One of my Homeboys

This is Ryan McGarvey, a local kid (in his mid 20s) who just started another European tour, his 4th or 5th one in the past couple of years. He's done real well for himself in the past 5 or 6 years. He played Eric Clapton's Crossroads Festival in 2010, was named Best New Talent by Guitar Player Magazine in 2013, and has received several similar awards in Europe. Smoking hot player, and a humble, likeable guy. We're acquaintances with a ton of mutual friends. I've chatted with him a number of times here in town...we kept running into each other at the grocery store a month or two ago, plus I've met him before at local shows. The drummer in this video is another acquaintance with whom I have a bunch of mutual friends. Another real nice guy and hot player. (Don't know the bass player.) This video is just snippets of several songs in his first set at a show in Rubigen, Switzerland.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m89kKIyDmI

Impressive for sure, is he just scraping by or can he make a living at it?

Why does he go to Europe? Not enough interest in the USA?

Cheers!

You sure have some cool homies

Pretty awesome!

Ted Calver said:

You sure have some cool homies

Click to expand...

Ted stole the words from my fingers.

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

What an awesome talent.

He does not play that guitar---it is part of him. Awesome talent.

Thanks Vaughn and Enjoy,
JimB

Stuart Ablett said:

Impressive for sure, is he just scraping by or can he make a living at it?

Why does he go to Europe? Not enough interest in the USA?

Cheers!

Click to expand...

From what I can tell, he's making a comfortable living, between the show receipts and merchandise sales (t-shirts and CDs). There's apparently a bigger fan base for the blues rock genre in Europe than in the US, so that's where there's more money to be made. Plus, I think there's a certain draw to see a "foreign" act. Just like some British performers or bands have a better following in the US than at home, there are American acts that are fairly obscure here and big hits in other parts of the world.

He's on the upswing of his career right now. Due to a lot of hard work (and judicious booking by his management) he has built up a strong following of fans around the world, so now he's starting to headline festivals in Europe and getting endorsement deals from major companies (like Marshall amps and Ernie Ball/Music Man guitars). He's shared the stage (and jammed live) with guys like Joe Bonamassa and Eric Clapton. It should be interesting to see what type of an arc his career follows.