by singer David Bowie. The group recorded two studio albums before dissolving in 1992, when Bowie returned to his solo career...

. Later, Gabrels became an essential part of Bowie's nineties sound, most notably on Outside (1995), Earthling
Earthling (album)
Earthling is an album by David Bowie released in February 1997 via BMG. The album showcases an electronica-influenced sound partly inspired by the Industrial and drum and bass culture of the 1990s.-Album background and development:...

(1997), and 'hours...'
'hours...'
'Hours...' is a 1999 album by British musician David Bowie. It was released on Virgin Records. This was Bowie's final album for the EMI sub-label....

(1999), the latter two of which he co-produced. "Dead Man Walking," a Bowie/Gabrels song from Earthling, was nominated for a Grammy award. Gabrels and Bowie also created the soundtrack to the computer game Omikron: The Nomad Soul
Omikron: The Nomad Soul
Omikron: The Nomad Soul is a Microsoft Windows and Dreamcast 3D adventure game developed by French developer Quantic Dream and published in 1999 by Eidos Interactive. It was released on October 31, 1999 for PC and on June 21, 2000 for Dreamcast...

in 1999 for the game's French publisher. Gabrels ended his professional association with Bowie in late 1999.

Independently, Gabrels maintained a wide-ranging career as composer/songwriter, musical collaborator, and solo performer/producer. Solo records by Gabrels include The Sacred Squall of Now (Rounder/Upstart, 1995); Ulysses (Della Notte) (Emagine, 2000); Live, Late, Loud (Myth Music, 2003); and Rockonica (Myth Music/Favored Nations/Sony, 2005). Ulysses was nominated for a Yahoo! Internet Award in 1999 as a then-pathbreaking Internet release, before becoming available the following year on CD.

Gabrels has written soundtracks for films including David Sutherland's The Farmer's Wife (Frontline, 1995) and for PBS productions, and collaborated with Public Enemy on the song "Go Cat Go" for the Spike Lee film He Got Game
He Got Game
He Got Game is a 1998 American sports-drama film written and directed by Spike Lee. It stars Denzel Washington as Jake Shuttlesworth, a prison inmate convicted for killing his wife...

(soundtrack, Def Jam, 1998). He wrote the "club music" portions of the soundtrack for the video game Deus Ex
Deus Ex
Deus Ex is an action role-playing game developed by Ion Storm Inc. and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000, which combines gameplay elements of first-person shooters with those of role-playing video games...

.

Gabrels and slide guitarist David Tronzo
David Tronzo
David Tronzo is an American guitarist, best known for his innovation of pairing the techniques of electric slide guitar to the genres of bebop, modern jazz, rock, downtown music and experimental music...

 joined forces on a virtuoso instrumental album, Night in Amnesia, issued by Rounder in 1995. Gabrels also worked with Robert Smith
Robert Smith (musician)
Robert James Smith is an English musician. He is the lead singer, guitar player and principal songwriter of the rock band The Cure, and its only constant member since its founding in 1976...

 of The Cure
The Cure
The Cure are an English rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. The band has experienced several line-up changes, with frontman, vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Robert Smith being the only constant member...

 during the 1990s, collaborating on The Cure's track "Wrong Number
Wrong Number (song)
"Wrong Number" is the name of a single released by the British group the Cure in 1997. The single was the new song on the Galore singles compilation 1987-1997...

" and "A Sign From God" (as COGASM
COGASM
COGASM is a side project of singer Robert Smith of The Cure, drummer Jason Cooper and guitarist Reeves Gabrels. The first two letters of the members' surnames were taken to form the group's name, which is properly spelled with all capital letters...

) as well as co-writing the song "Yesterday's Gone" which Smith sings on Gabrels' album Ulysses.

