Dylan Gardner At High Fidelity, Saturday April 16th 2016
Dylan Gardner
Dylan Gardner had decided to make the grand tour of Los Angeles record stores on Record Store Day, and I caught his short set at High Fidelity around 3 pm. He looked extremely young, and this is very simple: he released his debut album, ‘Adventures in Real Time’ in 2014 at the age of 17, so he must be 18 or 19!
He played a very dynamic acoustic set with the help of his brother on percussion/drum, he broke a guitar string but continued with the same enthusiasm and ‘less color in the guitar’ as he said. He covered Vampire Weekend’s ‘Diane Young’ with vivacity and it’s not an easy song to play with so little instrumentation. He looked so confident and had a cool demeanor at the same time, rocking a sort of Beatles haircut while playing his pop songs. He did only a few tunes in a complete acoustic mode, but you could feel an obvious and sincere passion, as a tunesmith quality of the songs.
Gardner has also a very DIY ethic, after recording his album in his bedroom, he reached 2.7 million Spotify plays for his track ‘Let’s Get Started’, he also achieved viral fame from a YouTube video (#DylanBrokeUpTheBeatles) in which he covered the Beatles ‘Abbey Road’ in 15-second increments… Dylan, you have now understood it, likes to mix old with new, songs from the 60’s with our modern internet-induced ADD. He is also very prolific since ‘Adventures in Real Time’ was compiled from over 100 songs he wrote, yes 100, an incredible number when you think he is still a teen. He got signed by Warner Bros. Records in August 2014, and he has already toured the US, opening for Emily Kinney.
The self-described ‘music nerd’ admits to have studied the greatest songwriters of history before coming up with his own material, and he has also confessed a true passion for Jimmy Page and Ben Fold which tells how eclectic he is. Live, his enthusiasm was so communicative you can only expect a happy future for this joyous kid with high-spirit upbeat songs.
More pictures of the show here
1 Comment
Covered Abbey Road in 15-second increments, did he? How wee. Sounds a bit like an IQ test, one if you bit on, you flunked.