Eric Garrison, a teacher at New Canaan Country School, has traveled the byways of America playing his folk music, a tradition he can”™t bring himself to retire from.
Garrison grew up in Hyde Park, N.Y., the son of a musically inclined IBM worker and a piano teacher.
“It was kind of expected in my house that you play an instrument. It was part of our culture.”
Garrison”™s first instrument was a drum set, but after heading off to Ithaca College and then Marist College, he found the guitar to be more suitable for cramped dorm rooms and campus steps.
“It was a way to be able to play more. I began doing solo stuff almost immediately.”
While in college, Garrison used various bands as the primary way to get his music heard; but it would be his voice in folk music that would prove to have staying power.
Garrison graduated from Marist with a degree in English and began to make a living by playing guitar.
He worked a variety of manual labor jobs to supplement his music. He also found teaching as a happy companion to his musical aspirations.
“I heard about an apprentice teacher program at New Canaan. I was very fortunate to have landed at NCCS. This is a great school ”“ great teachers, great staff, great resources and great kids. The longevity of my teaching career is directly connected with these features of the school.”
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In the early 1980s, what the school hours afforded Garrison was the ability to play gigs in the evening throughout the Hudson Valley, Westchester and Connecticut.
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“There I was, and teaching just came to be a very natural thing.”
Garrison”™s musical life began to grow as his performances began to stretch into the Deep South and Midwest.
Garrison married and remarried and had three children.
“The music I knew I wasn”™t ready to give up. A lot of people say that it”™s something associated with your youth and there”™s a time to give it up but that always struck me as odd.”
Garrison began to find his strength as a songwriter at folk workshops where men and women his age were building lives as musicians; it gave him hope.
“It made it accessible. Fifteen and twenty years earlier no one was offering any instruction on this is how to market yourself or approach a record label. The only way I knew how to do it then was getting out on the road. This was totally different, through college you”™re playing cover music and not many people are listening, but here people were concentrated coming to see you play your music.”
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Garrison built his musical repertoire and also developed his personality on stage by telling stories and jokes between songs. He also began working at the workshop programs, both as a teacher and administrator. His tenure at The Swannanoa Gathering, a major workshop-festival in North Carolina, stretched 14 years during which he was the founding coordinator and designer of the Contemporary Folk Week program.
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Garrison over the years developed a recording studio at his home in New Canaan called China Moon Productions as well as a theatrical sound business.
“I learned a lot about recording and production. I”™ve produced a couple dozen singer-songwriters. I did my very first album there.”
He now has three solo albums to his credit and his work can be heard on his website at www.ericgarrison.net.
Garrison has opened shows for icons such as Tom Paxton, Janis Ian, Leon Redbone, Aztec Two Step and bluegrass legend Bill Monroe. He has also had the chance to perform in sought after folk venues such as EddieӪs Attic in Decatur, Ga., Caf̩ Carpe in Fort Atkinson, Wis., Caff̩ Lena in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., The Grey Eagle in Asheville, N.C., the Ginkgo Coffeehouse in St. Paul, Minn., and the Towne Crier Cafe in Pawling, N.Y. Though his travels have decreased in frequency, Garrison can still be found playing some of his favorite venues and wonӪt miss the opportunity to strum on his guitar, whether itӪs for the area theater or a crowd just looking for some good folk music.
