 |
Andrew Calhoun | |
|---|---|
 Andrew Calhoun in 2016 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | November 30, 1957 New Haven, Connecticut, United States |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) |
|
| Instruments |
|
| Labels | |
| Associated acts | |
| Website | http://www.andrewcalhoun.com/ |
Andrew Calhoun (born November 30, 1957, in New Haven, Connecticut, United States) [1] is an American folk singer-songwriter based in the Chicago area.
Calhoun was inspired to become a musician when his mother introduced him to some of her high school students who played guitar. Early influences include Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Joseph Conrad, C.S. Lewis and Mississippi John Hurt.
In 1992, he founded the artists cooperative record label Waterbug Records, [2] [3] stating "Waterbug is largely an artists' co-op. All the artists own their recordings and publishing rights. We are working cooperatively to help each other get heard." [4]
Calhoun's performances include works by various songwriters and poets, Anglo-Scottish ballads in original translations from dialect, African American spirituals, and his own varied songbook. He is working on a Robert Burns songbook which will challenge several decisions on tune sources and variants accepted by scholarship since James Dick's work in 1903. He performs solo and in a duo with his daughter, Casey Calhoun, who sings.
In 2012, Calhoun received the Lantern Bearer Award for 25 years of service to the folk arts by the Folk Alliance Regional Midwest. In 2014, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Woodstock Folk Festival.
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in Australia, North Africa, North America and South America. Ballads are often 13 lines with an ABABBCBC form, consisting of couplets of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. Another common form is ABAB or ABCB repeated, in alternating eight and six syllable lines.
Sir Thomas de Ercildoun, better remembered as Thomas the Rhymer, also known as Thomas Learmont or True Thomas, was a Scottish laird and reputed prophet from Earlston in the Borders. Thomas' gift of prophecy is linked to his poetic ability.
James Henry Miller, better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was a folk singer-songwriter, folk song collector, labour activist and actor. Born in England to Scottish parents, he is known as one of the instigators of the 1960s folk revival as well as writing such songs as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Dirty Old Town".
"All My Trials" is a folk song which became popular during the social protest movements of the late 1950s and 1960s. Alternative titles it has been recorded under include "Bahamian Lullaby" and "All My Sorrows." The origins of the song are unclear, as it appears to not have been documented in any musicological or historical records until after the first commercial recording was released on Bob Gibson's 1956 debut album Offbeat Folksongs.
"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional English ballad. The song, which is a variant of The Elfin Knight, lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The "Scarborough Fair" variant was most common in the Yorkshire and Northumbria, where it was sung to various melodies, with refrains resembling "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" and "Then she'll be a true love of mine."
The folk music of England is a tradition-based music which has existed since the later medieval period. It is often contrasted with courtly, classical and later commercial music. Folk music traditionally was preserved and passed on orally within communities, but print and subsequently audio recordings have since become the primary means of transmission. The term is used to refer both to English traditional music and music composed or delivered in a traditional style.
Dave Carter was an American folk music singer-songwriter who described his style as "post-modern mythic American folk music". He was one half of the duo Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, who were heralded as the new "voice of modern folk music" in the months before Carter's unexpected death in July 2002. They were ranked as number one on the year-end list for "Top Artists" on the Folk Music Radio Airplay Chart for 2001 and 2002, and their popularity has endured in the years following Carter's death. Joan Baez, who went on tour with the duo in 2002, spoke of Carter's songs in the same terms that she once used to promote a young Bob Dylan:
"There is a special gift for writing songs that are available to other people, and Dave's songs are very available to me. It's a kind of genius, you know, and Dylan has the biggest case of it. But I hear it in Dave's songs, too.
Ella Jenkins is an American folk singer and actress. Dubbed "The First Lady of the Children's Folk Song" by the Wisconsin State Journal, she has been a leading performer of children's music for over fifty years. Her album, Multicultural Children's Songs (1995), has long been the most popular Smithsonian Folkways release. She has appeared on numerous children's television programs and in 2004, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Margaret "Peggy" Seeger is an American folk singer. She has lived in Britain for more than 60 years, and was married to the singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl until his death in 1989.
"Give Me Your Hand" is a tune from early 17th century Ireland by Rory Dall O'Cahan. It is one of the most widely recorded pieces of Irish traditional music.
