Pierre Bensusan, Donal Lunny, Richard Leo Johnson, Michael Hedges, Stephen Fearing, BeJae Fleming, Laurence Juber, Micheal O'Domhnaill, Dan Crary, Doc Watson, Dick Gaughin, John Renbourne...
Sounds Like
Everybody has their own opinion, but we've collected the following in the wild: Joni; Ani; Nora; Pierre; but the personal favorite is from Chad Haatvedt at Folk City - "She makes a guitar sound like nobody else."
Gayla Drake Paul is a force in songwriting and guitar performance. With 14 CDs to her credit, she is an artist who has made major contributions to her field. (See www.digitaldreamdoor.com, which ranks her as one of the top 100 acoustic guitarists on the planet, and also recommends her solo guitar CD in their top 10 Suggested Listening for Acoustic Guitar, and recently chose Broken Blues as one of the top 100 acoustic CDs of all time). A rarity beyond her achievements as an instrumentalist, she is also regarded as one of the finest songwriters of her generation, with an intimate and evocative voice.
She is currently writing monthly articles for the fastest growing guitar magazine in the country, Premier Guitar, and is in their Top 10 articles downloaded list every single month. She has authored the revolutionaly Accelerated Guitar Method; Book 1 is currently available from CDBaby, and Book 2 is in the publication process.
Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Francesco Paladino asked her to score a short film, Bluesblood and Mud Flowers, which led to an additional collaboration, The Iowa Stories, which won a Gold Remy at the Houston WorldFest International Film Festival in 2007 and has recently been released for European distribution. Francesco will return to the US in July 2008 for another collaboration about the Mississippi River. She was featured in the September/October 2006 issue of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine as one of the premier women flatpicking guitarists working today.
In 2003 after a decade of intensely hard work with 10 internationally released and acclaimed CDs , a shoulder injury made it impossible for her to play. Soon afterward she was diagnosed with cancer, and spent 2004 recovering from both. She continued to compose, and produced a film score for a National Forestry Service DVD, taught numerous songwriting and guitar clinics, and continued to host the Iowa Guitar Summit series. In 2005 she released 4 new CDs, and re-recorded and re-mastered two that had gone out of print. In May of 2006, she released Here in the Center of the World with drummer and percussionist Eric Douglas.
In May of 2007 she released the long awaited song-cycle The Wheel, a journey through a year of solar holidays. In January 2008 she released "Pour Me," another solo effort with 10 new songs. She’s currently working on additional guitar instruction books and composing music on a John Dick Double Forte nylon string guitar for a new CD project.
