TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Gordon Earle: I want to welcome everyone to another episode of “A Williams Life.” When I was researching our next guest, I came across this amazing quote about him that read, “If the arc of the moral universe is long but bend towards justice, it may be that messengers like Reggie Garrett showed us the way.” Reggie would likely be embarrassed by such praise because he is a thoughtful and modest man.

But having spent time with him recently, that quote rings true to me. Reggie has led many different lives from growing up with seven siblings in a rough section of Cincinnati, to Williams, to being a starving artist in New York, to working as a software engineer, a teacher, and, ultimately, a thriving Seattle-based musician.

It's a life full of twists and turns of deep convictions and artistic pursuits, and I'm so pleased that it brings Reggie to this conversation. So welcome, Reggie. 

[00:00:54] Reggie Garrett: Thank you. 

[00:00:56] Gordon Earle: We usually start these conversations by talking about Williams, but I wanted to explore the time before that, because you had a very distinct upbringing in Cincinnati, and we'll talk about both your parents and your family in a moment.

But I want to start by talking about your father. What kind of man was he? 

[00:01:13] Reggie Garrett: My father was, I should say, a good father of that type back in the Fifties, in those days. I mean, it's a little different these days, but he worked his behind off to support the family, as long as I remember. And beyond that, whenever we needed anything, he pretty much was there.

He was pretty old fashioned in a lot of things. For instance, he didn't believe that we should go to college, and there's a really interesting story around that, which I might talk about later on. But to his credit, you know, because of the way he was brought up, but to his credit, if you could show him that something was a good thing, then he would switch and he would support it, you know, a thousand percent. And that's what happened once we went to college and he thought, oh, okay. He supported us all the way. 

[00:02:07] Gordon Earle: Can you tell me: What were the jobs he was doing? The three jobs, to get a sense of that to support the family.

[00:02:12] Reggie Garrett: He worked at the post office, I think for a short stint as a carrier in the early days. But then he became a clerk and then rose to become a supervisor on the line sorting mail. He had a friend who started a business and he worked with him doing just manual labor, cleaning the office, things like that.

And then there were other assorted jobs that he had that, you know, I just can't remember, because we were kids and he was gone all the time. Didn't always tell us, but there were times that he was working up to three jobs to support the family. 

[00:02:42] Gordon Earle: So tell me about your mother. What was she like? 

[00:02:45] Reggie Garrett: My mother was the best mother in the history of the planet.

And I mean that absolutely. My mother had eight kids. She said that she had intended to be a career woman, but when she had her first child, that sort of changed everything. And the next thing she knew, she had eight, but she worked all during that time too. She was a teacher, she was trained as a social worker, and then became a teacher.

And then later on got into consultation with the public school district in Cincinnati. She was determined that all of her children would get a college education, you know, if we wanted one, and all of us did. She did everything in the world. She understood her children and who they were as people, better than most parents I've seen. She knew I was an artist and on her own volition, she found art classes at the art museum in Cincinnati when I was very young. And they took me on Saturdays so I could draw and take lessons. She knew I was into music. Actually, both my parents and my whole family were into music, so we listened to stuff, records and radio all the time.

We'd sing, we'd do harmonies, you know, she brought records for us. She was just a great mother. 

[00:04:09] Gordon Earle: How did she go about working in the way that you've described, but also having time to raise a family? It sounds almost impossible what she was able to do. 

[00:04:21] Reggie Garrett: Well, it's interesting because I remember her talking to a friend of hers once. And her friend made the same comment, like,  how do you manage. I mean, she got on different committees and neighborhood projects. How do you have the time to do all of that stuff with such a big family? And when we were very young, my grandmother helped out a lot. She lived very close to us.

She would come over and when both my parents were working, especially in the summertime, she'd be with us. She'd do chores and errands and she would take care of us. As we got older, what my mother said was, as the older children grow, then they can start to do things and help to take care of the younger ones.

And in an odd way, that gives me a lot more time than some of my friends who only have a couple of children. So she managed the whole thing well. 

[00:05:19] Gordon Earle: Now I'm wondering what it was like for you being in such a large family and if you felt you had a hard time being either seen or heard with so many siblings around.

