Gurr acknowledges that despite her earlier days as an electric rhythm guitar player, her signature sound has become an acoustic guitar. Whether she is playing her 1962 Gibson guitar or her Takamine, the stripped down, organic music fits the earthy tone of her lyrics and allows her strong vocals to shine through, rather than fighting for airspace with the instruments.

“I went acoustic by default. A few years ago I was touring on and off with Barney Bentall. We were playing a lot of tiny theaters in small towns, and they didn’t want full bands, because the theaters were too small. He went acoustic solo most of the time, and I went acoustic as a duo. The songs that I was performing at that time, were originally recorded with electric guitars, were rockier and punchier. Here, we were doing them on two acoustic guitars. I thought it was pretty cool that we were stripping them right down to the basic skeleton of the song, and presenting them in the rawest form that you possibly could,” she says.

The organic bent to Babe Gurr’s music contributes to the success of songs such as, “Love Is Tough,” a song whose seed was the breakup that a friend of hers was going through. “I was trying to write it from her perspective, and even though it was about what she was going through, it got very personal. I had to turn it inwards, for me to feel anything, and to be able to write about it. There is another song on the CD, called, “Now You’re Gone,” and it is such a break your heart song, about someone dying. That song was really hard to sing. “Love Is Tough,” is the same thing, and even though I am not experiencing that (in my own life) right now, we have all been there. When I sing that song, I can really feel it in my heart,” she says.

When she was once asked by her mother, why she wrote unhappy songs, Gurr replied, ‘I am writing about life mom, and it’s not all happy,’ to which she adds, “When I am going out to a movie, or going out to be entertained, I like to be taken on a ride. I like to feel something when I see somebody. I like to laugh. I like to cry or to be made to think. I also want to have a lighthearted time on some things. That’s what I try to achieve when I am doing a concert. I want to bring people on an emotional rollercoaster while they are there, so they will feel a whole bunch of things, and yet walk out with a smile upon their faces.”

July 2008

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