Rolling Stone called him rock's best-kept secret: a Brooklyn guitarist whose road-worn songs draw on Fahey, Basho, and folk-blues tradition.
MOODS · windblown · intimate · meditative · road-worn · autumnal · spacious · warm · reflective · understated · folk-rooted · quietly intense · pastoral
BIOGRAPHY
Steve Gunn was born April 20, 1977, in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. He studied art and music at Temple University before relocating to New York City, where he became based in Brooklyn. His earliest musical loves were punk rock and rap, and his first real band was a hardcore covers outfit that toured while he was in high school.
Gunn joined the experimental group GHQ, alongside Pete Nolan and Marcia Bassett, playing with the band from 2005 to 2007 as they released nine full-length recordings. He later served as a guitarist in Kurt Vile's backing band, The Violators. His influences include Michael Chapman, La Monte Young, Indian music, John Fahey, Jack Rose, Robbie Basho, and Sandy Bull. In July 2021 he performed as a solo act at the Newport Folk Festival.
WHY THEY'RE COOL
Gunn has built a body of work that critics say keeps deepening: Rolling Stone dubbed him rock's best-kept secret, and the Washington Post praised 2016's Eyes on the Lines as intimate yet mysteriously distant, a record reviewers considered his most accessible and confident to that point. Other You (2021) was described as a return to fully inspired form after a stretch of more formulaic albums, and Daylight Daylight (2025) drew a strong critical consensus for its quiet intensity and chamber-folk arrangements exploring memory and renewal. His guitar lineage, running through Fahey, Basho, Chapman, and Sandy Bull, gives his songwriting a rare rootedness.
GEORGE'S PLAYS
George has played this artist 8 times.
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