Gunnar Madsen is an award-winning composer, actor, singer, and
writer. He is perhaps best known as founder, songwriter and performer
with the internationally acclaimed acapella group The Bobs. Their
first album, released in 1984, led to a Grammy nomination for
Mr. Madsen. Since then, The Bobs have released five more albums
with Gunnar and Mr. Madsen has received seven consecutive ASCAP
songwriter's awards for his work. As a composer and songwriter/librettist
he has received commissions from the Los Angeles Theater Center,
the Oberlin Dance Collective, the Minnesota Opera, ISO Dance Theater,
National Public Radio, and many others. He has written music for
the feature films "Breaking the Rules" and "A Special
Providence", and is a featured performer on the soundtrack
of "At Play in the Fields of the Lord", in the National
Geographic Special "Asteroids: Deadly Impact", and as
the voice of Sammy Davis, Jr. in the HBO film "The Rat Pack".
He is also the creator of the sound and music for the hit video
game San Francisco Rush.
Gunnar's performing highlights include appearances on the Tonight
Show, the Smothers Brothers Show, and two award-winning hour-long
specials on PBS featuring his music and performances. He has worked
with a broad range of performers, including Robin Williams, The
Grateful Dead, Bobby McFerrin and Billy Crystal.
THE EXTENDED VERSION…
Alright, some fans have been writing in asking for more than the
typical bio material. They want the skinny, they want the straight
poop, they want the National Enquirer style dirt. We aim to please...
Whence Gunnar? From deep in the furthest regions of the arctic
circle. At least, that's where my great grandfather Gunnar Eriksen
was from (Tromsø, to be exact). Other ancestors come from
Copenagen and points north and points unknown. These various ancestors
emmigrated in various ways (legal and illegal) to the west coast
of the U.S., and, eventually, I was born. I come from 2 generations
of garbagemen. Both my father and his father ran garbage companies.
The Bobs' song "Trash" was written for a safety awards
ceremony at my father's company (one of the Bobs' first well paying
gigs). The ways to a career in the performing arts are many.
I was a boy, a son of a garbageman with a funny name. Yes, kids
made fun of my name. Music was not part of our home life. My parents
had few records. Our record player was a strange sleep-teaching
device with a clock built into it. Until the age of 8 I had one
record - Huckleberry Hound. Then I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan
show. My life changed. I mowed lawns, I washed cars, I did whatever
it took to buy Beatles records. For Christmas my parents gave
me a transistor radio, which I went to sleep with every single
night. Music became my passion. I took piano lessons for 6 months
or so, but gave it up, discouraged because I sounded nothing like
the Beatles. Still, I listened to records.
Then I was a teenager.
I bought a stereo, I needed my music louder than the sleep-teaching
contraption could deliver. My older sister left her folk guitar
behind when she went off galivanting one summer. I picked it up
and started strumming. I followed the diagrams in her Joni Mitchell
song book and learned chords. I took the guitar to the piano and
found how to make chords on the piano. I wrote songs with friends.
I made music!
My mother thought I made noise.
Still, she offered me piano lessons for my 17th birthday. I studied
classical piano, practicing 4 and 5 hours a day. I worked as a
garbageman for 6 months, saved up enough money to go to UC Berkeley.
I studied music there, like a demon. A wonderful professor urged
me into a job as an arranger for a little-known Brecht play "The
Measures Taken". It was a hit. I got more work, mainly writing
for Brechtian theater, then Shakespeare, then all kinds. I graduated.
I got a job delivering singing telegrams for Western Onion. It
was a blast, the perfect job for me at the time. But suddenly,
the market for singing telegrams evaporated, the company went
broke, and I was out of work...
Out of work along with countless other singing telegram deliverers.
The great singing telegram depression of 1981...
One of the unemployed, Matthew Bob Stull, and I got together and
thought it would be fun to form an acapella group. We drew up
a 25 words or less ad for the free classifieds, looking for a
bass singer. We got one call. From Richard 'Bob' Greene. He was
not only a bass singer, but a songwriter and recording engineer.
We rehearsed for 6 months, a beer-in-the-afternoons kind of thing,
then went to an open mike. At a cuban restaurant. A line of flamenco
guitarists stretched out the door, waiting for their turn on stage.
The promoter, sensing the diners' apathy towards nylon strings
and wood, moved our acapella trio to the front of the line. If
memory serves, we treated them to Psycho Killer, A White Sportcoat,
and a few others. They loved us. We had our first fans.
Still, that wasn't a paying gig. I continued making my living
by working in a video store, accompanying for voice teachers,
and so on.
Richard and I did all the arranging, it was all cover tunes at
first. Then we began writing songs together. We felt the need
for another voice, so we auditioned and found Janie 'Bob' Scott.
Our stage show began to gel. We were did weekly shows at a Jazz
club (there were no acapella clubs), and a local record company
approached us. We signed, made our first record ("The Bobs"),
and then we had offers to tour around the country. We did. Richard
and I got nominated for a Grammy for our arrangement of "Helter
Skelter". We got on radio shows, TV shows, we traveled to
Europe, we did festivals, huge concerts. We met a dance troupe
named Momix (they later changed their name to ISO). We improvised
together and worked up a show with them. The collaboration continued
over the years, with a commission from Lincoln Center and a one-hour
presentation on PBS. Life was exciting, it was a blast.
It was very much a blast. My childhood dream of a Beatle-like
existence had come true. And, in 1991, I decided to quit.
Why?
Our performances, our songs were beginning to feel flat to me.
I was tired of touring. I had a lovely woman waiting for me at
home. More than anything, I wanted something more, but I didn't
know what. Just something more.
I suppose it was time for my midlife crisis.
The ways out of a career in the performing arts are many...
Life after The Bobs was miserable. I'd grown quite used to having
hundreds of fans making me feel good one out of every three nights,
and I had nothing to replace it. I gave some concerts, I got commissions
from ODC/SF, NPR, the New Music Theater Ensemble and others. I
learned improv, I wrote a film score, I did some more theater
scores, produced a record, I sang on a film score, did some small
acting gigs. Life was not empty, but it felt like it. I was depressed
and couldn't find a way out. Things were dark.
The ways out of depression are many...
I began to study acting. Deep, rich, method-style, with a very
gifted teacher. It was just the thing for me. As I delved deeper
into my own self, I found new freedom, new power and joy in performing.
(Sounds holisitic and shit? Well, it is!) Life was still hard,
but eventually the gloom started to clear. It wasn't an all-at-once
kind of wake-up-and-be-happy scenario, but every day became a
little bit easier, even a little bit better. Out of the blue,
I was offered a job writing video game music for Atari. More money
than I'd ever made in my life. And my first ever regular job behind
a desk in a corporation for 40 hours a week. And it was exactly
the right thing at the time.
Life is weird. No doubt about it.
The Atari job filled my days and my bank account. Evenings I continued
to write. I wrote a bunch of waltzes, and they were recorded and
almost released by a record company, until they ran out of money.
Then I got a huge bonus from Atari, and the stars were suddenly
in alignment, and my eyes lit up, and I suddenly knew EXACTLY
what I wanted to do: Record my own record.
I spent the better part of 1997 recording The Power of a Hat.
The main sessions took place one magical week in May, where all
the basic tracks were recorded live. But the pre-record work had
started in January, and overdubs continued through the summer
into September, Mixes happened in October and December, and Mastering
finished up in April of 1998. I quit Atari in December '97 and,
except for a theater gig and some film work, have been dedicating
myself to getting these records out into the world. Depression
is for now behind me, and life seems wonderfully full and exciting.
The End? I doubt it...
