CRS 2021 – Q & A With NOAH GARNER

Photo courtesy of Noah Garner Music

Noah Garner: Hello.

Patti: Good to see you, Noah Garner.

Noah Garner: Thank you so much.

Patti: It’s our first time chatting. So, what’s going on?

Noah Garner: Man, nothing much just having a great media day, first day of CRS. It’s going to be a great week.

Patti: Good, I’m glad to hear it. Where are you right now? Are you in Nashville?

Noah Garner: Yeah, I’m in Nashville. Did you get a lot of ice where you are?

Patti: Yeah, lot of ice.

Noah Garner: Me too, I am in Hendersonville.

Patti: Oh, me too.

Noah Garner: Oh, wow, I’m right around Centerpoint Road.

Patti: Okay, well you’re not far. I’m off Walton Ferry.

Noah Garner: I used to live on Walton Ferry.

Patti: Did you really?

Noah Garner: I used to live in an apartment complex there.

Patti: We live right down near the end of the peninsula. We should have a boat. You shouldn’t live in Hendersonville without a boat.

Noah Garner: I felt like after living there for a while I should buy the smallest, cheapest boat I could find, and that’s exactly what I did, I got a 14-foot, old 1989 boat.

Patti: That would be good enough for me. Maybe a canoe.

Noah Garner: That’s all I need.

Patti: Inner tube, I’ll take that. That’d be good. So, welcome to Think Country. We’re based out of London, but obviously I’m not there, I don’t have the cool accent. I’m just the worker bee here in Nashville.

Noah Garner: I got you.

Patti: I listened to your most recent single, it’s very good. We like what we hear, so that’s good news.

Noah Garner: That means the world to me. I appreciate that.

Patti: Why don’t you tell everybody all about that single.

Noah Garner: So, “Gotta Get to You” is kind of a funny story because I used to drive down to Florida to see my family and a girl I was seeing down there. While I was driving back and forth from Nashville to Panama City, that’s about eight hours, I started writing that song just, you know, just to pass time while driving down. I held on to that song for a long time, almost three years.

Patti: Wow.

Noah Garner: Yeah, and in between my very first EP and the projects that we’re coming out with this year, we were trying to figure out, you know, what do we want to sound like? What do we want to be as an artist? Me and the team sat down and we said, “Well, let’s look at what we got,” because I was constantly writing new stuff. I had some old stuff and when I tend to write new stuff I kind of forget about old stuff. My mom actually remembered “Gotta Get to You,” and was like, “What about that one? You haven’t done it in a long time and people seem to like it, why don’t you try that?” So, I gave it a shot and it came out. We had a good friend’s buddy to help us produce it and we put it out. It’s just been a wild ride with that song, you know. I feel like everybody’s got somebody to get to and I wanted to tell that kind of story. With me sitting on it for so long, it was so fun to watch it come to life.

Video courtesy of Noah Garner Music and YouTube

Patti: So, what’s going to be the next thing for you? Do you have something new coming up?

Noah Garner: We have so much stuff coming up in 2021. We kind of took 2020 as like a reset button, you know, like a time to get mentally right, physically right and emotionally right. Get creative and really dive in, you know? If we’re going to put out any music in 2021, we need to really take the time that we have in 2020 to really dig into what we’re doing and make it as best as possible. We have a new single coming out on March 26th, along with a new EP, and a video for that song. That’s called “Spring Break Town,” and it’s got four songs on it. It’s got “Gotta Get to You,” our new single, “Spring Break Town” is on that, along with two other songs that we love. They’re just fun songs, you know, some partying and drinking and it’s just a really fun little EP we’re doing. We’re actually shooting two music videos for that this coming weekend. I’m leaving, I think it’s Friday morning, and I get there to Panama City, like 7:30 at night. Then we film all day Saturday and Sunday,

Patti: That’s a good place to film a video, I’m assuming for “Spring Break Town?”