Eliza Gilkyson is a Taos, New Mexico-based folk musician. She is the daughter of songwriter and folk musician Terry Gilkyson and his wife, Jane. Her brother is guitarist Tony Gilkyson, who played with the Los Angeles-based bands Lone Justice and X. She is married to scholar and author Robert Jensen. Gilkyson is a two-time Grammy Award nominee, receiving a nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 2004 and Best Folk Album in 2014.
Jonathan Byrd is an American singer-songwriter based in Carrboro, North Carolina. He is best known for his narrative tales of love, life, and death in America. In 2003, he was among the winners of the New Folk competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival. He set a record for CD sales at the festival that year, making more sales than the main stage acts. His song, "The Ballad of Larry" has been listed a "Top Rated Song" by Americana-UK. He primarily performs solo and accompanies himself in a variety of traditional acoustic guitar styles. His recordings have featured a variety of instrumental ensembles and typically include one or more instrumental tracks that feature Byrd's skillful flatpicking technique. Occasionally he also appears with the Athens, Georgia based world music duo, Dromedary.
Waterbug Records is a small independent record label based in Glen Ellyn, Illinois specializing in singer-songwriters and traditional folk musicians who do original research. The label was founded as an artist cooperative label in 1992 by singer-songwriter Andrew Calhoun. Calhoun described the label in a column written for Sing Out!: "Waterbug is largely an artists' co-op. All the artists own their recordings and publishing rights. Twenty artists contributed a song and part of the cost of manufacturing a label sampler, which each of us sell from the stage for $5. We are working cooperatively to help each other get heard."
The Sons of the Never Wrong is a Chicago-based singer/songwriter folk music trio founded in 1992. Current band members are Bruce Roper, Deborah Maris Lader, and Sue Demel.
Dromedary, also known as the Dromedary Quartet, is an American world music band originally based out of Athens, Georgia but now with members on both coasts. The group formed as a duo consisting of Andrew Reissiger and Rob McMaken playing a variety of instruments from cultures across the globe. The group's most recent album Sticks and Stones features New Orleans-to-Athens transplant Louis Romanos (percussion) and Chris Enghauser (bass).
Casey Neill is an American musician. He leads Portland, Oregon-based band Casey Neill & The Norway Rats, singing with a raspy vocal quality and playing electric and acoustic guitars. Neill's style, folk-punk, mixes influences from punk, Celtic and folk music, and has been compared to R.E.M. and The Pogues.
Out for the Count is the third album by Show of Hands. The album follows Phil Beer's departure from The Albion Band in 1990, allowing Show of Hands to become a full-time partnership. Recorded straight to Digital Audio Tape in The Old Court, Devon, in 1991, the duo released the album later on in the year on cassette, becoming the final of their cassette-only releases.
Eileen McGann is an Irish-Canadian folk singer, songwriter and traditional Celtic musician. Her album, Beyond The Storm, was Juno Award-nominated in 2002. She has released seven solo CDs and has established an almost 30-year career touring across North America and Great Britain.
Wilmer Watts was an American old time singer, banjo player and bandleader who recorded a series of records for Paramount Records in the 1920s.
Boiled in Lead is a rock/world-music band based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and founded in 1983. Tim Walters of MusicHound Folk called the group "the most important folk-rock band to appear since the 1970s." Influential record producer and musician Steve Albini called the band's self-titled first album "the most impressive debut record from a rock band I've heard all year." Their style, sometimes called "rock 'n' reel," is heavily influenced by Celtic music, folk, and punk rock, and has drawn them praise as one of the few American bands of the 1980s and 1990s to expand on Fairport Convention's rocked-up take on traditional folk. Folk Roots magazine noted that Boiled in Lead's "folk-punk" approach synthesized the idealistic and archival approach of 1960s folk music with the burgeoning American alternative-rock scene of the early 1980s typified by Hüsker Dü and R.E.M. The band also incorporates a plethora of international musical traditions, including Russian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Scottish, Vietnamese, Hungarian, African, klezmer, and gypsy music. Boiled in Lead has been hailed as a pioneering bridge between American rock and international music, and a precursor to Gogol Bordello and other gypsy-punk bands. While most heavily active in the 1980s and 1990s, the group is still performing today, including annual St. Patrick's Day concerts in Minneapolis. Over the course of its career, Boiled in Lead has released nearly a dozen albums and EPs, most recently 2012's The Well Below.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Other | |
   | This article about a singer-songwriter from the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
