Monday, March 12, 2012

An Interview with Garrett Borns

After seeing Garrett Borns' fantastic cover of "Criminal" on YouTube,

I immediately shot off an email to his manager to set up an interview.

He found the time to talk to me in the midst of pre-SXSW preparation.
"I've been listening to music for a lot longer than I've been playing, really," he said over the phone Saturday afternoon.
For a long time, Garrett wanted to become a filmmaker. Throughout high school, he wrote music, but didn't share it with many people.
"That was kind of my journal or my diary," he said.
Garrett ended up recording a demo in Grand Rapids and met a local filmmaker, Jeff Joanisse.  Jeff told him that if music was ever something he wanted to pursue as a career, he would be interested in managing him and investing in him.
Garrett had never considered music as a career before.  He began taking classical piano at a local community college, which opened his eyes to the world of music theory.
Not too long after, Jeff told Garrett that he was going to be in Paris, and offered to fly him out to film him playing music.  Garrett agreed, and he traveled to France in the springtime.
"I felt this weird feeling of home there," Garrett said.  "The response I got for my music was not what I expected at all."  People kept asking who he was, and where he was from, and if he had music online.  At that point, he didn't have much recorded.
Jeff offered again to become his manager, and Garrett accepted.
After that, things started happening. Garrett was asked to be the musical guest at a TEDx event in Grand Rapids.
"We played a montage of Paris footage behind me," he said. Again, he got a great response.
"People were like flipping out. I was like, 'Wow. Maybe I could do this.'"

Garrett attended a Britney Spears concert in Grand Rapids not long after.
"I had the chance to meet her," he said.  "I was chilling backstage with her kids, playing video games.  They're adorable. They have big Britney eyes."
Covering Spears' song "Criminal" just sort of happened
"The whole video was in one take," Garrett said. He also says the contentious toothpick-in-the-mouth was unintentional.
"[The band members] were smoking, so I just popped a toothpick in," he said. Then they went inside and covered the song. "It was kind of just a winged thing."
After Garrett released the video, he got to meet Britney's manager and the songwriter, who liked his cover.

So what's next for Garrett after SXSW?
"Hopefully I'll get a day off one day in there," he laughed. "I'm hoping to do a lot more video work this summer."
He's also going to be recording and writing music with his band. A full-length album may be in the works. Whatever happens, we'll surely hear much more from Garrett Borns.

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