Noah Garner: Yes. That’s exactly right. I lived in Panama City for about nine years before I moved up here, and “Spring Break Town” is all about, you know, a girl that I knew down there. I was head over heels for her, and when you move you lose that Spring Break love, that fire that burns really hot is gone. That memory still stays in that town. Everybody has a memory of Panama City, everybody goes to Spring Break there. I got this memory from down there on my previous Spring Break in 1989. Everybody has a story, so I wanted to kind of write a song about, you know, my memories there. It was what Spring Break kind of means to me and I couldn’t think of a better place to shoot it.

Patti: Definitely, and hopefully your weather will be better than here. I hope.

Noah Garner: Man, I’ll tell you what, I’ve got people down there right now in Florida, around the Tampa area, because I’ve got family down there, and they had 82-degree weather yesterday, and I said, “Man, I would kill for that compared to this ice.”

Patti: Oh, absolutely. Soak some of it up and bring it back please.

Noah Garner: I’m going to bottle it and actually sell it to people.

Patti: Thank you. Thank you. Then don’t sell it too expensive because we need a lot of it. So, I was reading some of your stuff online and you actually worked with Big Smo, that’s pretty interesting.

Noah Garner: Yeah. I did. He actually gave me my first opportunity to go on tour with anybody. I played guitar for him for a little while, same backgrounds. My best friend did photography for him and some production. We actually went to stay with him for a little while, you know, and did the whole tour/live thing with him for a while, and that was really fun, he’s a great dude.

Patti: Yeah, I’ve heard he does a lot for a lot of people, which is really cool.

Noah Garner: I’ll tell you what. In the time I was on tour with him and working with him, I never saw him treat a person bad. He always wanted to help. He always wanted to help somebody, always wanted to push things forward. If you had an idea, he was not the kind of guy that stifles creativity. He was definitely one of those dudes that kind of pushes the envelope forward. He’s just such a good dude.

Patti: That’s great. You’ve also opened for some really cool people. I mean, you’ve got a laundry list of really cool people you’ve opened for.

Noah Garner: I tend to say I’m very blessed and I’m very lucky to do what I’ve done. I tell people if I lost everything today and I didn’t get to play music anymore, or I didn’t have a chance, then I’ve done more than I ever thought I would ever do.

Patti: Yeah, that’s a good attitude.

Noah Garner: Then it feels like that’s just the beginning of the story and I feel like, you know, we’ve got a long way to go and a long road ahead of us, which I’m really excited about. Even just looking at what I’ve done, we have people like Lonestar, like, I grew up on Lonestar.

Patti: Yeah.

Noah Garner: I listen to their songs, I was singing them at talent shows when I was a kid, so meeting them and interacting with them, being able to open for them, that’s a lifetime dream for a kid like me. When you are singing their songs forever and then open for them, that’s huge. Then Ashley McBryde. I got to open up for her and I love her. I think she’s an unbelievable talent. I think she’s an unbelievable songwriter. She’s got to be probably one of the sweetest people that ever walked the Earth.

Patti: Without question.

Noah Garner: She just is such a great spirit. She made me feel like I was the main act. She made me feel like a million dollars. That’s something that I think when you look up to people, and you have these opportunities to open up for them, or do anything with them, when people are good to you, and treat you well, it takes your view of them that’s already so high and it just blows the cap off. I look at the people that allow me to open for them and helped me and and were so kind to me, I look at them as, you know, different highlights of my journey. I learned a lot from all those people.

Patti: Yeah, and I think probably you take that with you that, you know, someday, you can maybe pay that forward.

Noah Garner: Right, exactly. It’s actually something that I think about a lot. Like, when I moved to town. I was so young, I was 18 and didn’t know anybody. I was living with one of my mom’s friends from high school, on her couch. This old bass player looked at me one time and he said he would just kind of show me the ropes of Broadway, show me the town, teach me some things about singing and teach me some things about playing. I asked him, “Why are you doing this? You don’t have to. Why are you helping me?” He said, “Well, when I was young, there was this old dude that helped me. Now, I’ve got to help you. You’ve got to promise me that when you get old and you see some 18-year-old that you’ll help him.” I said, “All right, I get it man.” I take that with me every day. I try to do my best to help anybody that I can, and talk about, you know, my end of music and what I’ve gone through, and how I made it through those things. I feel like it’s part of the job. You know, it’s your duty as an artist and as a player to kind of help each other. It’s not a competition, we’re all doing the same thing, you know, we’re all creative, we’re all trying to write that song. That circle of influence, we’re all trying to do that.

