Gayle Skidmore

A born songwriter, Gayle Skidmore has written over 2500 songs since she began songwriting at the age of 8. Gayle Skidmore won Best Singer-Songwriter in the 2015 San Diego Music Awards, Best Pop Album in the 2014 San Diego Music Awards and Best Singer-Songwriter in the 2013 San Diego Music Awards. Her song "No Ordinary Life" was featured in the 2018 "Little Women" film.

“Listening to Gayle is like entering a dream you don’t want to get out of,” remarks Jens Kruger of The Kruger Brothers as he joins Gayle Skidmore on stage at Eagle Music Shop’s Banjo 2020 event with Deering Banjos. If there is one thing that Gayle’s fans express over and over, it is that her music encompasses you fully in an enchanting, other-worldly fantasy.

There is certainly a variety of styles within this realm, as you can experience on any of Skidmore’s over 24 independent releases, on which she plays over 20 instruments. She experiments with a range of influences from her classical piano background, as well as her many other musical ventures, such as her time filling in on lead guitar for the all-Asian “Chinatown Dance Rock” band The Slants. On her latest full-length studio album, The Golden West, she discusses “moving on from the troubles of the past and forging a promising new tomorrow” with “her wood nymph voice.” From banjo grooving “Moving On” with its catchy slide guitar and whistling combo, to the haunting “Pale Ghosts,” it has been described as “a kind of surreal, groovy portal of escape, where I am blasting her music on my magic radio as I drive down some forgotten coast in the middle of an Indian Summer with my best friends from childhood.” (-Carole Banks Weber, Medium.com)