The Garners: Much More than Gypsy Jazz

Jon & Lorelei Garner

Years ago, I was watching the Country Music Awards and noticed something interesting. The CMA gives awards for best vocalist—male, female, duo, group, etc. But there’s also a separate category for best “entertainer.”

What’s the difference, I wondered? Aren’t all musicians, by definition, entertainers? Or do some performers have an undefinable quality—the It Factor, to borrow the reality show title—that makes them inherently more watchable? Call it stage presence, call it charisma, call it showmanship, they just seem to connect with the audience in a way that even a more technically proficient musician might not.

Whatever It is, The Garners—husband/wife team Jon and Lorelei Garner and bassist Paul Tillery—have It.

Start with the music itself. I defy you to listen to any of their self-described “cowboy gypsy bebop crawl” songs without physically bobbing your head like a dancing cockatoo with a mohawk. I defy you. Jon Garner’s fingers skip around his guitar fretboard like a kid who knows every square inch of his backyard and has just been excused from the dinner table. Lorelei has transformed her former opera voice into a slithering jazz roller coaster that careens between octaves in a way that’s somehow both silky and punctuating. And Paul Tillery’s jaunty hands bounce so fast that if his upright bass were horizontal, you’d swear he was Jerry Lee Lewis pounding out some rockabilly. Combined, the effect makes even people who’ve never heard of Django Reinhardt seriously consider donning a circle skirt or suspenders and signing up for swing dance lessons.

A word about the term “gypsy jazz,” the genre most closely associated with their sound. Jon acknowledges the word can be considered a slur but takes his cues from the European musicians of the genre, whom he’s played and studied with for decades. “I’ve met a lot of the cats and asked them how they feel about the label and they’re proud. This is how their music is known and marketed, and they depend on people being able to find them. They don’t want it to be taken away from them because that’s money out of their pocket.” (Side note: regardless of your position on this term, I think we can all agree that Jon’s use of “cats” is cool as hell.).

Next there’s the tempo—my strumming arm gets tired just watching them. Don’t let Jon’s laconic speaking voice fool you—if the group’s BPM (beats per minute) were a measure of someone’s blood pressure, they’d have long since suffered a stroke. Even the group’s take on Irving Berlin’s Russian Lullaby is not something any sane parent would use to put their child to sleep. Maybe it comes from Jon’s early punk rock phase, since he describes their sound as a mixture of “Django Reinhardt, Billie Holiday, and the energy of the Violent Femmes.” Jon elaborates, “What I like in jazz is the raw energy. I feel like it’s almost like the original punk rock because of its rebelliousness and its energy and its chaos.”

Then there’s the variety. The Garners balance the skills of three top-tier musicians who are smart enough to constantly shift the focus between their strengths to keep the audience interested. Lorelei’s soaring melody-line transitions into Jon’s guitar runs, which switches to his lead vocal, which morphs into harmonies, which backs off to let Paul’s bass riff shine, which comes back around to Lorelei’s finale—all in one song. And while Lorelei’s vocals and Jon’s guitar solos frequently take the spotlight, both are quick to acknowledge the importance of Paul’s steady, yet creative bass line. Jon also praises the fact that Lorelei has become a “reliable and authentic rhythm player,” noting that “it’s hard to find people that can do it the right way. And she’s become one of the best in town, and it allows you to play the music correctly.”

Then there’s the song selection. The Garners regularly compose and record original material, and Jon has a catalog stretching back decades, including albums such as Blume, Jon Garner Trio and the Happy Accidents, and Jon Ji-JARM, and Dear Old World. But being an entertainer also means knowing when the audience just wants familiar ear candy. The Garners sense this intuitively and throw in plenty of crowd-pleasing standards, expanding beyond their original songs and Django repertoire to include blues, Louis Armstrong, and even Hank Williams.

Finally, there are the little theatrical touches—the call and response, the interweaving of singing and speaking, and the improvised outbursts they describe as “just hollering at each other.” This animation came naturally for Lorelei, a childhood musical theatre nerd who used to watch stacks of old Broadway shows on VHS and Beta tapes. But Jon has embraced it, explaining that “a lot of the tunes that we call standards come from musical theater. It’s the basis of it.” In fact, they’d like to go even further in this direction—not simply playing a series of song but creating “a whole theatrical arc” and narrative to their performances.

Hopefully, gentle reader, you realize by now that I’m not using the term “entertainer” as a euphemism for “technical slouch” here. See Carol Bellamy (“I think he is an entertainer. I would prefer if he were a performer”). We’ve all seen the burned-out musicians who rely on audience pandering and cheap laughs to prop up a stale, sub-par performance. But the Garners have no shortage of musical chops—they just have that extra spark you can’t define but you know it when you see it. If you hear them playing in a restaurant, you’ll put down your fork, look up, and listen. And if you’re out with someone, the conversation could suffer, and you might have to shush them once or twice.

Can being an entertainer, rather than a mere performer, be taught? Or are folks like the Garners a musical version of the Calvinist elect, chosen before birth to ascend to a higher plane of harmonious salvation? Well, Lorelei is the conductor of the Concert Choir and Swing Choir at Mission Bay High School, so she’s learned how to keep the attention of one of the toughest audiences around. And Jon has overpaid his dues through decades of gigging in every genre you’ve heard of (and some you haven’t). So, whether It’s learned or divinely gifted, the Garners are entertainers in the best possible way—a local treasure not to be missed. Swing by Books and Records or Wormwood, grab your beverage of choice, and fall in love with jazz all over again.

In addition to their regular gigs around town, the Garners will perform a concert for San Diego Folk Heritage on May 29 at 7:30 in Templar’s Hall in Poway; tickets available at https://sdfolkheritage.org/.