Gabriel Gordon was born in Ventura, California and grew up primarily in Santa Cruz. He also lived in New York City and Olympia, Washington as a child and teenager respectively. The son of a blues man from Mississippi, at the age of 9 Gabriel became serious about playing the guitar he was given for Christmas that year. He also played piano and sang in church and began recording and writing his own songs at 13. By the time he had graduated high school, he had attended 9 different schools, which gave him an early proclivity toward moving and travel. While still a teenager, he moved from Santa Cruz to New York City and soon landed a job at Jimi Hendrix’ legendary Electric Lady Studios. He worked there as an assistant manager and receptionist for a handful of years until he decided to play music full time. Whilst working there, Gabriel met legendary producers like Ron Saint Germain (Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, Soundgarden, Diana Ross) who taught Gabriel how to compose, arrange, record, mix and perform music. His first proper recordings were made in Studio A at Electric Lady with Ron “The Saint” Germain.
During his early years in New York, Gordon accompanied many artists such as Idina Menzel ("Let it Go" from Frozen) and Leona Naess. His first tour was with the Soup Dragons as a guitarist and backing vocalist in support of their final album Hydrophonic and he gradually became an in demand session musician for multiple artists, ad agencies and producers.
His first band in New York consisted of Andy Hess (Jon Scofield, Black Crowes) on bass, Tony Mason (Joan Osborne, Leo Nocentelli of the Meters) on drums and Jon Dryden (Norah Jones) on keyboards. The second incarnation of the band switched up Dryden for Rod Hohl on guitar and the band was renamed 12th Planet. They recorded their sole album at Electric Lady with Camus Celli as producer and toured the Northeast of the US. During the preparations for the recording, Gordon got a call from multi million selling recording artist Natalie Merchant to audition for her band. His first gig with her was Saturday Night Live and he went on to tour the world with her multiple times. He also recorded 11 albums with her and worked with her from 1998 - 2017. He also toured and/or recorded with Andrew Roachford, Mousse T, Soulounge, Astrid North, Light Blue Movers, Wax Poetic, Nightshades, Laurie Anderson, Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Jimmy Ray, Teddy Richards, Nena, Yasmine Hamdan and many more. He is also known for song writing collaborations with artists such as Brazilian Girls, Marc Sway, Hifi Sean, Jason Darling, Deron Johnson (Miles Davis, Seal), and Joel Shearer (Annie Lennox, Alanis Morrisette). He opened up for the likes of Bob Dylan (with Natalie Merchant), George Benson, Van Morrison, Lokua Kanza, Leonard Cohen, Tete, Al Jarreau, John Mayall and Meshell N’Degeocello. Gordon has recorded on well over 140 albums over his career and has released 10 solo albums. He has shared the stage with Bruce Springsteen, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko (The Band), Garland Jeffreys, Alejandro Escovedo, Jerry Barnes (Chic), Sterling Campbell (David Bowie), Angelique Kidjo, Paula Cole, John Sebastian, Indigo Girls, John Mayer, Bootsy Collins, Dave Stewart and many more. His 5th solo album entitled Overwhelmed was recorded and produced by Pete Smith (Sting, Squeeze, Joe Cocker) and mixed by Hans-Martin Buff (Prince).He is also a full time member of Ropeadope recording artists Light Blue Movers which features Deron Johnson, Jonathan Levy (Izaboo, David Broza), Adrian Harpham (Lucy Pearl/Raphael Saadiq, Dr. John). Their debut album Atlas was released in 2016 to critical acclaim.
Mr. Miller is now available as a digital release here! The album was written as a tribute to Henry Miller during his Big Sur years. Gabriel's childhood in Santa Cruz featured many trips to Big Sur which is one of the most enchanting parts of California. In 2013, Gabriel traveled there to compose all of the songs from the album there surrounded by the towering redwoods and raw Pacific tides.
The album was produced and recorded by Brian Bender (KT Tunstall, José James, Philip Glass) at Motherbrain studios in Brooklyn and mixed by Mark Plati (Prince, David Bowie) at Alice’s Restaurant in Manhattan. It was mastered by Roman Klun (Sarah McLachlan, Joan Osborne) at his Innsbruck Recording Studios. The album features Andy Hess (Black Crowes, Gov't Mule), Tony Mason (Leo Nocentelli of the Meters, Jon Scofield), Shawn Pelton (Saturday Night Live, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel), George Laks (Lenny Kravitz), Jonathan Anderson, Heather Christian, Natalie Merchant, Meshell N’Degeocello, Andrew Roachford, Aaron Johnston (Brazilian Girls, Harry Belafonte), Vernon Reid (Living Colour), Jason Darling, Brian Mitchell (Levon Helm), Bill McHenry and Avi Bortnik (Jon Scofield). The album also features songwriting collaborations with Jesse Murphy (Brazilian Girls), Joel Shearer, Jason Nye (Guano Apes) and Christof Littmann (Randy Crawford).
Gordon is now based in Denmark and has launched a new band called Gate to Venus along with his wife Cecilie Beck. Their 3 albums and 1 EP are available on their website:
www.gate2venus.com
He will continue to compose for Film and TV as well as release his own music and collaborate with other artists. He is travelling occasionally to Princeton, NJ to continue consulting work with Mitchell Duneier and the Princeton University Sociology Department for a course Professor Duneier teaches on Bruce Springsteen’s music. He has been working in that capacity since 2009 with Professor Duneier.
Gabriel just released a new album: 7 Point Star on January 21st, 2023 in Berlin at Speakeazy Berlin. He will return to Berlin on February 24th to perform a double bill with Sandhy Sondoro at Speakeazy Berlin (Kulmerstr. 20A in Schöneberg) and that performace will feature the 20th anniversary of Gypsy Living, Gabriel's 2003 album release.
In addition to all of this, a new concept album is called Mirror. It will be a double album consisting of new recordings of existing songs by Gabriel as well as new songs. If the song in question is in a primarily major key, it will be reharmonized into a minor key. The opposite will hold true as well. For example, the relative minor of G major is Eminor. If the song in question is in Em, it will be transformed into G. The melodies will stay the same. The 2nd half of the double album will be the “mirrored” version of the song. Each song will have an accompanying music video (all color for the original versions and black and whie for the “mirrored” version). This process will begin in the summer of 2023 and the recordings/filming will finish in the summer of 2025. In 2026 a world tour will commence where Gabriel will perform the entire album with a band. Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia.
Stay Tuned for information here!