Gunther Brown is a six piece Americana roots rock band from Portland, Maine. Gunther Brown introduced themselves to the world with Good Nights for Daydreams. Released in 2014, Good Nights for Daydreams was Gunther Brown’s full length debut and received only great reviews, both in the band’s hometown and internationally.
The Portland Phoenix said, “The guys in Gunther Brown can lay on the biting spite pretty thick, but they also embrace pure emotion. With Gunther Brown’s debut full-length, frontman Pete Dubuc and crew have created the most sorrowful local record since Ray Lamontagne’s Till the Sun Turns Black.” AmericanaUK added, “Gunther Brown’s debut album is forty minutes of resignation and despair set to one of the most mournful soundtracks you’re likely to hear this year or any other. Leader and songwriter Pete Dubuc is a master of despondency.”
In 2016, Gunther Brown released, North Wind, a new 10 song album, on vinyl, CD and digital formats. The album was released in Europe on CRS. Reviews of North Wind heaped praise on the band with statements like, “one of your great Americana promises for 2016.” and “‘North Wind’ is many things at once: tender, fierce, thought-provoking, powerful and even fun. Could lavish praise on every track … this band is really onto something.” After a European tour in 2017 the band took an extended break and the lineup underwent some changes before releasing New Man as a single in December 2018. Gunther Brown’s third full length album will be released on February 15, 2020 at One Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine, with special guest, Jenny Lou Drew.
Since the release of Rockbiter, Jenny Lou Drew’s sophomore solo record, the Maine artist has been collecting accolades from near and far, including a recent win at the Maine Songwriters Association annual songwriting competition for the song "Mending Fences” and a nom for Best in State alongside The Ghost of Paul Revere in the 2019 New England Music Awards.
On August 5th, just prior to the release of Rockbiter, Portland Press Herald Music Writer Aimsel Ponti announced, “I’m going to make a bold statement and declare (Rockbiter) the local album of the year.”
Portland talent buyer and promoter Lauren Wayne responded to the record with, “I haven’t heard someone come out of Maine with this kind of voice since Ray LaMontagne.”
The album, which is available digitally across platforms and tangibly on Bandcamp and select Bull Moose Music locations, “plays around with several constructs, including Freewheelin’ finger-picked folk, swaying, Orbisonian balladry and pedal-steel-swathed alt-country. But these are details you might not notice until the fourth or fifth listen, when it dawns on you that your speakers are now haunted forever by the benevolent spirit of Drew’s voice.” —Joe Sweeney, Mainer News, September 2019.
Since her solo debut, Drew’s music has been on regular rotation on WCLZ and Rockbiter has been hitting Maine airwaves on WCLZ, FrankFM, and Maine Public Radio. Rockbiter was released on August 10th with a show at Portland House of Music and Events and had nearly sold out of the first run of hard copies in less than a month’s time.
The reclusive singer-songwriter is self-taught, sans a handful of classical guitar lessons by the late-great, Michael Silvestri. She credits her whisper-like timbre to years spent whispering into a tape recorder in order to retain her crafted melodies. Her father, a race car driver turned mill worker, worked the graveyard shift at S.D. Warren paper mill while building a post-and-beam home for the family, and the 1970s trailer she spent her early years in was on hush-mode during daylight hours.