[00:05:29] Reggie Garrett: No. I was the oldest son and so that carries a little bit of gravity. It's not something that I fought about or was even aware of when I was younger, but as I got older I could look back and see that. So there was a way in which I always had a voice in the family. I tended to be very private, so, you know, in a family of eight kids, two adults, sometimes my grandmother was there, and not a very large place, it was hard to get privacy, but somehow I managed to, and would lose myself in my projects, like listening to music or reading or whatever it was that I was into at the time. Building model cars or planes. Somehow I managed. 

[00:06:20] Gordon Earle: When did you first get interested in music?

[00:06:24] Reggie Garrett: That's a hard question. I think as far back as I can remember, I think when we were young, we listened to the radio all the time and my parents had their records. My father was really into jazz and a little bit of blues. My mother was into gospel and rhythm and blues. The radio was always on or somebody was always playing records.

We were always listening when we were children. My two older sisters and I went to the church and we were in the choir, the children's choir. So we sang. My sister, older sister, would bring records home and we would listen to 'em and we would learn the different harmony parts and the three of us would sing harmonies all the time.

I think the thing that really clinched it was when we were very young. My mother—I think it was a part-time job she had—she came home one day and she had this shopping bag filled with albums. And in those days, albums were a special thing, you know, you listen to 45s. But she told us each we could have our own album, so we got to pick—me and my sister.

So we reached in. I remember the album that I picked was “The Blue Danube” and you have to remember I was only that big, you know, but it was my record. But “The Blue Danube” was a song that I loved because I used to hear it in cartoons all the time. So I always loved that piece of music. So that was my album, and we would fight to see who got to play their albums on the record player from time to time.

But we really got into music. We always listened, we always sang. We were in choirs, I don't know, as far back as I can remember, 

[00:08:04] Gordon Earle: When did you first start playing guitar? 

[00:08:07] Reggie Garrett: I was in, was it junior high? I think junior high. And I wanted a guitar. I just decided I wanted a guitar. You know, the Beatles had been around the Dave Clark Five, Hendricks, Eric Clapton, all these people.

Guitar was the thing. So I wanted a guitar, and so I begged my parents, harassed them. Please get me one. Please get me one. Please get me one. And for the first year they didn't. But then the next year they got me a guitar. And I came downstairs on Christmas morning and there was my guitar and I picked it up and I looked at it, and then I looked at them and I put it away.

And I didn't touch it for like six months because, really, it was like this plastic thing from Sears and it kinda hurt my feelings; I thought they really didn't take me seriously. I want a real guitar so I can learn how to play. This is a toy. And so I put it away, but then later I got the thing and I thought, well, I can at least start trying to learn some chords.

So I started messing around with it and I think they realized that. And the next Christmas, they went way overboard and got me this electric guitar that I didn't need because I really didn't know how to play, but they got this thing for me. And so then I ended up going out getting an amplifier and starting to really pick at it and try to learn things.

[00:09:29] Gordon Earle: Did it sort of come naturally to you, or did you have to really work at it? 

[00:09:36] Reggie Garrett: I had to work at it, but I'm stubborn. So when I'd listen to music, I would just sit there sort of fingering the thing and trying to make chords and strumming and picking and doing all kinds of weird things.

I didn't have lessons, but for me, the breakthrough came. I had learned a few chords and I was just sitting around, playing with the thing at one point, and I was listening to “After the Gold Rush” by Neil Young, and at some point I hit a D chord at the same time that he hit a chord.

And this light bulb went on in my head. Oh. So I started going through all my records, just listening and sounding out chords, you know, like, oh, that's this. Oh, that's okay. That's how that works. And that's how I learned how to play. I mean, I listened to all these records. I learned songs just by ear from the records and just started to play.

And then somebody taught me a little lead pattern. So I just started to mess around with that and eventually got good enough to at least, you know, do it in front of people. 

[00:10:40] Gordon Earle: Let's, take a step back from the family for a moment. Can you tell us what it was like growing up in Cincinnati in the fifties and sixties? You know, paint us a picture of the town and your life there. 

[00:10:53] Reggie Garrett: I always like to describe Cincinnati as a southern town that happens to exist in the North, north of the Ohio River. When you're a kid growing up, a lot of that kind of stuff doesn't really break into your consciousness, that much you're not aware of.

It's just that that was what life was like. But like I said, my mother wanted to make sure we could find our way. So she got us out into the city early when we were very little children. Taught us how to ride the buses and make change, find our way home and get around. So we were pretty comfortable going all over the city.

