Gerry Barnum

Gerry Barnum’s second acoustic CD “Harmony” was released in December, 2003, with 14 new original songs. Harmony was recorded at Gerry’s home studio (Big Pad) in Errington on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. Lots of slide guitar on this disc as well as harmonica, two of Gerry’s trademarks. Gerry is definitely a songwriter with roots in Folk and Blues. He was influenced in his formative years by early recordings from Elmore James, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee and Paul Butterfield ..to James Taylor and Ry Cooder to name a few.

His songs are similar to the Blues in feel but are often more evolved in texture and lyric. To say his songs have soul is an understatement. Gerry Barnum’s style is often compared to "a cross between John Hiatt and James Taylor."

“Harmony” really brought me back to playing slide which I had put down for awhile when I made the switch back from electric to acoustic a few years ago. My "new" guitar is a 1950’s Harmony (I’ve been loyally playing a 1935 Gibson since I first started to play over 30 years ago) and most of these songs were written on it. Harmony definitely represents a new voice, a new place and marks a line in the sand from my first CD,Pickin up the Pieces (an intimate look at personal past and the ”jigsaw puzzle of love” ).

Gerry spent over a dozen years in Vancouver B.C. playing in clubs and doing session and sideman work while chipping away at his songwriting. In his first few years, he opened up for a lot of the electric Blues artists he had grown up listening to such as John Mayall, Delbert McLinton, Spencer Davis Group, Savoy Brown and James Cotton.
This was a thrill and a great time for me and a rite of passage of sorts.


In the later years in Van. Gerry was was working as a sideman more and touring.Working with Country Rocker Sue Medley opened him up to the stadium side of music life with a cross Canada tour with Dwight Yoakum as well as doing some openers for Lyle Lovett and playing some guitar and harp with R&B bands as well.

A lot of my session work was on harmonica and most recently featured his electric slide playing on Michelle Wright’s latest CD. Over the last decade,Gerry has been devoted to writing as well as performing and touring solo. It’s been a long rich season of writing and maturing as a musician and now my challenge is "catch up" and getting this large body of work recorded and out there. Another disc is about 70% done with a full band. I've almost got enough instrumentals composed for a CD so that’s a dream too. Lots on the go.

Yeah, I’m definitely blossoming into the season of “Recording Artist" and the making of Harmony has been a good and challenging step along the way.