Patti: Yeah, I hear that over and over again, and that’s so good to hear. That’s refreshing when you hear it again from somebody new. It makes me happy to hear that. So, like, in your next five years, where do you want to be?

Noah Garner: Okay, honestly, I think I’ll be at the point I would like to be at, the point where we’re, you know, on tour pretty consistently. Putting out, you know, new music. I want to be able to at least be in the starting stages of being the next Garth Brooks, that’s pretty much the only way I can put it,

Patti: That’s a good goal. I like that, that’s thinking in the right direction.

Noah Garner: Thank you. I really do appreciate it. From the time I started I wanted to be like Garth Brooks. I always said that he’s the greatest entertainer, I’ve ever seen, and he’s probably one of the greatest entertainers of all time. If I could be half that good, I’d be doing something. In the next five years, I would like to think that I’ve started the right path to being that guy, and hopefully we’re out doing shows, we’ve got the music and people like us enough that they keep us around.

Patti: That’s excellent. That’s a great answer. I like your positivity, that’s perfect. I’ve got this little Chat Pack filled with cards with random questions. I’m going to pull one out and ask one, okay?

Noah Garner: Okay, bring it on!

Patti: Let’s see. This looks like a good one. All right, it says, “If you could bring back any tradition that seems to have faded into the past, what tradition would you bring back?”

Noah Garner: Wow. Can I do an old family traditional?

Patti: Absolutely, Yes.

Noah Garner: When I was a kid, every Halloween everybody in my family, no matter where you were or what you were doing, you made it to my grandma’s house to carve pumpkins on Halloween night.

Patti: This sounds fun.

Noah Garner: It was a super big deal. We have a very big family. The two grandparents they had three kids. All three kids, all their kids had three or four kids of their own. Our family’s really big. We would just get together and carve pumpkins. It was so fun because, you know, some people in my family were really good they’d make art out of pumpkins. Then there’s people like me that had two little triangles and a mouth and call it a day.

Patti: But it was a pumpkin.

Noah Garner: But it worked.

Patti: Right, and you were together doing the same activity.

Noah Garner: Right. I think of that the most because Thanksgiving may not be the whole family, but we still get together, and Christmas may not be the whole family, but we also get together. We see each other through the year, but that’s something that I don’t think we’ve done since I was five, and I think it kind of harkens back to the 90s to me, like, I feel that vintage thing. It’s hanging out with your whole family.

Patti: Yeah.

Noah Garner: It was a thing back then.

Patti: Maybe you need to get that going again.

Noah Garner: It is funny you should say that. Literally, my wheels are always turning, man. It’d be cool to do that, like, on Broadway, or like, with like other acts, you get a whole bunch of artists.

Patti: You’re right, you should start the Noah Garner pumpkin carving event. I would so go to that. I would carve a pumpkin. Write it down. Do it now.

Noah Garner: Pumpkin carving event. I love this.

Patti: I love that too. I think we’ve brainstormed something new Noah.

Noah Garner: I love it, and of course, you know you’re going to have to be there.

Patti: I will be there. I will absolutely be there, and you will absolutely make sure that I’m there and remind me that this is a thing. I will write it down in my book for October, I’ll write it in red, at the top.

Noah Garner: That’s it. I love it. I really think we can put that together.

Patti: I know, I think it’s a thing. Finally, when you “Think Country,” because we are Think Country, what do you think?

Noah Garner: I think of my life. Every country song I’ve ever listened to describes something I was going through, or something I felt or something I said. When I think of country music I think of my life. You know, honesty, love, compassion, respect for people, being the best person you can be, going through hard times and making it out the other side.

Patti: Perfect. Excellent. It’s been a pleasure.

Noah Garner: Thank you so much for everything, I really do appreciate it.

Patti: You’re welcome and have a great CRS.

Noah Garner: You too.

Patti: All right. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Noah Garner: Bye-bye.

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