We lived in one of the Black neighborhoods that was sort of north of it, called Lincoln Heights. We went in for all kinds of different reasons, but you know, Cincinnati was, I'd say, a pretty average northern 1950s kind of American town. 

[00:11:56] Gordon Earle: You say, a southern town with a northern vibe to it. Did you experience or witness any segregation during that time? 

[00:12:04] Reggie Garrett: Oh yeah. 

[00:12:06] Gordon Earle: Tell us about that. 

[00:12:08] Reggie Garrett: Yeah. My sisters and I talk about it from time to time. There are things that they remember that I don't; there are things I remember that they do. But I was thinking about the way I first learned about racism and segregation as a little kid.

In Cincinnati, down by the river, there's an amusement park, which is, interestingly, named Coney Island, just like the one in Brooklyn. It's not there anymore. It hasn't been there for years. But we loved Coney Island. We loved going to Coney Island, riding the rollercoaster, all the different rides, you know.

So one summer, we're finished with all of our chores and errands this Saturday. So my sisters and I decided, well, we want to go to Coney Island. So we started harassing my mother and father, let's go to Coney, let's go, let's go. And they're kind of busy and kept putting us off. No, we want to go to Coney Island, please. Let's go. Let's go. 

And they kept putting us off. My mother finally said, we can't go to Coney Island today. And we're like, well, why can't we go to Coney Island today? And she said, because colored people are not allowed there today. To a kid that age, I had no idea where to put that, even how to think about how to question.

It was like, what, what, what, what is that all about? What do you mean? That was the beginning. From that point on, we started to encounter—well, I guess we'd been encountering things—except maybe I was just becoming aware a little bit more. My sisters talk about my father taking us to a swimming pool in Dayton, Ohio, and they wouldn't allow us in because Black people were not allowed in that pool.

And just all kinds of other little things. It's not like the Klan was burning crosses on our lawn or anything. However, I think the national leader of the Klan was based in Cincinnati for a while. So if you drove down I-75 just south of where we lived, you could see a giant farm field with the giant burned cross in it.

Every day that you passed that thing. But you know, that was life. 

[00:14:15] Gordon Earle: Did that change your view of Cincinnati? You grew up and you thought of it one way and then you experienced that stuff and did you change your view on the town you grew up in? 

[00:14:25] Reggie Garrett: As time went on, my view did change. What really changed was after I left, when I went away to college for those four years and then went to grad school and realized every time I came back to Cincinnati it was just more difficult to be there.

It got harder and harder. I got to the point that I could maybe make it for about three days and then I just had to leave. My family was still there, so I'd go to visit from time to time. 

[00:14:52] Gordon Earle: You just mentioned going off to college, and I'm curious: You said earlier that your father didn't necessarily support kids going to college, and yet you all went to college and graduated.

Could tell us about the education you received, which I understand was mostly driven by your mother. 

[00:15:12] Reggie Garrett: My mother was a teacher and education was a big thing to her. Apparently when she first started having children, she determined that we would all go as far as we could, education-wise.

So in her mind we were gonna go to college. Every one of us. My elementary school was an Episcopal school, so we went there, kindergarten through sixth grade. When I finished there, I think we moved that summer to a different neighborhood. We got a house, we got out of the projects. We had a house in a new neighborhood.

Early in the summer, I remember my parents woke me up very early one day, said, get up, get dressed. I got up, I got dressed. They put me in the car and we drove, seemed like to the other side of the county. We went to this school, Cincinnati Country Day. You know, the only thing I knew about Country Day was these rich White kids who always got beat by Lincoln Heights in football.

That's all I knew about Country Day. But took me out there and then they gave me all of these tests. I took a whole battery of tests. Nobody had said anything to me about what was going on, but I took a bunch of tests and then when it was over; the headmaster was there. He said, well, I guess we're gonna accept you, so let's arrange for summer school.

Because there were some things that I needed a little bit of help in. My school hadn't taught those things that they needed. That's how I learned where I was going to school, and that's how I started. I went to Cincinnati Country Day, which I guess was rated as one of the best prep schools in the Midwest.

I went there for seventh through twelfth, graduated, then went to Williams. 

[00:17:02] Gordon Earle: How did your parents pay for that Country Day experience? Or were you on scholarship, or how did that work out? 

[00:17:08] Reggie Garrett: I got partial scholarship. My parents paid for some, and they did that for all of us. They actually went broke a few times and had to declare bankruptcy a couple of times to make sure all their kids got through college.

