P.G. Six - Biography
P.G. Six is singer-songwriter Patrick Gubler’s folk-leaning solo project, which he started in the late-1990s after stints in Memphis Luxure and lo-fi genre-hoppers, The Tower Recordings. The New York-based multi-instrumentalist plays a sophisticated brand of revivalist folk, based on the modal music he grew to love from bands like Fairport Convention, Pentangle and Incredible String Band. As an aficianado of drone with a cerebral approach to music, P.G. Six is known to color outside the box even when he’s presented within the lines of convention. At one point he handed out harmonicas to the audience to achieve a backdrop of incessant noise to improvise over, disabling some of the reeds so that “the resulting droning chord would be neutral—neither major nor minor.” Since 2001 when his first LP Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites (Amish) came out, Gubler has put out three more full-length albums and toured through North America and Europe, performing with such luminaries as Michael Hurley and Yo La Tengo. He is currently signed to Chicago-based indie label, Drag City.
Having had piano lessons as a child and subsequently learned his scales with a geek’s passion for Dorian minor mode and Mixolydian major mode, he set out to put them into practice. Gubler first made a name for himself in the noise-rock band Memphis Luxure, and in the mid-1990s with the tape manipulating, New York underground darlings, The Tower Recordings. With a pack of well-versed and eclectic instrumentalists from which to explore sound, the outfit released several albums on the Siltbreeze and Communion labels before P.G. Six branched out on his own, evolving towards a sparser Bert Jansch-type of British folk music.
After releasing a now out-of-print single in the late-1990s as P.G. Six, he came out with the entrancing nine-song Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites in 2001 on Amish Records, and his ability to tell a story via an acoustic guitar—along with flute, harp, hurdygurdy and piano—drew comparisons to everyone from Jansch to Townes Van Zandt to John Renbourn. With the help of Silver Jews drummer Tim Barnes, P.G. Six showed his understanding of avant-folk music through a variety of restraints and occasional seam-bursting excursions (he improvises on tracks like “Unteleported Man”). He also recorded an Anne Briggs cover, “Go Your Way My Love.”
In 2004, P.G. Six put out his second LP, The Well of Memory (Amish), with cameo backing vocals spots by Helen Rush. Again rooted to the folk stylings of the previous album yet with elaborate, mood-shifting fusions and digressions (the Asian-sounding autoharp on the opener, “Well of Memory, Pt. 1” as an example), P.G. Six plays with structure and reveals it as an imaginary boundary.
He followed this up with an album of highly improvised instrumental pieces on Music For the Sherman Box Series and Other Works (2006 Amish), created for New Jersey-based visual artist Christine Krol’s multimedia collage exhibit. Employing bray harp, a Celtic wire-strung harp and tremolo pedal (all titles named after the instruments used, such as “For 2 Bray Harps” or “For Bray Harp with Echo and Flanged Reverb”), the album showcased his versatility.
Looking to side-step the rampant psych-folk label so pervasive in the mid-2000s, P.G. Six’s fourth full-length studio album—Slightly Sorry (2007 Drag City)—was a bit of a departure from the pastoral art-folk forays or earlier works, and an abrupt move towards more pop-oriented sounds. Rather than sticking to the home recording aesthetic that has become synonymous with his name, he enlisted guest players in the more polished record, including Sue Garner (vocals, mixing) and Bob Bannister (guitar/Fender jazz bass). He also performed a cover version of former Remy Zero guitarist Jeffrey Cain’s “Not I the Seed.”
Over the decade that P.G. Six has been putting out his alt-folk music, he has been critically acclaimed for his innovation. He continues to tour and in 2009 appeared alongside Ron Sexsmith Meg Baird on the disc Crayon Angel: A Tribute to The Music of Judee Sill (American Dust), with his track “Til Dreams Come True.” He also had his track “Bless These Blues” from Slightly Sorry on an Uncut Magazine CD compilation with Bright Eyes, Oakley Hall and Lavender Diamond.
