Zac Gunthorpe

“All I’ve ever wanted to do is write songs and be true to them,” says Zac Gunthorpe. It might sound like an obvious approach, but some musicians take years to discover it. For Gunthorpe there was never any other way, which tells you much about the young songwriter and his music. As a youngster, he plunged into music so intensely he would have exploded if he didn’t have a crack at making it himself. Combining enthusiasm (bordering on obsession) with natural talent and an intimate familiarity with Beatles/Byrds/Band songcraft, he was off and running. ?Debut album Glory Bound (2015) cemented Gunthorpe’s dedication to making music and, more importantly, to songwriting as a way of life.“It was always songwriters that I went to, to try and make sense of life before I began writing and playing music,” says Gunthorpe. “I got to a point where I realised they were writing their own songs to make sense of life for them and I needed to do the same if I was going to make sense of mine.” Album Number Two, Ghost of the Town (2018) introduced a focus on lost, desperate spirits, the “stealers and their shadowy nooks,” the “broken hearted lovers laying in graves.” Over eight original songs, Gunthorpe and The Brown Byrds (Ryan Miller, Brett Layton, Zach Miller and Neal Purchase Jr) dedicate themselves to these ghosts with a raw commitment reminiscent of Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night, with engineer/producer Zach Miller hanging onto the desk controls for dear life. ?“I think it’s about the invisible people,” says Gunthorpe of Ghost of the Town. “Downtrodden folk, down on their luck, that can’t catch a break and feel like the world has turned its back on them. That’s why we had to track it live with imperfections included. Life isn’t perfect, especially for the characters in these songs.” -Martin Jones Zac is going to give you a chance to go beneath veneers of simplicity into understated complexity and nuance. Listening, you might begin to hear why he doesn't need anything more than his guitar and his voice to enchant the night. Be prepared to dive under the facile surface of day-to-day appearances, into sophisticated, fertile awareness. –  Charlie Macneilhttps://www.zacgunthorpe.com