About Us

Meet Paul VanGilder

I was born and raised in Memphis by parents from Detroit, so I grew up steeped in the soul and funk legacies of those cities. I began playing bass in high school and idolizing another left-handed bassist named Paul who played in a little-known band called the Beatles. During college at the University of Tennessee, I was in a rock ‘n roll band, playing at clubs, parties, and the occasional barn throughout Memphis, Knoxville, and the mid-south. We recorded an album that no one listened to and went our separate ways as we came upon graduation and the real-world. I moved out west and completed a PhD at Arizona State and post-doc at Banner Alzheimer’s Institute, while blowing off steam by banging out tunes in the garage with colleagues in the aptly named group Not That Kind of Doctor. I jumped at an opportunity to return to my hometown to work at St. Jude developing neurorehabilitation treatments for patients and survivors, and was ecstatic to join the Mighty Electric in 2022.