Wishing Well - 2001
“A transplanted Southerner with serious chops on the acoustic blues guitar, Boerner makes you feel as if you're sitting on the back porch with him as he's pickin', grinnin', and passin' the bottle. Easy listening on your own back porch (or in the coffee shop, as the case may be).”
– Jim DeRogatis
Pop Music Critic Chicago Sun-Times
“When it comes to top flight original blues, ballads, and folk, you won't find a more skilled practitioner around these parts than singer-songwriter/guitarist Greg Boerner. His new CD Wishing Well is rife with outstanding original material, expressive vocals, and dexterous finger picked guitar. Boerner's songs, with folk, old timey, country, and on occasion even Latin grooves spicing his mainly blues-based approach, are well-written and confidently delivered. You can't ask for much more than that.”
– Kevin Toelle
Blues Editor, Illinois Entertainer
“Once vinyl wears through its grooves and CDs begin to stutter with rot, you'll still hear Greg Boerner, worrying a Freddy King lick to death, doing everything he can to attempt to capture Ray Charles and maybe even wink at Tom Waits by allowing a bit of distortion to creep into an otherwise acoustic affair. Boerner's sophomore effort, Wishing Well - self-produced, self-penned and self-played (but for a bit of piano here and a trap set there) - effortlessly wears its influences on its sleeves, and you get the feeling Mr. Boerner wanted it this way. The authority of the blues here is pervasive; Greg doesn't think twice about snatching a lyric straight out of a nearby Chicago club circa 1950, as on "Two Time Woman " or the title cut. And he does this blatantly and proudly, making that link and giving respect where it is so obviously due. The album's best track, "Thing Of Her Own " finds Boerner in a sneakier mood, slipping in the stray Cuban influence and an insinuating bit of electric guitar. "Bus Departure ", the CD's closer, is a lazy shuffle the aforementioned Freddy King never got around to writing. But this is not a blues album. It's a firelit album by a songwriter showing, with each release, a growing ease and command.”
– Bruce Miller
Writer, teacher, banjo player, self-professed music junkie, gardener and a contributing writer for Magnet magazine. For better or worse, he holds an MFA in Fiction from Goddard College.