The Saga of Arnt Arntzen

Thirty-three year-old guitarist/banjoist Arnt Arntzen, younger brother of reedman Evan Arntzen, has quickly established his own presence in New York. Evan was featured in this paper in April 2018, so now it’s Arnt’s turn. As has happened with three of my recent interviews, I sent each subject a list of questions, which they turned into an autobiographical account. With minor editing, my work was done! So in Arnt’s words… Growing up, I remember being around music all the time. My mother Georgina was a prairie girl from Regina, Saskatchewan, and was musical from an early age. My father Tom came from a large family where everyone played music; he sang and played piano. They met when my father answered an ad in the Georgia Straight (then the leading free-hippie rag in Vancouver) to go all the way to Regina to be the keyboardist in Georgina’s touring rock-and-disco cover band, called Gina Dean and Scoundrel (Scoundrel was purposefully singular). The whole band lived out of a converted school bus while they played all over the USA and Canada, in every kind of venue from big city concert halls to little hotel bars and lounges in little prairie towns. When they married and decided to have a family, Evan came along first. At first, they attempted to keep their touring going, by bringing the family along. Evan has more memories of this time than I do; I was too young to have any re