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The creative force behind Glorytellers is guitarist/singer/songwriter Geoff Farina, who spent the better part of 14 years fronting Boston’s genre-bending Karate, and as one-half of the formative lo-fi duo Secret Stars. Gavin McCarthy (Karate, Cul de Sac), Joshua Larue (Him/Mice Parade), Luther Gray III (Ida, Joe Morris Trio), and engineer Andy Hong are also part of Glorytellers.
Although the band sounds most like Karate, Secret Stars, and other Farina-related projects, Glorytellers are undoubtedly a product of the 80’s underground music of their adolescence, and their first loves were bands like the Minutemen, Gray Matter, Beefeater, Dream Syndicate, Spacemen 3, the Raincoats, the Fall, Wire, the Smiths, the Effigies, Squirrel Bait, Crass, Pere Ubu, The Gun Club, and Killing Joke. Glorytellers songs also manifest Farina’s love for earlier American music, including the dense ragtime guitar of Blind Blake and Gary Davis, the earnest blues of Robert Pete Williams, Geeshie Wiley, Willie Johnson, and Skip James, the raw acoustic music of Roscoe Holcom, Robbie Basho, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, the narrative songwriting of the Band, Leonard Cohen, Mose Allison, Merle Haggard, Gram Parsons, and Bob Dylan, the impressionistic harmonies of pianists Herbie Nichols, Andrew Hill, Jelly Roll Morton, Bill Evans, and Abdullah Ibrahim, and the electric guitar styles of Jim Hall, Lonnie Johnson, Johnny Smith, Otis Rush, Grant Green, Link Wray, and Jimmy Bryant.
The name “Glorytellers” can have positive or negative denotations. A gloryteller can be one who recounts resplendence or grandeur, such as someone who sings about the possibility of a more egalitarian society, or it can be someone who proclaims veneration for expired majesty, such as those who stir up nationalism by trumpeting a vague and narrow set of values. “Glory” is also a verb meaning, “to take great pride or pleasure in,” so a gloryteller can designate someone who takes pride in narrating.
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