Originally from Minnesota, Scott began his musical career as a drummer soaking up local favorites Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, and The Jayhawks. He moved to San Francisco, traded his drum sticks for an acoustic guitar, and began writing. From the start, his songs were rhythmically sophisticated and melodically mature, with hooks both surprising and inevitable. An obsession with home recording quickly developed, and he soon found himself spending every night hunched over a cheap four-track cassette recorder. Several years and several hundred songs later, Gagner was ready to polish the best tracks for his acclaimed, genre-hopping debut Rhapsody in Blonde. His second LP, Rise & Shine is at once more sonically focused and ambitious, swimming in lush layers of vibraphone, strings, and horns.