Gabriel Mayers

Gabriel Mayers is an artist’s artist. You may have heard him in the subway competing with rush hour traffic, caught a rare club performance, or stumbled across his Bandcamp page. If you have, you know it only takes a few chords for his soulful voice to cut through the cacophony of train cars and clinking glasses to catch your attention. For him, music isn’t about the money; it’s about stopping strangers in their tracks to share in a communal experience. And it’s working, as people literally miss their trains home to hear him sing in the subway station, with nothing but a ukulele for backup. - Sarah Loaiza, Eventbrite

Sadly, these days, busking in the subways (or outdoors in the warmer months) is one of the few reliable ways left for musicians to make some money through their music. While busking with a group of fellow musicians can be fun, doing it by alone isn't easy, and requires a lot of self discipline and self confidence; but it can be an excellent training ground: busking is like being on stage for a whole day, with a constantly changing (and therefore unbiased) audience; it's an opportunity for a prolonged trial and error session that, over time, can potentially reveal many important secrets related to entertaining a crowd: "how does the average person react to each of my songs?" "What is the mood, or lyric, or body language that triggers a response?" "What gets the travelers to drop their cash in the hat?"
Today we saw Gabriel Mayers busking at our local subway station, and - even just for a minute or so - we enjoyed his understated folk songs. It turns out the guy embraces the NYC subway experience entirely, by recording in it, and allowing train and announcement noises to randomly enter his tracks. Check out his latest single "Sixty Charisma Scented Blackbirds" - and the NYC subway noises that come with it. - The Deli Magazine

I was waiting for the F the other day when my ear caught an enchanting melody from a nearby musician. Buskers aren’t uncommon on the platforms, but there was something different about this song I heard that made me migrate towards it.

There was a ukelele/guitar hybrid instrument playing a rhythmic and soulful tune, then a surprisingly husky voice belting out from a young, clean-cut man. When I glanced up from my stare, I noticed that this musician had similarly captured the entire platform — every single pair of eyes and ears.

Meet Gabriel Mayers. You may recognize him from the party scene in Brooklyn, or from a brief stint on VH1’s Make or Break show, but Gabe’s new music is so much more than what he has done in the past. Through various methods of self-exploration through reflection, hardships and even psychedelics, Gabe has found himself with a renewed outlook on life, evident to all who listen as his soul shines through his material. - Matt Coneybeare , Viewing.Nyc

When he was sixteen years old, Gabriel Mayers hoped to impress a crush by teaching himself to play Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” on the acoustic guitar. He took an unsanctioned two-week break from his high school, Brooklyn College Academy, to learn the instrument by ear. Mayers found himself more smitten with the guitar than with the girl; in the eleventh grade, he dropped out of high school to pursue a career in music. After working a variety of jobs in the service industry—and playing in a band—he opted to make his living as a busker in the New York City subway system.

Full article on The New Yorker's Website - The New Yorker

The night started with the sweet sounds of Little Racer and moved from there to the Eventbrite winner Gabriel Mayers, who stunned the crowd with his power songs and performance. - The Wild Honey Pie

Linda is like a heat-seeking missile and her target is weakness. Her first session in the studio is with Gabriel, who has been doing mainly covers. She suspects that his lack of originals might be an issue on his road to success. Linda ushers Gabriel into the studio and introduces her studio band. When he begins to play, she’s instantly bored by him. She yells that he has no heat and is simply coming across flat. When her sound engineer dares ask a repetitive question, she yells at him too. Actually she spends most of the time yelling at everyone. This should be called The Linda Perry Screaming Project: Shut up and Sing, Damnit. When Gabriel continues to fall short of her expectations, she drops a truth bomb. “There’s way better bands than you are. How are you going to stand out?” This cold, hard dose of reality seems to work and Gabriel amps it up a few notches. Linda is satisfied for now, but she’s not giving him any more warnings. - AfterEllen.com

So yesterday, I wondered whether Brett Paine Murphy was good friends with Brooklyn’s most beautiful buskers, or whether he happened on them by chance and then set them up with a microphone that makes them sound like audible honey. Today, with this video of Gabriel Mayers singing the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale,” I’ve decided I don’t care where these perfect creatures come from, as long as Murphy keeps at it with his video concert series. Gabriel Mayers makes the ukelele magical and not at all like the tired, faux-“quirky” instrument it’s become, and “Femme Fatale” sounds like a completely new song as it fills the Court Street R platform. Oh, yeah, and he’s almost unbearably handsome, (just like everyone else Brett Paine Murphey showcases). - Animal New York

In the intro, we get a to hear a brief snippet of each act's music before the Linda Perrification begins, and some have already piqued my interest. Standouts include Brooklyn busker hottie Gabriel Mayers and Nigerian R&B sisters Vanjess, whose "Drumroll" I've already listened to a half a dozen times. - Previously TV

We are also fortunate enough to have Gabriel Mayers and Josh Fox himself perform for us. Gabriel is the artist featured in How to Let Go. Josh speaks a little about discovering Gabriel when he was running to catch the train in New York and being struck by the beauty of his lyrics. We feel the same way, and have been captivated by his voice and deeply moving songs. - Ohio Revolution

Gabriel Mayers performs Too Close to the Sun and what an amazing transformation this young man went through, from singing covers to writing and performing his own songs. Gabriel has a great voice and if you have watched his covers before, you would agree with the fact that he is amazingly talented. I think he will continue to amaze us as he continues to grow into his own and write songs that capture his emotions. - Music Junkie Press

Gabriel Mayers, busker extraordinaire. Speaking of the subway, Mayers’ vocal and ukulele skills make a long wait for the R train worthwhile. - Brooklyn Heights Blog

Two songs from environmental documentaries have it both ways: “A Minute To Breathe” from Fisher Stevens and Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Before the Flood” is a Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross song with a strained, fragile Reznor vocal, and music that moves at a crawl; you can take this as the song of a person who is brokenhearted, or of a person (or a planet) who’s just plain broken. And despite the odd title, in “Sixty Charisma Scented Blackbirds” from “How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change,” Gabriel Mayers delivers an evocative acoustic ballad about longing for connection. - TheWrap