Music / Reed Turner
The names of the towns he drove by in Idaho and New Mexico sounded familiar, so Reed Turner called his mother, who confirmed that this summer he drove the exact same route from Portland, Ore., to Austin as his family did 20 years ago when Turner was 5. His mother also passed on a tidbit he'd forgotten: "She said that I insisted on us staying only at Best Western motels the entire trip."
As a scuffling singer-songwriter, Turner changed his nightly lodging philosophy on the latest trek. "This time, the cheapest motels won out," he said with a laugh.
Born in Portland and raised in Austin, Turner came home in early August with a new six-song EP that he calls "my own outsider's analysis of the things I witnessed during a very ambivalent period of life." Although he writes in first-person, the songs on SIDE ONE: SEE HOW FAR I GET aren't necessarily autobiographical. But they're unflinchingly personal. From the title track, with its search for meaning, to the EP-closing "Acrobats & Soldiers," the young protagonist seems to grow more comfortable with who he is.
The same could be said for Turner's four years at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he majored in songwriting, His high school band, Dissidents, won second best U-18 Band in The Austin Chronicle's Austin Music Awards in 2004, but lead singer Turner had been playing guitar less than two years when he was accepted at the prestigious school of budding virtuosos. "I was pretty green compared to most of the other students," he said. "But I soaked it all up and learned so much. It was like moving to Italy to learn how to speak Italian."
Turner said being taught to play guitar in a finger-picking Merle Travis style was a major development in his songwriting. "Finger-picking is absolutely addictive," he said. The technique flavors the album's leadoff track, "Beware the Hand," as well as other numbers.
After graduating in 2008, Turner moved to Los Angeles, where he honed his performance skills as a solo artist.
Next stop was Nashville, where he recorded his first album in 2009, produced by Clay Cook of the Zac Brown Band. Cook called ALL MY RUNNING one of the best things he'd ever worked on, and the record led to bookings on the college circuit, but Turner felt his best work was ahead of him. "It certainly has its moments," he said of the debut, "but in retrospect the songs didn't fit together as well as I would have liked."
Turner spent the next two years touring and playing such notable venues as Hotel Cafe, House of Blues and Bluebird Cafe and sharing the stage with Gary Clark Jr. and Bob Schneider.
He returned to Portland, where he co-produced SIDE ONE: SEE HOW FAR I GET with Rob Stroup.
Turner won the 2011 Director's Award in the Nashville International Songwriting and Lyrics Competition for "Acrobats & Soldiers."
In love with music since his parents bought him HELP by the Beatles at age 3, Turner grew up on vinyl records. He calls this record SIDE ONE: SEE HOW FAR I GET because he approached it more like side one of an album than an EP.
"I was having a conversation with my parents and a few other Baby Boomers earlier in the year and I was saying that younger people don't listen to entire albums any more; they listen to a song here, a song there," said Turner. "But they told me they didn't really play entire albums either. It was much more common to play a side of several different albums. This got me thinking that 25 minutes is just about perfect." Turner said the next EP will be side two.
But for now he can't wait to play his new songs, which will come out on CD September 27, live with his four-piece band. Don't be surprised, amidst the introspective numbers, to hear some out-of-left-field covers like "My Sharona" or "I Believe I Can Fly." This band likes to have fun.
"It just feels so good to be back," Turner said, only three days after returning to the city he left at age 18 in 2004. "I'd had my adventures and learned a lot and lived all over the country, but I've always kept a 512 phone number. Austin's always been home."
8/2011
Contact: Jill McGuckin, McGuckin Entertainment PR, 512.217.9404; jill@mcguckinpr.com