But it was a mix of both. 

[00:17:23] Gordon Earle: So I have to ask you, how did you learn about Williams? 

[00:17:27] Reggie Garrett: That's a funny story. It has everything to do with Country Day. Country Day, like I said, seemed like it was on the other side of the county. It was a long way off. And there was a school bus that came to pick students up, but it didn't come as far as my neighborhood.

So what I'd have to do would be to get up early in the morning and my father would drive me to my uncle's house because he had to go really early. 

[00:17:53] Gordon Earle: I don't want to interrupt, but how early in the morning were you getting up? 

[00:17:56] Reggie Garrett: We're talking about 5:30, you know, five 5:30, sometimes six through the years that I did it, but pretty early.

[00:18:05] Gordon Earle: Wow. 

[00:18:05] Reggie Garrett: He had to be at work early, but then he dropped me at my uncle's and then I'd wait at my uncle's for an hour and a half or so until I had to walk up to where the bus stop was, which was next to a dry cleaner. So I'd do my homework in the morning at my uncle's house, sit there and watch TV.

You might remember travelogues that would come on very early in the morning, sometimes before the regular programming started. One day they had this 15 minute piece about Williams College, beautiful Williams College in the Berkshires, you know? And so it's on, and I'm doing my homework, and it's just kind of going on and on.

I'm not paying much attention. But then they said something about students get the option of a junior year abroad. It's like my ears pricked up. I said, what? What? Because you know, I had never heard of such a thing like—wait, my junior year, I can go to another country? I want to go to that place.

That was it. I want to go to that place. I guess a couple years later, when they started to ask us where we wanted to go, I said, I think I want to go to Williams. And the headmaster got this huge smile. Turns out that probably a third to half the faculty had gone to Williams 

[00:19:27] Gordon Earle: You had no idea until you talked to them about it, right? 

[00:19:31] Reggie Garrett: No idea. I was one of their star pupils, so they're like, yeah, we think that's a great idea. So that's how I found out about it and ended up going there. 

[00:19:41] Gordon Earle: Tell us about the transition, if any. Was it seamless? But you're going from Cincinnati, you're going to the Berkshires. So what was the transition like; or was it like a glove that fit? 

[00:19:53] Reggie Garrett: A couple of things come to mind. One, my time in high school was tough. I mean, I got through it and did very, very well. But they worked us to death. I had a lot of work and, and the first couple years I really had to figure out how to organize my time to study and get all of the work done.

So by the time I got to Williams, I was pretty used to a tough load of work. That didn't bother me too much. But when I first got there, I think the thing that struck me, which strikes so many, is I was on my own for the first time. I could make up my own mind about what I did when, how or not.

And so my freshman year, the first semester, I spent a lot of time in the basement of Baxter Hall playing pool and ping pong with friends of mine. I mean, a lot of time down there. 

[00:20:52] Gordon Earle: I don't want to give away one of your secrets, but I think you ate a lot of sticky buns. 

[00:20:55] Reggie Garrett: Oh, I love those things. Honey buns. I love honey buns.

So much so that I kind of got in trouble academically. I shouldn't say I got in trouble. Flags were raised and so the JA came up to talk to me, like, you know, you're professors are worried, are you gonna pass? And he was asking me all these questions and I remember saying, yeah, I know. I think it's about time for me to sort of buckle down and get this work done. I've been having too much fun up to now. 

He said, well, is there anything that you don't understand? I said, no, this class is just a survey course. You read the syllabus, you listen to the stuff, you remember it, you know, you regurgitate it on the test.

It's not hard, but, but I just need to get to work. So after a while, I finally settled down and got to work and then, you know, did pretty well for the rest of the time at Williams. I had a few missteps along the way, but generally speaking, it was a pretty good experience, pretty successful experience.

[00:21:54] Gordon Earle: Did you play a lot of music when you were at Williams? Because we had Rick Richards on the program earlier and he said he jammed a fair amount with you. 

[00:22:01] Reggie Garrett: We did. I met Rick probably the first week of class. Did he share you his pictures of  his magnificent Afro that he had back in those days?

Because I don't think he looks like that now, and you know, it kind of irked me because I wanted to grow an Afro so bad, but my hair just wouldn't grow it. But we both found out that we played guitar, and we both lived in Layman, so he'd come up to my place or I'd come down his suite and we would play and we'd jam.

