Bio

Gerry Paul is an award winning songwriter, musician, producer, children’s author, television presenter, and festival director - who in his spare time likes to go spearfishing, wrestle sharks and discover new recipes for cooking kai moana.

He has just released a debut album with his Good-Time Americana Kiwi Folk band, T-Bone, titled Good ‘n Greasy. The album went to No. 2 in the New Zealand album charts and the band completed a North Island tour with sell out shows in Wellington, Taranaki, Leigh and Kerikeri. The album consists of seven of Gerry’s original songs and two more he has co-written with the band.

Dublin born and raised in the Hutt Valley, Gerry spent sixteen years touring the world with some of the biggest names in folk music and has performed in over forty countries, including forty states in America. He has played in some of the world's most prestigious venues including the Sydney Opera House, The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, the National Geographic Headquarters in Washington DC and at over 500 music festivals including Cambridge Folk Festival, Roskilde Folk Festival, Woodford Folk Festival, Port Fairy Folk Festival and WOMAD festivals around the globe.

After music festivals defining and marking his 20's and 30's, Gerry moved back to Wellington and started working as the music programmer for NZ’s largest Street Festival CubaDupa. Wanting to introduce Kiwis to some of the exciting bands he had seen while touring the world, he started his own music festival Coastella in 2016, an eclectic festival of musical discovery on the Kapiti Coast, which ran from 2016 – 2019 and attracted 10, 000 people over the four festivals. He curated NZ Irish Fest in 2018, which included over 120 events nationally and in 2019, was appointed as Festival Director of CubaDupa.

Under his leadership as Festival Director, CubaDupa won the Wellington Gold Award in the Vibrant category, is currently a finalist in the New Zealand Event Association Awards for Best Cultural and Best Community events and was touted as the largest post Covid festival in the world in 2021, with over 160, 000 in attendance. Gerry was recently a finalist in Wellingtonian of the Year for 2021 in the Arts category.

Gerry has recently moved with his whanau to Kerikeri in the Far North of Aotearoa and has taken on the role of General Manager of the Turner Centre in Kerikeri. The centre is home to a 400 seat theatre and events centre and 1000 PAX event centre.

An in demand session musician, Gerry has performed and recorded with some of the world’s best known folk musicians including Grammy Award Winning Bluegrass Icon Tim O’Brien, Irish Platinum selling Accordion maestro Sharon Shannon, Indian Bansoori player Ravi Kumur (long time member of Ravi Shankar's band) as well as his own band of ten years Gráda. In recent years he put together the project Motu : Oileáin with Trinity Roots and renowned Irish musicians; Pauline Scanlon, Alan Doherty and Tola Custy, which performed sell out shows in NZ and Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow and was chosen to be the cultural component of the Irish President, Michael D. Higgins’ state visit to NZ in 2017. Gerry currently plays with his band T-Bone, an Americana five-piece and has a band for his kids songs called The Elephant Tree Band.

In 2010, Gerry's song Hank the Wrestling Shark was awarded the 2010 Grand Prize in the prestigious international John Lennon Songwriting Contest, a coveted award among songwriters. Another song off the same album Workin' on the Worm Farm was a finalist and received an honourable mention in the International Songwriting Competition 2011. His children's picture book Hank the Wresting Shark was one of twenty books chosen by the New Zealand Society of Authors to appear at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2012, where NZ was the country of honour.

In 2013, Gerry was chosen to be the house guitar player and musical director for Ireland's National Music Week, which had him traveling around Ireland on a 'music train' recording and performing with fifty of Ireland's best known singers. Hank the Shark made a big splash over there and Gerry went on to co-write and present his own TV series ‘Woohoo! Splash’ for RTE on national Irish television.

Links

• Facebook Page
• Youtube Page
• SoundCloud Page
• Spotify Page