Matt Turk (musician)

Last updated

Matt Turk is a singer/songwriter, [1] multi-instrumentalist [2] [3] and veteran performer [4] based in the Hudson Valley [5] in New York State. He performs around the world both as a bandleader and an acoustic folk troubadour.

Contents

Early life and education

Turk grew up in Westchester County, New York and attended New York University, graduating Cum Laude with a B.A. in history and a minor in religious studies.

Career

At NYU he formed the band, The Hour, which played alongside Blues Traveler, Dave Matthews and the Spin Doctors. His band was a regular act at the Arrowhead Ranch, a music venue promoted by rock impresario Bill Graham.

In June 1992, Turk teamed up with Pete Seeger as part of The Street Singers, a group that taught folk songs to schoolchildren and adults in and around New York City. Turk's time with Seeger, and his year and a half stint working for God's Love We Deliver, delivering food to folks homebound with AIDS, led him to write songs about social justice.

Turk recorded with Pete Seeger [6] and opened for Judy Collins, the Grateful Dead's Mickey Hart, Fiona Apple, and The Doobie Brothers.

Turk has created a number of solo albums, and performed on a number of others. His 2010 recording, American Preservation, produced by David Dobkin, placed at Number #20 on the folk/dj charts and is a collection of traditional standards and classics, ranging from Roy Acuff to Pink Floyd, and from Taj Mahal to T. Rex. His version of "America the Beautiful" with Gaby Moreno has been called "arguably the definitive acoustic version" by Music News Nashville. [7]

Turk's 2014 album, Cold Revival, attracted a number of positive reviews, including being named "Best album of 2014" by RUST magazine. [4] As of 2020 Matt serves as the music director at Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills New Jersey

Selected discography

Solo

Session Musician

Band Member

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pete Seeger</span> American folk singer and social activist (1919–2014)

Peter Seeger was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene," which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers' rights, and environmental causes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Béla Fleck</span> American banjo player

Béla Anton Leoš Fleck is an American banjo player. An acclaimed virtuoso, he is an innovative and technically proficient pioneer and ambassador of the banjo, playing music from bluegrass, jazz, classical, rock and various world music genres. He is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Fleck has won 15 Grammy Awards and been nominated 33 times.

The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City originally consisting of Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman. Founded in 1948, the group sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children's songs, labor songs, and American ballads. The group sold millions of records at the height of their popularity, including the first folk song to reach No. 1 on popular music charts, their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene." Despite their popularity, the Weavers were blacklisted during much of the 1950s.

"How Can I Keep From Singing?" is an American folksong originating as a Christian hymn. The author of the lyrics was known only as 'Pauline T', and the original tune was composed by American Baptist minister Robert Lowry. The song is frequently, though erroneously, cited as a traditional Quaker or Shaker hymn. The original composition has now entered into the public domain, and appears in several hymnals and song collections, both in its original form and with a revised text that omits most of the explicitly Christian content and adds a verse about solidarity in the face of oppression. Though it was not originally a Quaker hymn, Quakers adopted it as their own in the twentieth century and use it widely today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Seeger</span> American folk musician and folklorist

Mike Seeger was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, mouth harp, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary recordings, and performed in more than 40 other recordings. He desired to make known the caretakers of culture that inspired and taught him.

Americana is an amalgam of American music formed by the confluence of the shared and varied traditions that make up the musical ethos of the United States, specifically those sounds that are emerged from the Southern United States such as folk, gospel, blues, country, jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, bluegrass, and other external influences.

"Masters of War" is a song by Bob Dylan, written over the winter of 1962–63 and released on the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in the spring of 1963. The song's melody was adapted from the traditional "Nottamun Town." Dylan's lyrics are a protest against the Cold War nuclear arms build-up of the early 1960s.

<i>We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions</i> 2006 studio album by Bruce Springsteen

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions is the fourteenth studio album by Bruce Springsteen. Released in 2006, it peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 49th Grammy Awards.

"Turn! Turn! Turn!", also known as or subtitled "To Everything There Is a Season", is a song written by Pete Seeger in 1959. The lyrics – except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song, and the final two lines – consist of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes. The song was originally released in 1962 as "To Everything There Is a Season" on the folk group the Limeliters' album Folk Matinee, and then some months later on Seeger's own The Bitter and the Sweet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Springsteen with the Seeger Sessions Band Tour</span> 2006 concert tour by Bruce Springsteen and the Sessions Band

The Bruce Springsteen with the Seeger Sessions Band Tour, afterward sometimes referred to simply as the Sessions Band Tour, was a 2006 concert tour featuring Bruce Springsteen and the Sessions Band playing what was billed as "An all-new evening of gospel, folk, and blues", otherwise seen as a form of big band folk music. The tour was an outgrowth of the approach taken on Springsteen's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions album, which featured folk music songs written or made popular by activist folk musician Pete Seeger, but taken to an even greater extent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American folk music revival</span> 20th-century American musical movement