We did that for a long time and eventually formed a band together.

[00:22:36] Gordon Earle: Wow. I wish I had been next door to listen in on those sessions. 

[00:22:42] Reggie Garrett: Eh, I don't know if we were that good back then, but, but yeah, eventually we formed a band. I think we called it Afro Rock, played a few parties, a few shows.

Yeah, we played together a fair amount. 

[00:22:55] Gordon Earle: On the same theme, I want to ask you what it was like to be a Black student at Williams during those years. I'm gonna drill down on it in a second, but can you give me your overall thoughts of what that was like? 

[00:23:08] Reggie Garrett: I think it was at an interesting time, because there was a lot of change.

There was a lot of social protest, a lot of issues that needed to be worked out. I was in an interesting position because, like I said, my mother had gotten us out into the community very early on, so I was comfortable around anybody. I mean, it really didn't bother me. I didn't have a problem being there among so many White students, like a lot of my Black classmates did, which was kind of an eye-opener to me because I was raised to know that I could compete with anybody.

My family was like that. Education was important. So all of us worked hard in school all the way. We almost kind of competed with each other to see who got the best grades all the time. So we knew that we could do that. It was more interesting; it was almost like I was this observer sitting back looking at everything that was going on.

It was funny because I had White friends, I had Black friends, I had White friends from high school, who went to Williams, that I stayed friends with on campus. I had Black friends. My best friend Harry Jackson. We went to high school together. He was there. But also the Black community, we were all friends.

I could float between both worlds and it was not difficult for me at all. At the same time, I was very aware of all the issues, and the struggle that was going on at the time. 

[00:24:43] Gordon Earle: In an earlier conversation along these lines, you said something that stuck with me. You said you had grown up being taught to be respectful of White people and not to fear them.

[00:24:54] Reggie Garrett: Right. Because of the time that we grew up, it was very important for Black people to know how to read and deal with White people. It's just a matter of survival, especially for my parents coming out of the South. My mother from Spartanburg, South Carolina; my father from Mount Sterling, Kentucky.

So they both had a healthy respect; I think my father more so than my mother, but my mother had a lot more education too. So we were taught not so much to be afraid of White people, but to be aware of how we needed to behave when we were around them. Right. Just that kind of thing. So things that you could say, things you couldn't, ways you should be.

[00:25:44] Gordon Earle: Yeah. Understand. If you look at all of your Williams experience on the social side, the academic side, the racial side, did Williams adequately prepare you for your life after Williams? 

[00:25:59] Reggie Garrett: I'd say yes, it did. I guess it really comes down to what it is that you wanted to get out of it. For me, I wanted to be an artist and I wanted to go to Williams, and those two things are necessarily combined, but there was a way in which they weren't, like it didn't matter to me that Williams was not this top-notch art school.

It's where I wanted to go to school. So I went there and it had an art department, so I got some training. The down the downside was, when I was a senior and we were all applying to art schools, I don't think any of us got into the first places that we were accepted. I ended up going to Albany State for graduate degree, but that was after I had been turned down everywhere else, and I think it's because we had a whole year's less preparation than students from almost any other school.

The other side of it is because it was Williams. The reputation, the kinds of people who went there. I'd say years later when I was living in New York and I needed a job and I tried a lot of different things, I ended up working at IBM. My sister worked for IBM and she told me, you should apply, so I went and applied.

I didn't want to for a long time, but one of the things I found out, I went around and interviewed with a lot of the managers and at one point I interviewed one guy and he had this big smile on his face. When I walked in the office, he said, so I hear you went to Williams? And I said, yeah.

He said, well, I went to Amherst and we both glared at each other and then just started laughing and he recommended they hire me. I think it's because having gone to a place like Williams, they knew that I could be comfortable around and deal with their clientele.  

[00:27:55] Gordon Earle: Right.

[00:27:55] Reggie Garrett: In the higher echelons of business and corporations in New York City. So it prepared me in a number of ways. 

[00:28:03] Gordon Earle: I want to get to IBM in a second. You did get your Master's in painting immediately after Williams, and I'm wondering why you got the Master’s when I know music was your first love. Maybe it was equal to painting. You've mentioned it several times, but why painting versus advancing your academic life and music? 

