AUSTIN, Texas — Since arriving in Austin in 1990, Guy Forsyth has made his mark on this city’s music scene (and worldwide) in multiple configurations, from the popular retro bands Asylum Street Spankers and Hot Nut Riveters to various trio/duo to fronting full 7- piece Rock/Blues collaborations. He’s also mesmerized audiences as an amazing singer songwriter — mixing blues, folk, soul, jazz, bluegrass and myriad other genres into his singular sound.

On his new EP, Rider, releasing Nov. 3, which he created with a full band accompanying him, via his own Small and Nimble Records label, Forsyth again fuses multiple styles into four songs that exhibit his vast range. From the up-tempo rock of “Get Up”, in which he reveals how he formed his lifelong love of music — and compulsion to make it no matter what — to the soulful “Rolling Blackout Blues,” in which he mourns a friend who died of hypothermia during Austin’s big freeze of 2021.

On the galloping title tune, Forsyth sings of “ghosts and scars that we carry around inside; those hard-to-shake-off, unwanted guests that rattle around our heads and hearts.” On “Armalite,” he bangs out a searing depiction of our current fear-based existence. This is a departure from his last folk release(2019) which had a number hit song on the folks charts along with the full release riding on the chart for months.

Forsyth is debuting the EP’s release on Nov. 4 with a hometown release show and party at the famed Vortex, an artist-owned multidisciplinary in Austin TX. He is honored to have this performance and release supported by the City of Austin Live Music Venue Grant which was awarded to him in September of this year.

From this planned EP trilogy he intends to merge these songs and more into a full length album. For this effort, Forsyth again teamed up with longtime producer and collaborator Mark Addison, with whom he’d recorded two of his most successful albums: Unrepentant Schizophrenic Americana and Love Songs: For and Against. That album contained their co-write, “Long Long Time,” which spent over sixmonths in heavy rotation on Austin’s KGSR-FM; the album got a 4.5-star rating on Allmusic.com, and both album and song earned Austin Music Award nominations. (With nine wins, Forsyth has made the awards’ all-time winners list; his honors include two vocal awards and four for Best Miscellaneous. This time out,  Forsyth and Addison co-wrote “Rider” and “Get Up.”

“He challenged me to write from an intimate personal space,” Forsyth says. “Songs, however personal they may be, still have to reach the listener. Poetry, rhythm, rhyme and tone are tools to transcend time and space and transport you to another place. A place where you might find a story that informs and enriches your own. I hope ‘the human’ comes through in these songs … and ‘the ghosts,’ too.”