Garnet Rogers, always stunning

Garnet Rogers is one of the most sincere and thoughtful folk performers I’ve ever seen.

Here’s a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0c3gA76uPQ

Last night Rogers played a superb show in Herndon VA. The man can write songs. Sweet love songs. Stark, ideal-busting topical songs about soldiering and working hard. Introspective songs about living and dying in an incomprehensively vast universe. Great stuff.

I am truly worn out on a lot of the recycled themes that many songwriters use for folk, acoustic, and bluegrass compositions today. Civil War stories, love songs set in the 1930s, it’s all too tried and contrived for me. I think I rode on a real train once in my life, so how many train songs can I sing with true feeling and integrity? I find Garnet Rogers’s music inspiring because I understand the stories. He writes for people today, about life’s troubles and joys all around us. No formulas needed for these songs, just someone who cares enough and works hard enough to create songs that are honest and true.