Gabrels appears with Club D'Elf on Now I Understand, (Accurate Records, 2006), the first studio recording by a Boston-based underground dub/jazz/Moroccan/trance/electronica group led by bassist Mike Rivard; the album also features John Medeski & Billy Martin (Medeski, Martin & Wood), DJ Logic, Mat Maneri, Duke Levine, Alain Mallet, Mister Rourke, and more. In 2008 German label AFM released New Universal Order by X-World/5, a Heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...

 supergroup
Supergroup (music)
In the late 1960s, the term supergroup was coined to describe "a rock music group whose performers are already famous from having performed individually or in other groups"....

 made up of guitarists Gabrels and Andy LaRocque
Andy LaRocque
Andy LaRocque is best known as a guitarist, songwriter, and occasional synth player for the band King Diamond.-Biography:...

, vocalist Nils K. Rue
Nils K. Rue
Nils K. Rue is a Norwegian metal singer. His main band is the progressive metal band Pagan's Mind; he is also a current member of the heavy metal band X-World/5 and the newest vocalist for Canadian progressive metal band, Eidolon....

, bass player Magnus Rosén
Magnus Rosén
Klas Magnus Rosén is a Swedish musician, born 1963 in Gothenburg, and is best known for being the bassist of the Swedish band HammerFall during the years 1997-2007....

, and Los Angeles-based drummer Big Swede.

Since 2006 Gabrels has been based in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...

. He currently performs most often with drummer Jeff Brown and bass player Kevin Hornback in a trio, REEVES GABRELS & HiS iMAGiNARY FR13NDS."

Gear

Guitars: Gabrels has used different guitars at varied phases in his musical career, selecting instruments to suit the music. He is noted for playing Steinberger
Steinberger
Steinberger refers to a series of distinctive electric guitars and bass guitars, designed and originally manufactured by Ned Steinberger. The word Steinberger can be used to refer to either the instruments themselves or the company that produced them...

 guitars, the Parker Fly
Parker Fly
The Parker Fly is a type of electric guitar built by Parker Guitars. It was designed by Ken Parker and Larry Fishman, and first produced in 1993. The Fly is unique among electric guitars in the way it uses composite materials. It is notable for its light weight and resonance...

, and Fernandes Guitars
Fernandes Guitars
Fernandes Guitars is a guitar and accessory manufacturer that originated in Japan in 1969, building flamenco guitars. As the company grew it expanded production to include more acoustic guitars, electric guitars, bass guitars, amplifiers, and accessories to become one of the biggest guitar...

, but also plays Gibson Guitars such as the Les Paul
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...

 and the Flying V, as well as Fender
Fender
Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, commonly referred to as simply Fender, of Scottsdale, Arizona is a manufacturer of stringed instruments and amplifiers, such as solid-body electric guitars, including the Stratocaster and the Telecaster...

's Stratocaster.

He has often chosen innovative, less well known makers, explaining in interviews that he prefers a guitar without a set history and with which he is free to create sounds of his own imagination.

At the summer NAMM show in 2008, Gabrels found two new guitars he liked, both by American makers: Campbell American Guitars
Campbell american guitars
Campbell American Guitars is an American Guitar company based in Massachusetts, with their factory located in Rhode Island. They were originally known as Greene and Campbell but have changed their name to Campbell American Guitars. Their line of guitars include the Transitone, Caledonian, Precix...

 of New England, and Reverend Guitars of Warren, Michigan.

A Reeves Gabrels signature model guitar will be available from Reverend guitars
Reverend guitars
Reverend Musical Instruments, commonly known as Reverend, is an American manufacturer of electric guitars. The company was established in 1996 by noted guitar and amplifier technician Joe Naylor, a graduate of the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery...

in early 2010, and featured at the winter NAMM show in Los Angeles.

Discography

Tin Machine
  • Tin Machine (1989)
  • Tin Machine II (1991)
  • Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby (1992)


David Bowie
  • Outside (1995)
  • Earthling (1997)
  • 'hours...' (1999)


Solo Work
  • The Sacred Squall of Now (1995)
  • Ulysses (Della Notte) (2000)
  • Rockonica (2005)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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