I was born on the mason-dixon line and
that’s where I still am. NY city
and my Texan family are my
constant companions. Writing for the
second album now … some pre release tunes are up here now

AARON GILMARTIN is a singer-songwriter and guitarist of uncommon passion, commitment, and integrity. With a background full of influences ranging from Brazil and flamenco to rock and blues, he combines virtuosic, intricate guitar work with a straightforward, honest, heartfelt vocal style. Aaron writes accessible and appealing pop-folk tunes and delivers them in a voice of gentle strength and powerful conviction.

Born in Washington DC to a Texan family of artists and musicians, as a child, Aaron was exposed to the broad breadth of American musics: traditional Irish ballads, civil war songs, folk songs of social conscience, show-tunes, instrumental and vocal jazz, and spirituals. He began playing recorder at the age of 6, took up the clarinet at 9, played his first string instrument the banjo at 10, and started playing guitar at 12. At around the same time, he fell in love with the Beatles (although the first strains of the White Album scared him the first time he listened to it) and began to immerse himself in popular music. As a teenager Aaron opened himself with enthusiasm to a wide range of influences and styles: straight-up rock-and-roll (the Stones and the Who), psychedelia (Pink Floyd, Yes, ELP), punk (Ramones, Clash, Replacements) pure pop (B-52s, Prince, and the Police), reggae (Marley, Cliff, the Police) and classic singer-songwriters (Dylan, Carole King, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, and Paul Simon). His guitar heroes include Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townsend, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Robert Fripp, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Pat Martino, Pat Metheney, John Scofield, and Muddy Waters.

Aaron attended Waldorf schools throughout much of his childhood, and the development of his distinctive artistic sensibility, with its emphasis on purity, beauty, and authenticity, owes much to this early education. He went on to receive formal musical training at a DC-area performing arts high school, where he studied classical and jazz guitar, and later at both Berkelee College of Music and California State University at Hayward, where he received a degree in classical guitar performance. Traveling to and living in San Miguel de Allende Mexico, Brazil, and Cuba, and studying under many master teachers, Aaron honed the skills that gave him his first career as a musician, performing Brazilian, flamenco, Latin, jazz, and Cuban music in San Francisco and New York City as both a guitarist and vocalist. For more information on this aspect of Aaron’s career, go to www.myspace/flamencoaaron . As a culmination of this phase of his career, Aaron recorded two instructional DVDS on flamenco guitar for Homespun Tapes.

These DVDs were produced and directed by Woodstock legend Happy Traum.

www.homespuntapes.com/prodpg/prodpg.asp?prodID=1149&prodType=

In the spring of 2001, Aaron joined the singer Dorothy Potter’s band Azujela as lead guitarist and vocalist. Over the next three years, Dorothy and Aaron performed classic Cuban son and Brazilian favorites in Spanish and Portuguese in many NYC venues, and composed and recorded songs together for Songs of Love, an organization that creates personalized songs for severely ill children. From 2004 until the spring of 2007, as half of the GilmartinPotter Band, Aaron played all over Europe and Scandinavia, singing in Irish pubs, cafes, and clubs, on cruise ships and military bases. The GilmartinPotter Band released their debut CD, Just Before Rising, in April 2007 and then embarked on a successful cross-country tour of the United States. Now a solo performer based in New York City, Aaron is at work on a new album. In February 2008, he will travel to San Francisco to lead song-writing workshops in the San Bruno County jail under the auspices of Sunny Schwartz’s RSVP (Resolve to Stop the Violence) program of restorative justice.