membership
member since: 14 Dec 2004 11:28 AM
background / biography
Cats. Irish music. Drinking songs. Nowhere else but from the bright imagination of Marc Gunn would those three elements be so neatly integrated. Yet Gunn, sometimes called the hardest working man in Celtic music around his hometown in Austin, is an accomplished musician and entrepreneur who not long ago headlined at the Oscar party for Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
For Gunn, it started small, though not inauspiciously, wearing a kilt on campus at the University of Texas. As the autoharp-playing half of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Gunn and partner Andrew McKee developed a loyal following with weekly performances on campus. This quickly led to gigs at renaissance fairs, science fiction conventions, and Celtic music festivals as well as parties and weddings for the pair.
With the Bards calendar busy, Gunn began producing the duos recordings. Their first effort in 1999 was Marked By Great Size followed by Gullible's Travels in 2000. The third release was 2001s instrumental Songs of the Muse, then two theme CDs A Faire To Remember and A Celtic Renaissance Wedding. 2002 saw the release of Songs of Ireland and in 2003, Memories of Middle Earth. A long-awaited solo album, Soul of a Harper, brought Gunn accolades in 2004; he then embarked on work for Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers.
Gunns activities are not restricted to musical performance alone. He is the brains behind an online resource called the Celtic MP3s Music Magazine (http://www.celticmp3s.com/). The weekly publication reviews Celtic music of all varieties from Irish traditional music to Celtic rock. Two free, full-length MP3s are offered for download every week on the site. Additionally, Gunn publishes The Bards Crier's Music Marketing and Promotion Tips Ezine (http://www.bardscrier.com/), a newsletter that teaches musicians about marketing and promotion.
All that hard work and effort has hardly gone unnoticed. Fans have downloaded more than five million MP3s from him; over one million of those were for the hugely popular Tolkien (The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings). The Brobdingnagian Bards were voted Best Renaissance Men in the Austin Chronicles 2003 Best of Austin poll. In March of 2005, The Bards collected an Austin Music Award for the Bards as Best Novelty Band, the first time any Celtic band has won. Gunns solo CD Soul of a Harper won the Best Cover Art category that year.
In a town famous for almost every musical genre except Celtic music, Marc Gunn has raised the bar and held it high. Using the musical past and a vivid imagination bolstered with ambition and drive, he blazes trails from terra firma to cyberspace, encouraging others to follow.
Copyright (c) 2005 Marc Gunn
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
Free Documentation License".
For Gunn, it started small, though not inauspiciously, wearing a kilt on campus at the University of Texas. As the autoharp-playing half of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Gunn and partner Andrew McKee developed a loyal following with weekly performances on campus. This quickly led to gigs at renaissance fairs, science fiction conventions, and Celtic music festivals as well as parties and weddings for the pair.
With the Bards calendar busy, Gunn began producing the duos recordings. Their first effort in 1999 was Marked By Great Size followed by Gullible's Travels in 2000. The third release was 2001s instrumental Songs of the Muse, then two theme CDs A Faire To Remember and A Celtic Renaissance Wedding. 2002 saw the release of Songs of Ireland and in 2003, Memories of Middle Earth. A long-awaited solo album, Soul of a Harper, brought Gunn accolades in 2004; he then embarked on work for Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers.
Gunns activities are not restricted to musical performance alone. He is the brains behind an online resource called the Celtic MP3s Music Magazine (http://www.celticmp3s.com/). The weekly publication reviews Celtic music of all varieties from Irish traditional music to Celtic rock. Two free, full-length MP3s are offered for download every week on the site. Additionally, Gunn publishes The Bards Crier's Music Marketing and Promotion Tips Ezine (http://www.bardscrier.com/), a newsletter that teaches musicians about marketing and promotion.
All that hard work and effort has hardly gone unnoticed. Fans have downloaded more than five million MP3s from him; over one million of those were for the hugely popular Tolkien (The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings). The Brobdingnagian Bards were voted Best Renaissance Men in the Austin Chronicles 2003 Best of Austin poll. In March of 2005, The Bards collected an Austin Music Award for the Bards as Best Novelty Band, the first time any Celtic band has won. Gunns solo CD Soul of a Harper won the Best Cover Art category that year.
In a town famous for almost every musical genre except Celtic music, Marc Gunn has raised the bar and held it high. Using the musical past and a vivid imagination bolstered with ambition and drive, he blazes trails from terra firma to cyberspace, encouraging others to follow.
Copyright (c) 2005 Marc Gunn
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
Free Documentation License".
location
genre
Brobdingnagian Bards, Andy M. Stewart, Ed Miller, The Dubliners, The Corries, Enya, Irish Rovers, Loreena McKennit, Elvis Presley, Martin Carthy, The Fureys, Dervish, Fairport Convention, Dick Gaughan, Steeleye Span, Kingston Trio, Phil Coulter
» find other artists in the genre "Brobdingnagian Bards, Andy M. Stewart, Ed Miller, The Dubliners, The Corries, Enya, Irish Rovers, Loreena McKennit, Elvis Presley, Martin Carthy, The Fureys, Dervish, Fairport Convention, Dick Gaughan, Steeleye Span, Kingston Trio, Phil Coulter"
» find other artists in the genre "Brobdingnagian Bards, Andy M. Stewart, Ed Miller, The Dubliners, The Corries, Enya, Irish Rovers, Loreena McKennit, Elvis Presley, Martin Carthy, The Fureys, Dervish, Fairport Convention, Dick Gaughan, Steeleye Span, Kingston Trio, Phil Coulter"
influences
Elvis Presley, Fabrizio de Andre, Bryan Bowers, Enya, The Dubliners, Sinead O'Connor, Clannad, Altan, Tom Paxton, Al Grierson, Roger Miller, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead, Wierd Als, The Wolfe Tones
