Greg Garing’s Musical Circus

Garing’s Circus celebrates Nashville’s traditional music heritage

By Ron Wynn, rwynn@nashvillecitypaper.com

December 19, 2005

Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Greg Garing avoids using words like “purist” in describing himself or his music, though he certainly embraces the term “traditionalist” when describing the genres and artists that he reveres.

Longtime Nashville fans might remember Garing from his days playing with Ralph Stanley or Jimmy Martin, or the many recordings he made with the late fiddle giant Vassar Clements. He lived in New York from 1998 until just a few months ago, but has now returned to Nashville.

“One of the things I’ve always tried to do is gather up what I considered the best of the music of the South and take it across America -- to present some of the finest traditional music throughout this region and the South,” Garing said.

“One of the acts is a great old-time African-American mountain music singer named Norris, who’s spent much of his life playing in Holland.  He plays old-time bluegrass, and he even has a group called the Ebony String Band. Those are the types of performers that we want to get on the Circus, people really playing the true traditional music.”

Though he grew up in Erie, Pa., Garing has always gravitated toward vintage American music rather than trendy pop.  A boogie-woogie and ragtime pianist as a 10-year-old, Garing made the move to Nashville at 18 and became a familiar part of the Lower Broad music community.  Still, he’s quick to downplay any notions that he was some sort of trendsetter.

“I was playing a lot of the honky-tonks, and one weekend we went to Tootsie’s. Lucinda Williams came through and John Prine, and Lucinda was just thrilled about what we were playing and asked if we could play there some more. Eventually there were bands like BR549 and others that did a lot of playing in the honky-tonks. But the one thing that didn’t happen there that I really hoped would was we couldn’t get the old-timers to get involved. There were a few shows at Ernest Tubb’s, but so many of them just wouldn’t get involved, and of course now they’re mostly gone.”

Garing was featured in a 1999 documentary by Glenn Lazzaro titled Newcomer along with John Hartford, Doug Dillard and Bill Monroe. He also played with the Harlem All Stars, a collection of venerable musicians who worked with many swing era masters. He envisions the Music City Circus as the culmination and continuation of his efforts to help publicize the nation’s genuine roots music.

“We have a host of ages who appear on the show,” Garing said. “From young to old, we’re showing audiences old school skill and heart in music still exists.”

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