Home » Member Page

Joe Baer Magnant

Guitarist and composer that freely intertwines tradition with modernity and minimalism.

About Me

Joe Baer Magnant grew up in a small town in Vermont where he was a self-taught guitarist starting at the age of five. He later studied formally at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. Over the years he has toyed with rock, blues, folk, world, jazz, and soul music, gradually defining a unique sound that lies somehere between the lines. He is also a very active music instructor that keeps a steady of rotation of 30-40 students a week of all ages and abilities. Musical influnces include Bill Frisell, Grant Green, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and Mulatu Astatke. The Joe Baer Magnant Group shifts between tradition and modernity while freely improvising over original compositions and arrangements of songs by Tom Waits, Mulatu Astatke, Erik Satie, and Gary Burton. Magnant’s genre-blurring guitar style developed while performing thousands of shows in an array of genres, studying at Berklee College of Music, and becoming one of the youngest faculty members of the Cape Cod Conservatory of Music. The quartet features Tony Capriccio on electric piano (The Hexaphonics), Chris Lujan on upright bass (The M-Tet, Terrance Brewer), and Michael Reed on drums (Planet Booty, Secret Sidewalk). Their first album Traces was released in 2014 and their second, Liminal Spaces, will be released on March 11th, 2015 on Old Tom Foolery Records.

The Joe Baer Magnant Trio Traditional songs and folk music are the centerpiece of this experiemental group that freely improvises over the rich harmonies of songs engrained into american and world culture. The M-Tet This San Francisco based instrumental classic soul group “wants to blow your mind with some old- school funk!” (KPFA DJ, author, and funk music historian Ricky Vincent). Rooted in the sound of '60s organ-based R&B made famous by Booker T. & The M.G.’s and The Meters, The M-Tet offers an “old-school heat in a new-school package (Larry Grogan, Funky 16 Corners).” With vinyl released by Lugnut Brand Records and Detroit’s Funk Night Records (which includes releases from the legendary Dap-Kings and The Soul Surfers), The M-Tet pushes hard in concert with their take on classic soul standards and original “groovers that show the band is really in their own lane (Hotpeasandbutta.com).” Or, as Heavysoulbrutha.com puts it, “Full of soul sugar, these fly dudes lay down some soul that’s good for your soul.”