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Darryl Purpose is an American singer-songwriter, known for his narrative (often very personal) lyrics and fingerstyle guitar. Before becoming a professional musician, Purpose was a professional blackjack player and was known as one of the best in the world. [1] In 2010 Purpose was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. "Purpose has the voice of James Taylor, the brains of Bob Dylan, and the soul of Willie Nelson". [2]
In 1986, Purpose walked across the United States with The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament and then a year later in the former Soviet Union. In 1996, he became a "full-time national touring singer-songwriter" who "hit the folk scene...with an unusually eclectic resume that provided him with a wealth of compelling stories to tell." [3] As of December 2011, Purpose has returned to touring full-time, returning from an unexplained seven-year hiatus.
When Darryl Purpose was 16 years old, his mother put a book called "Beat the Dealer" in his Christmas stocking. He went to Las Vegas as a teenager and began a career as professional card player – and still calls this the "only real job I’ve ever had." Years later, he took time off to walk across the country for peace, and fell in with a bad crowd – musicians and peaceniks. In 1996, inspired by his work with a traveling band of musical activists, Purpose began to tour nationally as a solo singer-songwriter. Eight years, six CDs and a thousand-plus shows later, he was headlining venues like the Freight and Salvage, Club Passim, McCabe's, The Bluebird Cafe, The Kennedy Center, and the Kerrville Folk Festival Main Stage.
In 2005, he inexplicably set down his guitar and took a seven-year sabbatical in the Rocky Mountains. During this time, he shepherded the release of Singer-Songwriter Heaven: the songs of Kevin Faherty. He also continued to co-captain the Second Strings Project, which is responsible for delivering over twenty thousand sets of guitar strings to those who need them all around the world. In 2009, he was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame, one of 17 members, including Ed Thorp, the man who wrote that book that his mother put into his Christmas stocking at 16. He says that he also “got healthy, in multiple ways.”
2012 saw Purpose record his first CD of original material in 10 years – Next Time Around, produced by Billy Crockett for the Blue Rock Artists label. With no formal radio promotion, the CD spent five weeks at #1 on the Roots Music Report folk chart for national radio airplay in March and April 2013.
While in the former Soviet Union, Purpose took note of the many talented musicians playing instruments that were unfit for their level of expertise and left several guitars with them. Later, in El Salvador, he witnessed how the people would alter guitars that were falling apart to still be able to play music. To the end of assisting struggling musicians across the globe, Purpose and Kevin Deame announced the beginning of The Second Strings Project in 1999. They collect used guitar strings from artists in the United States and distribute them to needy musicians around the world. [4]
Purpose has co-written songs with a handful of fellow songwriters, including short story writer and author Robert Morgan Fisher, as well as the author-songwriter-photographer Paul Zollo, with whom Purpose has written many songs, including "The Ghost of Crazy Horse," "Baltimore," which details the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe, "Koreatown," and "Crooked Line," which tells the story of Chavez Ravine, and was the title song of Purpose's 2001 album. Their song "California (Rutherford Hayes in the Morning)" tells the story of this mostly forgotten president, the first to ever travel to California. For Purpose's 2013 Next Time Around, they wrote songs, including "Dreams of Life" and "Orange Raincoat."
James Roger McGuinn is an American musician. He is best known for being the frontman and leader of the Byrds. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with the Byrds. As a solo artist he has released 10 albums and collaborated with, among others, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Chris Hillman. The 12-string Rickenbacker guitar is his signature instrument.
Richard Thompson is an English singer, songwriter, and guitarist.
Ralph McTell is an English singer-songwriter and acoustic guitar player who has been an influential figure on the UK folk music scene since the 1960s. McTell is best known for his song "Streets of London" (1969), which has been covered by over two hundred artists around the world.
Joseph Lee "Big Joe" Williams was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over five decades, he recorded the songs "Baby Please Don't Go", "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama", among many others, for various record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 1992.
Eric Bogle is a Scottish-born Australian folk singer-songwriter. Born and raised in Scotland, he emigrated to Australia at the age of 25, to settle near Adelaide, South Australia. Bogle's songs have covered a variety of topics, and have been performed by many artists. Two of his best known songs are "No Man's Land" and "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda", with the latter named one of the APRA Top 30 Australian songs in 2001, as part of the celebrations for the Australasian Performing Right Association's 75th anniversary.
