The
Brad
Gordon

Once upon a time...

Brad Gordon, AKA "The Professor", is a multi-instrumentalist musician and producer. He recently worked as the multi-instrumentalist (keys/horns/accordion/b-vox/gtr) for the Hotel Cafe US and European tours. He's produced several artists, such as Jim Bianco, The New Fidelity, and Quincy Coleman (the Come Closer album), and, most recently Raining Jane (the Paper Nest EP). Collectively, they've been played on dozens of major radio stations around the nation including KCRW and KROQ. They've also licensed their music to several televsion shows and movies including Men In Trees, Moonlight, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Las Vegas, and Eli Stone. And one friend even won his category in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest with a song they recorded together in Brad's Los Angeles studio.

Brad often plays on and mixes the records at his home studio in Echo Park (an area of Los Angeles) with occasional field trips to other studios for drums.

At his Magic Carpet Studios he also does tracks and arrangements for other artists' records with real instruments — horn sections, piano, keyboards, guitars, you name it — and often sends the tracks back remotely over the internet. He has lots of real instruments at his studio to play with and is comfortable putting together a quick score or arrangement on the fly.

Brad loves making music in his studio. But he also likes to get out into the world during a few carefully selected months each year. He travels the world and performs live on tour, on the radio, and on televsion with artists he loves and respects such as Jim Bianco, the entire roster of the Hotel Cafe Tour, and selectively with other individual artists including Quincy Coleman, Kate Havnevik, Jesca Hoop, and Cary Brothers.

Brad's also been lucky enough to perform live on the radio several times on KCRW's (Los Angeles) influential Morning Becomes Eclectic with Jim Bianco, Quincy Coleman, Gus Black, and Jesca Hoop. While touring with Cary Brothers he also had a chance to perform live on the Craig Ferguson Show on CBS and even at a private event for metaphysicist Depak Chopra!

The Hotel Cafe Tour is a bi-annual review style show with several artists rotating in front of a house band. 2008 was the third year in a row Brad's been on these often-sold-out tours, which has given him a chance meet and perform with some amazing and diverse acts he loves, such as Cary Brothers (the tour's creator), Jim Bianco, Ingrid Michaelson, Brian Wright and The Waco Tragedies, Brett Dennen, Kate Havnevik, Sara Bareilles, Dan Wilson, The Weepies, Jessie Baylin, Kevin Devine, Butch Walker, Josh Radin, Schuyler Fisk, Meiko, Jesca Hoop, Buddy, Rachel Yamagata, Steve Reynolds, and Tom McRae.

Brad is originally from New Orleans, but has been living and working in LA for about 10 years as a producer/composer/multi-instrumentalist and formerly as a piano teacher. His Magic Carpet Studios is in the Echo Park neighborhood where he lives.

In addition to arranging and producing other artists, Brad also loves to create a lot music of his own, which has been used in several short films, TV, DVDs, and as background for live radio segues by several deejays. He loves to create instrumental music (featured on this site) that comes in a variety of forms and ranges — from TV tune-type ditties and psychedelic pop-rock to old-time ensemble pieces and psuedo-classical and jazz scores. Some of it is just plain corny, but so much fun to make! He usually plays all of the instruments on these pieces — including piano, electric and acoustic guitars, bass, trumpet, clarinet, bass clarinet, accordion, organs, sax, and percussion — with some rhythmic help from his wife, drummer Tammy Bumann.

Brad us slowly building up a diverse and quirky sound library of original music that has started to get some licensing interest and use.

In his spare time, Brad enjoys woodworking — mainly on musical instruments, vintage-style cases for non-vintage equipment, and studio furniture.

He loves watching old movies (Spaghetti Westerns and silent films!) and going to antique malls — mostly in search of more vintage instruments to supply the woodworking habit. Camping and going to minor league baseball games with his wife is also a favorite pastime.

He likes wearing vintage glasses frames and anything that fits in with someone who would wear such frames. Is this why everyone seems to call him "The Professor"?

The Brad Gordon

Once upon a time...

The
Brad
Gordon