GREGORY RAWLINS

*****www.junkerdashrecords.com***** https://gregoryrawlins.bandcamp.com/ --------- https://soundcloud.com/gregory-rawlins Gregory Rawlins spent most of his childhood exploring the rain-sopped forests of Port Orchard, Washington, building forts and popping wheelies along the way. Pinecone fights were rampant, and the playground of the school he walked to each morning was big enough to exhaust the children properly. Though he went unpaid, his first job was standing up rounds of Fir, Hemlock, and Cedar for his father to split-- before they were loaded up and sold. This was a side job his father performed between playing cops and robbers. His mom was a mail lady. Before folks built houses in the woods behind them, the Rawlins’s lit their bonfires by rifle. True, explosives of most kinds were readily available in such a locale, and it wasn’t uncommon for Gregory to save recycled beer can money for months just to spend it every July in a single Skokomish Indian Reservation visit. And while the thrill of ignition left an indelible mark on the child, this penchant for destruction was no match for his even more fervent drive to preserve. In his many walks through the woods, the grandeur of the landscape, the lushness of the foliage, and the diversity of life above and below enamored young Gregory over all things. Each spring the white trillium would sprout amid the salal and sword fern, late summer yielded hillside blackberries and creek side salmonberries, and the foreboding fall birthed spectrums of bubbly, glistening fungi. The forest was always something he feared and respected, because it, like him, breathed, spoke and sometimes bled. The music Gregory Rawlins chooses to write never fully peels itself from such impressions. A formal student of creative writing and poetry, Rawlins left college in the mid 2000s and, upon landing in Seattle, co-founded the acclaimed folk/rock outfit Sons of Guns alongside quirky Theatre major and intense Van Halen fan, Mike Surber. SOG seemed to walk a fine and characteristic line between the soft acoustic Americana folk ballad and those high-revved, sweaty classic messes of the rain-sopped Northwest. Songs resonated as sincere, lyrically deft, and, despite all popular leanings, celebratory. During what band interims arose, Rawlins ardently pursued his craft, soon letting fly a series of self-recorded, self-released albums: The Amazing Circle of Boxes (2008), Fuggit, I’ll Bet a Hunnerd (2010), ELWHA (2012), and Bottom Feeder Fellowship (2013).
And while the artist’s fondness for both minimalistic folk, psychedelic rock, and unorthodox recording approaches made these several works difficult to categorize, they did perk the curiosity of critics, fans and fellow musicians alike. Greg Harness of RootsWorld Magazine writes, “The songs of Gregory Rawlins combine engaging storytelling with sharply focused visual imagery, drawing the listener into a shared world of intensely-held emotions. Performed with an eclectic ingenuity and an unconventional approach to instruments, a live show by Gregory Rawlins is not to be missed.”
 The envelope of experimentation was pushed even further in 2014, when the psychedelic garage rock quartet known as Catskills was formed in La Grande, Oregon. Jeff Grammer (keyboard, guitar, theremin), Wayne Marvin Callahan (bass), Andy Steele (drums) and Rawlins set out not only to create extremely loud and extremely provocative tunes, but ones with cinematic qualities, lathered with atmospheric texture and slave to no time constraint (their longest song exceeds the 18-minute mark). Informed by a range of mutual influences (Sleep, John Coltrane, NEU!, Swans, The Stooges) Catskills is much more the live show that you experience rather than simply attend. 
 All told, Gregory Rawlins has overseen 12 full-lengths albums, and 3 EP’s in just over a decade, splitting his time between various creative projects (music, poetry, acting) while getting into the wilderness as much as possible. 
 Returning from an 11-month hiatus to Monterrey, Mexico, the last calendar year has been a busy one for the artist. Commissioned by Eastern Oregon University to compose an original score to Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind, Rawlins also returned to theatre to act in John Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as Duke Orsino, and Joseph Merrick in The Elephant Man. On the musical front, the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 couldn't be more prolific for the artist-- releasing two separate solo albums within two months, and set to unleash a 4th Sons of Guns album March 12th.

La Grande, OR