In early 2015, the Guy Forsyth Blues Band will be reincarnated, will tour throughout the US and Europe, and will release two brand new albums, including a brand new blues-oriented studio album called "The Pleaser". It's the latest chapter in an amazing story (and a really nice segue too...):

Guy Forsyth arrived in Austin on January 10, 1990, with a guitar, a harmonica, and a rented U-Haul truck. A street-smart entertainer raised on American western standards and musical soundtracks while growing up in Kansas City, Mo., he cut his teeth working as a comic stuntman at renaissance faires, passing tip jars from crowd to crowd after each sideshow performance left the room in awe.

Forsyth started by busking on the streets of Austin and quickly working his way up to bars—bars like the now famous Joe's Generic that didn’t pay but would let you play for tips. It worked, he remembers. All of a sudden, he'd built himself a band. He also found himself a fan in a Dutch record label that helped him cut his debut album High Temperature and brought him across the Atlantic to tour. When he got back, he found that he was starting to earn the attention of the bigger players in Austin's music scene.

He started holding residencies at Antone's, and in 1995, he cut his first record, Needlegun, for the legendary blues venue's sister shop Antone's Records and Tapes.

Needlegun took Forsyth to Europe again, and when he returned, he came back to busk corners with the band he helped form in 1994: the Asylum Street Spankers, an old-time gutbucket blues crew. Forsyth would captain the Spankers until 1997, when preparations began for his third album, Can You Live Without, his second record to be released on Antone’s.

Antone's was sold to Texas Music Group, leaving Forsyth caught without cover in the no-man’s land left by an “industry standard contract”.

Forsyth beat on through the saga. He and his band toured regularly through Europe and across the States. He started his own record label, Small and Nimble Records, and it wasn’t long before he had recorded and released a new studio album. Love Songs: For and Against was considered to be his best work to date and heralded the arrival of an artist that could no longer be easily pigeon-holed as a blues artist.

"The reason why I do this is because music has always been such an inspiration to me, a thing that has provided a level of ecstasy more than any other distraction or entertainment."

That energy has also proved the basis for his audience's ecstasy. Guy Forsyth is a dynamic personality on record, but like so many before him, it’s on stage where the truth comes, and here the truth is that Guy lives to play. The thrill is in the show. You can sense it when you see him in the clubs or on the festival stage; you can hear it on 2007's Unrepentant Schizophrenic Americana, his double disc live compilation, and on Calico Girl, his Small and Nimble re-recording of the then-bottled up Can You Live Without sessions; you can see it on 300 Miles from Here to There, the live concert CD/DVD he released in early 2011, and you can hear it on his 2012 album “The Freedom To Fail”, released through a new partnership with Houston-based indie label Blue Corn Music.