Lennie Gallant, CM is a Canadian singer-songwriter and instrumentalist from Prince Edward Island. His music crosses into the folk rock and country music genres, while celebrating the musical heritage of his home province. He has been presented with many awards for his performances and songwriting.
James Messina is an American musician, songwriter, singer, guitarist, recording engineer and record producer. He was a member of the folk rock group Buffalo Springfield, a founding member of the pioneering country rock band Poco, and half of the soft rock duo Loggins and Messina with Kenny Loggins.
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Michael Chapman was a British singer-songwriter and virtuosic guitar player. Chapman originally began playing guitar with jazz bands, mainly in his home town of Leeds in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He became well known in the folk clubs of the late 1960s, as well as on the 'progressive' music scene, and released over 50 albums.
James Darrell Scott, known as Darrell Scott, is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. The son of musician Wayne Scott, he moved as a child to East Gary, Indiana. He was playing professionally by his teens in Southern California. Later, Darrell moved to Toronto then Boston. He attended Tufts University, where he studied poetry and literature. He has lived in Nashville, Tennessee since about 1995. He has written several mainstream country hits, and he has also established himself as one of Nashville's premier session instrumentalists. His younger brother, David Scott, occasionally accompanies Darrell on the keyboard.
William Knight Kirchen is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. He was a member of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen from 1967 to the mid-1970s and later worked with Nick Lowe. Guitar Player magazine described Kirchen as "Titan of The Telecaster" for his prowess on the guitar.
Tom Dundee (1946–2006) was a singer/songwriter born in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
5 is the fifth studio album by J. J. Cale. Released in 1979, it was his first album in three years. When the album was re-issued on CD, "Katy Kool Lady" was replaced by a new song listed as "Out of Style," though it was still listed as the former on the CD. "Out of Style" is also included on the 2007 album Rewind: The Unreleased Recordings under its proper title. There is still no U.S. domestic release of the song "Katy Kool Lady" on CD.
Clive James Gregson is an English singer/songwriter, musician and record producer. He has toured in bands, provided backup for well-known musicians, and written songs that have been covered by Kim Carnes, Norma Waterson and Nanci Griffith. He is featured in Hugh Gregory's 2002 book 1,000 Great Guitarists.
Joel Rafael is an American singer-songwriter and folk musician from San Diego County, California. Rafael's second volume to celebrate the songs of Woody Guthrie, was released on Appleseed in 2005. The first volume, Woodeye, was released on Inside Recordings in 2003. Joel and his acoustic band have been performing and touring nationally since 1993. In 2000, the Joel Rafael Band, comprising Joel Rafael,, his daughter Jamaica, Carl Johnson and Jeff Berkley (ethno-percussion), released their third album, Hopper on Inside Recordings, an independent label created by Jackson Browne and his management. The album was nominated in 2001 for an Association For Independent Music (AFIM) Best Contemporary Folk award.
Mark Elliott is a songwriter, author and guitarist whose career started in Washington, D.C. and later took him to Nashville. As a songwriter Elliott has penned hits which reached the Billboard Top Forty charts, notably "Every Man for Himself" for Neal McCoy. As an author, Mark is represented by Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc. New York, New York, and has released his debut coming of age memoir, entitled, "The Sons of Starmount: Memoir of a Ten-Year-Old Boy" on Valentine's Day 2019. The companion album to the book, featuring all original songs produced in the style of the 1970s is also available.
Harvey Reid is an American musician living in York, Maine. He won the 1981 National Fingerpicking Guitar Competition and the 1982 International Autoharp competition. In 1996, Acoustic Guitar magazine listed Harvey's album Steel Drivin' Man as one of the top 10 essential folk albums/CDs of all time. He has 19 records available from Woodpecker Records.
Jacob Moon is a solo Canadian folk singer/songwriter and guitarist based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He has an extensive repertoire of songs, with nine albums to his credit. He has won many accolades and has been invited to perform for and with some of his heroes, including Rush, Marillion, Ron Sexsmith and Gordon Lightfoot. Moon's famous YouTube cover of Rush's Subdivisions went viral in 2009 and has earned him many fans around the world.
Randle Lynn Chowning is a singer-songwriter best known as the founder, one of the lead vocalists, and the lead guitarist of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
Motopony is a Seattle-based alt-psych band led by singer Daniel Blue. With the success of their previous full-length albums and a recording journey to the iconic Abbey Road Studios, Motopony has toured around the world playing festivals including SXSW, India's NH-7 Weekender and Bumbershoot, with U.S. tours and dates all across the UK.