From the Kalamazoo Gazette
http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/kzgazette/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/features-0/1048263694243290.xml

Folk rocker Rogers returns to his 'spiritual home'

Friday, March 21, 2003

BY ELIZABETH CLARK
SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE




While most can't imagine Portage as a place of pilgrimage, Kalamazoo
is truly a mecca to folk rocker Garnet Rogers.


Most performers manage to squeeze in a reference to Paw Paw or
Schoolcraft to personalize their sets, but it's a safe bet for most
the city catchphrase "Yes, there really is a Kalamazoo" really comes
as news. Not so for Ontario-based Rogers.

Rogers said he scores a fix for his addiction every time he comes to
Kalamazoo. He's developed a doozy of a habit after more than 30 years
on the road, both touring with late brother Stan Rogers and going it
alone since his brother's death in 1983.

Rogers' drug of choice: Gibson guitars.

"Kalamazoo's my spiritual home because I'm a completely nuts about
Gibson guitars," Rogers said. "I know a guy, he used to work at the
Gibson plant and he lives outside of town -- he actually made a
guitar for me that's my main stage guitar now."

The singer-songwriter's stash of Gibsons includes 30 models from 1927
to 1968.

"I kind of have these lurid fantasies about these instruments that
must be in private homes in the area and an itch to get on them," he
said. He calls some models "holy grails" of guitars. He has some and
uses them in the studio but said they're too delicate to take on the
road.

"God help me, I bought one yesterday," he said. "I had to go in and
take a big breath -- a 1968 Gibson Les Paul. It cost more money than
my parents made in one year in their entire career."

Flipping through buy-and-sell papers and hunting for gems at junk
shops fills his free time on the road.

He's not unlike a grown-up who still collects "Star Wars" statuettes.
Music has always been his passion and past-time since he and brother
Stan grew up playing guitars, so it came as no surprise when Rogers
came home and dumped his books and packed up his knapsack the day he
finished high school.

"I went up to where he (Stan) and his little band were playing and
that was it. I was in the band. ...I think that was always the plan
that we were going to play together."

Losing his brother, best friend and band mate all at once bewildered
the singer on every level of his life.

"It's coming up on 20 years now and I'm still coming up on ways it
effects me. He always took care of me. Things such as how to get to
the damn shows. I'd been to the gig before and I just didn't know how
to get there.

"The worst part was dealing with a very private grief in a very
public way," he said. "I'd show up to shows where people who had come
to see us play as a band. Emotions would run pretty high in the room.
I was trying to not make it an evening of dirges. I wanted to play a
show that people would enjoy, and I wasn't feeling that chipper."

With a baritone like a Redwood trunk you couldn't dream of wrapping
your arms around, Rogers comforting voice imparts a contentedness to
even his more mournful numbers. His recent best-of CD "All That Is"
reveals a range from what he calls the "breathless place" of soft
tones to music so "jagged" it makes people want to throw things.

"I'm sort of bouncing around from those extremes, and, luckily, I
stay closer to the middle."