The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electric Dylan controversy</span> 1965 music controversy

By 1965, Bob Dylan was the leading songwriter of the American folk music revival. The response to his albums The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The Times They Are a-Changin' led the media to label him the "spokesman of a generation".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Contemporary folk music</span> Genre of popular music centered around Anglophonic folk-revivals

Contemporary folk music refers to a wide variety of genres that emerged in the mid 20th century and afterwards which were associated with traditional folk music. Starting in the mid-20th century a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. The most common name for this new form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "contemporary folk music" or "folk revival music" to make the distinction. The transition was somewhat centered in the US and is also called the American folk music revival. Fusion genres such as folk rock and others also evolved within this phenomenon. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, it often shares the same English name, performers and venues as traditional folk music; even individual songs may be a blend of the two.

"The Bells of Rhymney" is a song by folk singer Pete Seeger, which consists of Seeger's own music accompanying words written by Welsh poet Idris Davies. Seeger first released a recording of the song on a live album in 1958, but it is the American folk rock band the Byrds' 1965 recording that is the best known version of the song.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Giving Tree Band</span>

The Giving Tree Band is a rock & roll band from Yorkville, Illinois. The band is known for their live shows, which cover a vast array of genres. The current lineup consists of brothers Eric "E" and Todd Fink, Karl "Charlie Karls" Kieser (Bass/Vocals), Zachariah "Z" Oostema (Percussion/Vocals), and Erik "Norm" Norman (Keys/Mandolin/Guitars/Vocals) who is recognized for adding elaborate solos. Though the group uses an instrumentation largely associated with bluegrass and Americana, their sound often drums up comparisons to such classic rock icons as The Band, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and The Beatles.

The Sessions Band is an American musical group that has periodically recorded and toured with American rock singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen in various formations since 1997.

Toshi Seeger was an American filmmaker, producer and environmental activist. A filmmaker who specialized in the subject of folk music, Toshi's credits include the 1966 film Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison and the Emmy Award-winning documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, released through PBS in 2007. In 1966, Seeger and her husband, folk-singer Pete Seeger, co-founded the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which seeks to protect the Hudson River and surrounding wetlands. Additionally, they co-founded the Clearwater Festival, a major music festival held annually at Croton Point Park in Westchester County, New York.

"Good Shepherd" is a traditional song, best known as recorded by Jefferson Airplane on their 1969 album Volunteers. It was arranged and sung by the group's lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, who described their interpretation of it as psychedelic folk-rock.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judah & the Lion</span> American band

Judah & the Lion are an American folk band from Nashville, Tennessee, formed in 2011. Currently the band consists of Judah Akers and Brian Macdonald.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream</span> Anti-war song written by Ed McCurdy

"Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" is a song written by American folk singer-songwriter Ed McCurdy in 1950. Due to McCurdy's connection with fellow musicians, it was common in repertoires within the folk music community. The song had its first album release when Pete Seeger recorded it as "Strangest Dream" for his 1956 album Love Songs For Friends & Foes. Seeger would later re-visit the song for his 1967 album Waist Deep in the Big Muddy and other Love Songs. The strong anti-war theme of the song led it to be recorded by multiple other artists, including The Weavers (1960), Joan Baez (1962), The Kingston Trio (1963), Simon & Garfunkel (1964), and Johnny Cash who released two versions of the song during the 2000s.

References

  1. "Matt Turk’s ‘Cold Revival’ offers riveting tunes". Daily Freeman. David Malachowski
  2. "Music Review: Matt Turk - 'Cold Revival'". Seattle PI
  3. "Matt Turk releases 'Cold Revival'". Celebrity CafeBy Chelsea Lewis , 8/3/2014
  4. 1 2 "RUST Magazine 2014 Album of the Year" Rust Magazine. by Eric Petersen on November 19, 2014
  5. Mike Hammer, "Aztec Two-Step Struts Their Stuff At The City Winery!" Downtown Magazine NYC, March 13, 2013
  6. Marisa LaScala, Q&A with Westchester Resident and Musician Matt Turk, Westchester Magazine, May 2013.
  7. 1 2 Janet Goodman, Matt Turk – American Preservation Music News Nashville, May 13, 2014
  8. "Troubador/Busker Matt Turk Cold Revival Album Review" Archived 2015-03-07 at the Wayback Machine The Noise Beneath the Apple. Heather Jackson February 9, 2015
  9. "Matt Turk – Cold Revival" Music News Nashville, September 12, 2014 by Dan Harr
  10. Joe Viglione, What Gives, Review by Joe Viglione All Music
  11. "What Gives Album Review" Virgin Radio