George Carver

George Carver's music is an idiosyncratic, low-key blend of jazz, blues, folk and country. The singer, songwriter and multi instrumentalist who currently resides in Austin, Texas, can boast of as much experience in other areas of the music business as he's had on the stage. Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, inspired equally by futurist R. Buckminster Fuller and bluesman Muddy Waters, Carver was schooled in music by local Western New York masters Stan Szelest and Sandy Konikoff . After a few rootless years of singing and playing he helped found the bluesy punk-rock band Tot Rocket & the Twins, taking up residence in New York City in the early Eighties. His decade-plus in New York found him filling other roles. He sold guitars to the stars on the famous block of shops along 48th street. As an engineer at Top Cat Studios, he worked with a long list of artists including Whitney Houston, Joe Cocker, Duran Duran, Aerosmith, PIL, and Bob Dylan, as they rehearsed, cut demos or played label showcases. Later, he composed and produced all kinds of music for film and TV out of KMA Studios on Times Square, as well producing and recording diverse artists like modern jazz improviser Cooper-Moore, shakuhachi master James Nyoraku, and the great Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji.

Moving to Austin in 1991 to provide a more hospitable environment for his family, Carver's musical horizons expanded considerably when he became immersed in Western Swing, the freewheeling èhillbilly jazzî that was born in Texas in the Thirties. That's when he took up the eight string lap (non-pedal) steel, learning from such Lone Star masters as Jimmy Day, Cindy Cashdollar, John Ely and Junior Brown, and using the energetic, feel-good sound as a counterpoint to the world-weary, more darkly humorous music he writes and performs with his band The Modern Agriculture. In addition to fronting his own group, Carver plays with Mark Rubin and the Ridgetop Syncopators and Lubbock bluesman R.C. Banks He also works regularly as a producer and musician around town. Among the highlights of his Austin phase, he's been a finalist in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest; won a Parent's Choice Award for Down at the Zoo, his CD with Austin funkster Papa Mali; performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. with the Ridgetop Syncopators; backed Gwyneth Paltrow on guitar in the movie Infamous; and been the featured artist at festivals like the 2005 Breda Jazz Festival in Holland, and the Winnipeg and Calgary folk festivals in Canada in the Summer of 2006. Following the release of his 1998 album God the Mother, Carver signed with the Dutch label Pink Records and began touring Belgium and the Netherlands where he returns regularly.