[00:28:28] Reggie Garrett: Painting was something that I always did. I always drew, I always painted. It was sort of a given in my mind that that's what I was gonna do. Music I always loved, but didn't think necessarily that that was something I should be doing. It was something that I loved. It was only when I started to play the guitar that I thought about it. I wasn't at that level of the people that I really respected and thought, oh, you really need to be doing stuff like that if you're gonna be musician.

[00:29:01] Gordon Earle: So you thought at that point you might be a more successful painter than a musician? 

[00:29:05] Reggie Garrett: Exactly. And as a matter of fact, when I was on campus, I wrote a couple of plays, I started a novel, bunch of short stories. So I was thinking about being a writer too, but it occurred to me soon that, nah, that wasn't gonna work. That's not something that I wanted to do for a living. 

[00:29:23] Gordon Earle: If you still have some examples of your artwork, we'll put it up on the website, but can you describe the paintings, either the art that you love or the art that you do? Can you give us a sense of that verbally? 

[00:29:36] Reggie Garrett: Sure. I mean, I like all kinds of art. It's sort of a pointless thing for me to say, “This is the kind of thing I like,” because every day I'll run into something else and go, oh, that's kind of slick. I never thought of that before. But the kinds of stuff I did when I was at Williams in particular: I did a lot of representational stuff.

As a matter of fact, you were the ones who told me that when they took down the library, in the Martin Luther King reading room in the old library, I had a painting. The portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr., was one I painted, was the first commission I ever got when I graduated from Williams, but I did a lot of representational stuff, a lot of portraits, a lot of African masks, things like that.

Mostly that was the kind of stuff I did when I got to Albany. I started to gravitate more toward more geometric, abstract kinds of things got into real creatively doing etchings, embossing the paper, cutting it, making three dimensional objects out of it, just all kinds of things.

After I left Williams, it’s probably harder to describe the kinds of stuff that I did, but after that, I had a loft in Brooklyn and painted for a long time. Just went broke and finally let that go. 

[00:30:59] Gordon Earle: Can you describe that chapter in your life and what you learned from it? The starving artist period. 

[00:31:05] Reggie Garrett: When I finished at Albany, I was staying at my sister's. I decided that I wanted to continue. So I applied to Pratt in New York and got accepted, but they had already doled out all of their financial aid money and I was broke. There was no way I could go there. So I went down and I looked at the campus and walked around and decided, yeah, I want to come here.

So I deferred admissions and figured I'd take the time to move down there and get established and work, make some money, and then go the next year. So I moved down there. When I first went down, I stayed with my sister who lived in Newark, New Jersey; sort of slept on a mattress behind the couch in her living room for a while, and looked for work and got a bunch of different jobs, just part-time jobs.

Finally got a job at Macy's in New York, in the stock room as a stock clerk. 

[00:32:04] Gordon Earle: That's what a Williams degree will get for you. 

[00:32:07] Reggie Garrett: It's funny you say that though, 'cause it was a holiday rush and I thought, okay, they're hiring. So I went and when the woman who was looking at it looked at my application, said, wait a minute, you went to Williams College?

I said, yeah. She said, we can't have a Williams College graduate working in the stock room, you know? Wow. And I said my mother taught me, if you can't do what you want, you might as well eat. I need a job. So she hired me and I worked in the stock room there for a while. Met my best friend, a guy named Willie Rodriguez, who was a trumpeter.

He used to play in different bands. I think he played in a band with Tito Puente for a while, but we got to be really good friends. And we both wanted a loft. So we started looking around all over Manhattan, all over Tribeca, everywhere. Just as we were about to give up, somebody said there are these places over in Brooklyn, this neighborhood that's kind of opening up. You should look over there. 

So we went and it's the neighborhood that is now known as Dumbo. It was not anything like it is now. All these old cobblestone streets, old factories, like a terrifying place at night. But there were a couple of lofts in a few of the buildings and there was one that had some spaces.

So we went and we saw it and we got it. We spent a lot of time cleaning that thing. While we were working at Macy's, he was also working a part-time job at UPS. We cleared it out, cleaned it, sanded it, and essentially built the place. And once we got it going, I started painting. I was working in the stock room at Macy's and we were going broke 'cause the loft was expensive.

So I ended up looking for jobs and got turned down for every advertising agency, graphic design job. I tried. My sister said apply to IBM, so I did. And they hired me. So at that point, I wasn't starving anymore. But up to that point, it was touch and go from time to time. 

