Gannon likes to say he fell in love with music twice. First, he inherited it from his family. He absorbed his dad’s obsession with alt-country and bands like Counting Crows and Third Eye Blind. He learned his mom’s love of The Beatles and a good movie soundtrack. Through his five older siblings’ rattling car speakers he found Atmosphere and Taking Back Sunday.
During the pandemic, Gannon fell in love with music again. Booted from his college dorm, he spent 2020 in his rural desert hometown – just outside of Las Vegas. His vinyl collection exploded and artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Sufjan Stevens, Gang of Youths, Wednesday and Little Simz became favorites. Hyperpop, DIY emo and Americana became pillars of his playlists.
As a music journalist, he wrote profiles and reviews for the alt-weekly Phoenix New Times and hosted several specialty shows at the student-run station Blaze Radio, where he was station manager. Since then, Gannon has worked stints as a features and entertainment reporter at the Minnesota Star Tribune and Quad-City Times. Career highlights include interviewing Jenny Lewis and Hippo Campus and earning a feature writing award for his 67-part series on concert history in the Quad-Cities.
He still has a lot of Vegas pride (especially for his hometown band the Killers), but Gannon is excited about planting roots in the Twin Cities. He’s passionate about uplifting local musicians, and he’s already a big fan of Minnesota artists like Fend, Zora, she’s green, Keep for Cheap, runo plum and Creekbed Carter Hogan. He’s shamelessly sappy about music discovery, because he believes that music will always find you at the right time.
Gannon is a host at The Current. You can hear him on Saturday and Sunday from 3 to 7 p.m., and filling in at various times throughout the week.
