Art(s) on the Air Aug 16, 2023 with Trae Gurley

Join Tamara for an interview with singer and musician Trae Gurley. He's a long-time Savannahian who specializes in songs by The American Songbook legends, such as Sinatra, Mercer, Porter, Gershwin, and Cahn. Over his 30-year career, Trae has performed at restaurants, jazz bars, private parties, and weddings, from The Hollywood Hills to Cape Cod.

When downtown staple Jazz'd first opened in 2003, Trae began a weekly Thursday night singing gig, and he stayed for 10 years! After all these years, he and his band El Alma are about to return for 3 performances: Saturday August 19, Saturday September 23, and Saturday October 14.  

Check out Trae's music and follow him here:

https://www.traegurley.com/ 
https://www.instagram.com/traegurley1975/ 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok9b7-deggc&t=4s 

Topics in their chat include:

How Trae got started in music by learning saxophone in high school; his memories of growing up in Garden City and then Pooler; the thriving musical theatre scene in Savannah during the 90s (did you know there used to be "Shakespeare in the Square?!"); how he spent years emceeing kids' dance competitions every weekend before segueing into becoming a voice performer; his earliest performances in a Savannah club called Moxie's, singing in an oversized tuxedo at midnight, to people playing pool; the term "The Great American Songbook" to describe Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, etc; his night singing "Moon River" at a gig next door to Johnny Mercer's old house; and getting to return to musical theatre by performing this past spring in "Once." 

(Side note re: our conversation about Sinatra, per Google it is true that "He didn't have any formal music education, but he had perfect pitch.") 

Tune in and get all the details!