[00:34:07] Gordon Earle: In the “stealing your soul” line of questioning, I was wondering: Did you feel, after you started working there, that you were—quote unquote, for lack of a better word—selling out? Because you weren't doing your art full time? Or did you just say, this is it, this is what I'm doing, at least for this period of my life? 

[00:34:27] Reggie Garrett: Well, it was a mix of those. I mean, it was interesting having that kind of a job because there were times that it would sort of cut through to me. Having gone to a place like Williams, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, you know, and I was making way more money than I ever considered I would make as an artist, or in any of the other jobs that I'd had.

So I did it. I did the training, worked there for a few years and was doing very well. But the thing that really pushed it was I'd been writing for a while and I was doing well at IBM. I was sitting at the desk one day and my boss came by and he handed me a check and I said, what's this for?

And he said, oh, it's the bonus. The team earned a bonus. They did some big thing. And so it wasn't even my part of the team, but they earned a bonus, so everybody got it. And I remember thinking, I sat there and looked at this check and I thought about how these things would come to me from time to time.

I did my work, but also I got money for things that I didn't have anything to do with. And it struck me that it would be really, really easy to just stay there for the rest of my life because the money was coming in. It scared the hell out of me. It did. I remember sitting there looking around the office and this thought crossed my head, one day I'm gonna be 50 years old and I'm still gonna be sitting at this desk and I will not have done any of the things that I decided I wanted to do.

That's what really kind of prodded me to try to get out of there. 

[00:36:06] Gordon Earle: Let's talk about the get-out-of-there phase of your life, because I know in 2005 you embarked on a very different path. You earned your teaching certificate and taught in a special program for high school dropouts in Seattle, and I know that was very meaningful to you.

Could you describe the work and why it was so meaningful? 

[00:36:27] Reggie Garrett: I'd been working at a bank in Seattle, doing computer center stuff, and I had left there, saved up a bunch of money and finally decided I wanted to do music full time. So I saved a pile of money and quit the job, and then just started playing and writing and doing things.

My wife helped to support us through that time. But as time went on, I decided I needed to earn money because music was not supporting us. So what I thought I'd do would be to tutor. So I started tutoring and then the thought crossed my mind, well, if I get my teaching certificate, I can probably charge more money as a tutor.

So I decided to go back to school and get my teaching certificate. I got my high school teaching certificates in social studies and language arts, so essentially English and history. And then my percussionist in my band taught in this program at a local community college and he kept saying you should teach there, you know, it's a pretty good job. People are pretty cool. 

I kept putting him off like, nah, you know, I'm a musician, I do this. And finally, I needed the money. He said, well, let me introduce you. So he took me up there and introduced me. I took my resume, they interviewed me and they hired me. I taught 13 or 14 years in that program. It's the best job I ever had in my life. 

[00:37:50] Gordon Earle: Wow. Did you ever have students come up to you and say that you'd made a difference in their lives? 

[00:37:58] Reggie Garrett: A few times I did. Years later, I was walking in the park with my wife and I heard somebody—”Mr. G!”— and stopped and looked and there's this guy up on the roof and he was doing some repair on one of the boat houses down by the park.

He said, I'm so-and-so; I was in your class. You remember? And he yelled out a couple of things we did, and I said, yeah. He said, hey, you know, I'm married. I have a daughter, I'm doing this job. He said, you were right. Thank you for everything. 

That was the kind of program it was to take kids who had dropped out of high school, were out on the streets, whatever, and teach them how to do college so they could go and get a degree and get a job. If they passed my class or I taught them how to be college students, then the state would pay for their degree. I had a few students over the years who I ran into out in the streets; it was good to see them and tat they were doing well.

[00:38:55] Gordon Earle: Reggie, I'd like to turn now to the music that you're producing today. I read one critic who wrote the following of your music, which we're gonna listen to very shortly. The critic wrote that your style “boldly refuses to comply with the fundamental approach to the blues or any other genre.” What do you think of that?

[00:39:17] Reggie Garrett: I think that's entirely accurate, and it's kind of funny because I remember when I first started recording things and trying to get signed to a record label, I would send things out. I. The one critique that I always got was, we don't know how to categorize this. 

[00:39:35] Gordon Earle: Right? 

Reggie Garrett: The stuff that I write, most I can say is it's a combination of things that I like.

