Gary M Hall has written and performed music for forty years. He picked up a five-stringed Roy Rogers guitar at age 5 and had his first ephiphany. Ed Sullivan and The Beatles were the next lightning bolt.From the mid-70s to mid-90s, he played in various regularly performing bands, including Highway Call, Hot Lettuce, Opie, The Groove Dudes, The Raiders of Time, Tricky Dick and the Skandelles, Too Smooth, Al Chemical and the Pharmacox, and The VeeGees. Performing 120 - 150 nights a year, he's played bars, schools, auditoriums, foyers, the Great Outdoors, golf courses, and at least once inspired an audience to tear toilets off the walls. It was in the '70s that his Clapton-esque guitar style and tendency to walk into walls led to his baptism as Slowhead. In the mid-90s, Gary joined orchestras in various theatres in Nebraska (Lincoln & Omaha), on and offstage, with and without make-up. Gary rocked the house with “The Who’s Tommy”, “Grease”, “Hair”, “The Rocky Horror Show”, and “Footloose”, went jazzy with “Crazy for You”, shtick with “Hello, Dolly”, and Broadway with “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”, “The Civil War”, “Pippin”, “Godspell”, “Children of Eden”, “Grapes of Wrath”, etc. Gary has directed music for several shows, and composed original music for others. He's been a guest speaker (History of Rock Guitar, Development of Road Music, etc.) at university and theatrical events. Gary's composed hundreds of songs, instrumental and lyrical; some could be categorized as a combination of rock, pop, blues, and folk, often in the style the Grateful Dead, Mark Knopfler, or Eric Clapton. Some are uncategorizable. Young, old, and deceased listeners alike have found true delight in his unpredictable lyrics and flowing guitar.
Gary did much analog recording in the 1980s & 1990s, under the name The Occupants. Sadly, he never publicly released the tapes, including “Meet the Occupants”, “The Occupants Second Albumen”, “Millennial Cramps”, “Libidinal Sneeze”, “The White Cassette”, etc. He now records under his own name, and still under the name of “The Occupants”.
Gary released his first CD of original recordings, Occupantaloons in April 2003. His second CD, Colonel Pecker’s Homely Parts Club Orchestra, was released in October of 2003. Occupantional Hazard hit the planet in April 2004, and Occuparadise in May 2005. Now, with the dual release of "OccupEyes" and "Rockupants" in 2009, he's back on the charts!
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