Grant Geissman

Guitarist/composer Grant Geissman is a popular Contemporary Jazz recording artist, with sixteen albums released under his own name. Grant’s latest project, BLOOZ, marks a return to a partnership with the Mesa/Bluemoon label, which released a number of Grant’s albums in the early 1990s.

Other recent albums include BOP! BANG! BOOM!, which completes a trilogy of jazz albums released on Grant’s own label, Futurism Records. BOP! BANG! BOOM! is a powerfully eclectic recording that features special guests including Tom Scott, Larry Carlton, Albert Lee, Russell Ferrante, Mike Finnegan, Leland Sklar and Van Dyke Parks.

The second in the trilogy, Cool Man Cool, features “cool music I like to play, cool people I like to play with,” including special guests Chick Corea, Chuck Mangione, Tom Scott, Jerry Hahn, Russell Ferrante, Patrice Rushen, Mike Finnigan, and Van Dyke Parks. His previous project, Say That!, marked his return to “real” (not Smooth) jazz, and contains thirteen original Grant Geissman compositions that play like a righteous melding of 1960s Wes Montgomery, Horace Silver, and Jimmy Smith. Jazz critic Bill Milkowski wrote that “Say That! is an iron fist upside the mushy head of smooth jazz, and Grant Geissman's defiant declaration of independence.”

Geissman also co-wrote the music for all twelve seasons of the hit CBS-TV series Two and a Half Men, for all six seasons of hit CBS-TV series Mike & Molly, and for the first season of the short-lived CBS-TV series B Positive. He has also contributed specialty music for a number of other TV shows, including The Big Bang Theory and Mom.

As a studio guitarist he has recorded with such artists as Quincy Jones, Steve Tyrell, Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello, Chuck Mangione (playing the now-legendary guitar solo on Chuck's 1978 hit “Feels So Good”), Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson, Inara George, Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band, Paula Abdul, Ringo Starr, Keiko Matsui, David Benoit, Placido Domingo, Luis Miguel, and Julio Iglesias. He has also played on the scores for such TV shows as Monk (playing the Django Reinhardt-style acoustic guitar solo on the theme), Mad Men, and Dawson's Creek. He has played on the scores to films like Because I Said So (starring Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore), Minions, Austin Powers/The Spy Who Shagged Me, The Majestic, and Anaconda.

With the legendary, eclectic musician/composer Van Dyke Parks, Geissman has worked on Parks’s solo recording projects, and on music for the HBO children's program Harold and the Purple Crayon, for which Parks and Geissman were nominated for an Annie Award.

Five of Geissman’s solo releases reached the top 10 on the national airplay charts, with two of them, Flying Colors and Time Will Tell, rising to the #1 position on the Gavin, Mac, and Radio & Records Charts. The complete list of his solo recordings is Good Stuff, Put Away Childish Toys, Drinkin' from the Money River, Snapshots, All My Tomorrows, Take Another Look, Flying Colors, the compilation CD Reruns, Time Will Tell, Rustic Technology, Business as Usual, In With the Out Crowd, There and Back Again, Say That!, Cool Man Cool, and BOP! BANG! BOOM!

Grant Geissman’s initial stamp on pop culture was the guitar solo on Chuck Mangione’s 1978 pop crossover hit, "Feels So Good." A San Jose, California native who grew up on a steady diet of Beatles, Eric Clapton/Cream, surf guitar music and later jazz and blues greats Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell and B.B. King, Geissman was in his senior year of college as a classical guitar major at Cal State Northridge in Los Angeles when a mutual friend recommended him for a gig with Chuck Mangione. With Mangione, Geissman recorded a number of albums, toured the world, and appeared on virtually all of the major TV programs of the time that featured live musical acts. Geissman is very gratified that “the solo” from "Feels So Good" is now regarded to be a classic.

Apart from his musical career, Geissman is one of the country's largest collectors of MAD Magazine and 1950s EC Comics memorabilia. He has authored five definitive books on the subjects: Collectibly MAD (Kitchen Sink Press, 1995), Tales of Terrror! The EC Companion (with Fred von Bernewitz, Gemstone/Fantagraphics, 2000), Foul Play! The Art and Artists of the Notorious 1950s EC Comics! (Harper Design, 2005), FELDSTEIN: The Mad Life and Fantastic Art of Al Feldstein! (IDW, 2013), and the massive, Eisner-nominated Taschen tome The History of EC Comics (2020).