It's not like every song is packed with all of these things, but there are elements of blues, of rock, of folk, of gospel. There's a period I went through with a lot of Latin rhythms, Celtic stuff. I mean, there's all kinds of things rolled up into what I write. And so, yeah, usually when people ask me what I do, I'll say, okay, listen to this, and you tell me what it is.

Years ago I got a review and the critic, the reviewer said, “Garrett's urban acoustic folk soul.” And I thought, you know, I don't know exactly what that is, but it kind of sounds like what I do, so I'll run with it. So, 

[00:40:25] Gordon Earle: I'll pick up on the word acoustic there because I'm wondering why you settled on the acoustic guitar as your primary instrument, and what's special about the instrument to you is because you played it so long. Do you feel you have a special connection to the acoustic guitar?

[00:40:43] Reggie Garrett: Hmm. It might be simply that I've just played it for so long. I play electric too, but the kinds of things that I do, I guess that my body feels comfortable with, subtle, much better on an acoustic guitar. And part of it is that the guitar is not the same as the cello, but the woman I play with now, she plays cello.

When we first started playing, she said, here, I want you to know why I play cello. So she set me up with the cello in front of me, and then she bowed the thing and you could feel it through the body. It's like, oh, oh yeah, I know why you do this. And maybe that's what it is, because you don't get anything like that from an electric guitar.

You know? It's not to put down what an electric guitar does, but maybe it's just as simple as that. The pure physical sensation of playing the thing. 

[00:41:42] Gordon Earle: Can you tell me about the types of musicians or the musical traditions that have had the greatest impact on you? I know in reading up on some of your background, I saw you had a particular affinity for Richie Havens, but I imagine that there are many, many artists that have influenced you. Who would you talk about in terms of your art? 

[00:42:02] Reggie Garrett: God, that's so hard. I've been influenced by so many people and I think of influence differently than a lot of people do. I'll say I'm influenced by somebody and they'll listen to that person and say, I don't hear it. For instance, I like Gentle Giant in the way that the singer phrases things very differently than most other people.

There are certain bands that I really like because of the acoustic spread that they do, some bands for rhythm. I like Richie Havens, I like Hendricks, loved Aretha Franklin, James Brown. I mean, there's really too many to mention, you know? In terms of influences, I know that people who listen to me will maybe pick out particular folks and say, oh, I can see that. I can see that you were influenced by him. Richie Havens probably just because he was Black and played acoustic guitar, and at a certain point I had a band lineup a lot like his. It was acoustic-based, a lot of strumming, a lot of different tunings. But lots of other people too. That one is really hard for me. It's like way too many people for me to mention. 

[00:43:16] Gordon Earle: I'll ask an equally, maybe, hard question. If you can describe the types of songs that you write. Because if you listen to them, they're practically every subject in every human emotion. It's hard to categorize you as a songwriter and maybe hard to categorize you as a musician.

You're hard to categorize. 

[00:43:38] Reggie Garrett: I'm hard to categorize and probably just 'cause I don't know what I'm doing, so I just do it. I remember I had a printmaking professor once who loved what I did because I wasn't trained as a printmaker. So I did all these things that you weren't supposed to do, ’cause it seemed interesting to me and he just loved it.

I think I approach music like that. Like I said, I was self-taught, so there are things that I do that they don't teach and some teachers would probably frown on. And when I write, I'd say in the past seven or eight years, I've had a particular focus that helped me with what I write up to that point. It was just all kinds of things. 

I got hooked up with an organization called the Bushwick Book Club at a certain point, and what they do is they'll pick a book and assign a bunch of different songwriters and musicians to write a song based on that book, on some experience of that book.

It could be what the plot is about, the theme, the subject, characters, relationships, your experience of the book. If it's about gardening, maybe you’re remembering how you garden, whatever it is that strikes you, you write a song. I've written a ton of songs for them.

What I like about that is that it gets me to think about topics that I wouldn't normally think about. So I end up writing about all kinds of different things. I pretty much go everywhere. 

[00:45:13] Gordon Earle: We want to focus now really on your music, which means playing some of it. And I want to start with your latest album.

Your love of history comes into this album: “York’s Lament” and other stories, because it features a ballad about a man called York who is, as you know, the enslaved personal servant to Captain William Clark, who is the co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. So it adds a little history, and lots of music.

So we'll play that now.

[00:45:53] [Music] 

[00:46:31] Gordon Earle: That's a beautiful song, Reggie. Can you tell me how you came to write it and what happened to York?