Paul Banks

Hailing originally from Colorado, guitarist Paul Banks captured the Danish music award for best folk songwriter in 2001. He has called Denmark home since 1961 and first entered that nation’s modest, heavily taxed recording industry with releases in the late ’70s. Over the years he has contributed as a sideman to more than 100 Scandinavian groups, a breadth of experience that surfaces equally in the recordings issued under his own name.

Blues, gospel, jazz, ragtime, and folk form the core of most of those projects, among them the critically acclaimed White Noise and Diamond Nights from 2002. Anyone seeking to grasp everything that shaped that album would need to immerse themselves in the Danish music scene, passing many evenings alongside local blues ensembles. Banks emerged from an environment that is earnest, reverential, and well-intentioned, yet it was the flowering of his individual voice that prompted reviewers to hail White Noise and Diamond Nights like a beautiful bouquet. Listeners wanting to hear him in a more house-rocking setting can turn to Second to None by the Barner-Wittrock band.