Hard rock or heavy rock is a heavier subgenre of rock music typified by aggressive vocals and distorted electric guitars. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the garage, psychedelic and blues rock movements. Some of the earliest hard rock music was produced by the Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Cream, Vanilla Fudge, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In the late 1960s, bands such as Blue Cheer, the Jeff Beck Group, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Golden Earring, Steppenwolf, and Deep Purple also produced hard rock.
Dorothy Snowden "Dar" Williams is an American pop folk singer-songwriter from Mount Kisco, New York. Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker has described Williams as "one of America's very best singer-songwriters."
Lucy Kaplansky is an American folk musician based in New York City. Kaplansky has a PhD in clinical psychology from Yeshiva University and plays guitar, mandolin, and piano.
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.
Sylvia Jane Hutton, also known mononymously as Sylvia, is an American country music and country pop singer and songwriter. Her biggest hit, was her single "Nobody" in 1982. It reached number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 5 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, number 9 on the Cashbox Top 100, and number 1 on the Billboard Country Singles chart. The song earned her a gold record certification and a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Her other country chart hits include "Drifter", "Fallin' in Love", "Tumbleweed" and "Snapshot". She was named Female Vocalist of the Year by the Academy of Country Music for 1982. She is also credited with making the first "concept" music video clip to air on Country Music Television (CMT), with "The Matador".
Hugh Blumenfeld is an American folk musician and singer-songwriter from Connecticut. He was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City, graduated with degrees in Biology and Humanities from M.I.T. in 1980, and got a master's degree in English Literature from the University of Chicago in 1981. He was active in the Greenwich Village music scene in the 1980s, attending the Cornelia Street Songwriters Exchange and performing at Folk City and Speak Easy while working on a PhD in Poetics from New York University. He also helped to edit the Fast Folk Musical Magazine and recorded songs for a dozen issues. After earning his PhD in 1991, he worked as an English professor until 1994, when he began writing and performing full-time. Over the next 10 years he toured mainly in the Northeast and Midwest, with several short tours in Europe and one in Israel. In 1999 he was appointed Connecticut State Troubadour.
John Gorka is an American singer-songwriter. In 1991, Rolling Stone magazine called him "the preeminent male singer-songwriter of what has been dubbed the New Folk Movement."
"Fall on Me" is a song by the American alternative rock band R.E.M. from their fourth album Lifes Rich Pageant (1986). It was the first of two singles released from that LP. It peaked at number 94 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was one of the band's early compositions about environmentalism, discussing acid rain. It also transitioned from their murky lyrics and jangling guitar of their first three albums to a more accessible sound influenced by producer Don Gehman.
Antje Duvekot is a German-American singer-songwriter and guitarist based in Somerville, Massachusetts. She holds three top songwriting awards including the Kerrville New Folk Competition's Best New Folk Award, Boston Music Award for Outstanding Folk Act, and Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest.
Cry Cry Cry was a folk supergroup, consisting of Richard Shindell, Lucy Kaplansky, and Dar Williams. The band released an eponymous album of cover songs on October 13, 1998.
Courier is the first live recording and sixth album by Richard Shindell. It includes many of his most popular originals from previous recordings, a cover of Lowell George's classic song, "Willin'", and what has been described as a "near-holy reading" of Bruce Springsteen's "Fourth of July, Asbury Park".
Fast Folk Musical Magazine was a combination magazine and record album published from February 1982 to 1997. The magazine acted as a songwriter/performer cooperative, and was an outlet for singer-songwriters to release their first recordings.
"Don’t Make Promises" was the first track on Tim Hardin's debut album Tim Hardin 1, released in 1966. The song, along with "Reason to Believe," was one of the two major songwriting hits from the album, with more than a dozen cover versions having been recorded following its release. British radio presenter and writer Charlie Gillett noted the song's ability to achieve "the elusive balance between personal miseries and universal sufferings," while author Mark Brend praised the song's "fragile pop sensibilities" and how it contrasted with the "swaggering" R&B of album track "Ain't Gonna Do Without."
South of Delia is the seventh solo album by American folk singer-songwriter Richard Shindell. South of Delia is a cover album. Although he himself is sometimes described as a "songwriter's songwriter," covers are not new to Shindell. In addition to recording a few on his previous solo albums, he was also one third of the folk supergroup / cover band Cry Cry Cry. On South of Delia, Shindell covers songs from several songwriting legends, including Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, as well as some from younger up-and-coming writer/performers, such as Jeffrey Foucault and Josh Ritter.
Over the Hills is the sixth solo album by New York singer–songwriter Lucy Kaplansky, released in 2007. The album contains a mix of covers and original songs written with her husband, Rick Litvin.
Sparrows Point is the 1992 debut album of singer-songwriter Richard Shindell.
Blue Divide is the second album by singer-songwriter Richard Shindell. It was released in 1995 by Shanachie Records. Shanachie also released a live promo CD, Scenes from a Blue Divide (Live) and More which included five live tracks recorded at the Treestar Coffeehouse in Mount Kisco, New York.
Reunion Hill is a 1997 album by singer-songwriter Richard Shindell. It was Shindell's third and final studio album for Shanachie Records. Allmusic calls the album "songcraft at its finest." The album includes a cover of "I'll Be Here in the Morning" by Townes Van Zandt who died earlier that same year.
Somewhere Near Paterson is a 2000 album by singer-songwriter Richard Shindell. It was Shindell's first album for Signature Sounds. It was also Shindell's first album following the album and tour performed with the collaboration, Cry Cry Cry. His band mates Lucy Kaplansky and Dar Williams join with him here on Buddy and Julie Miller's "My Love Will Follow You".
Michael Jerling is an American acoustic folk singer-songwriter. He was born in Illinois and attended college at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. His association with Fast Folk Musical Magazine in New York's Greenwich Village led to his song, "Long Black Wall", being included in a Smithsonian Folkways CD celebrating twenty years of Fast Folk. Jerling has won several awards for his music including winning the prestigious Kerrville Folk Festival's "New Folk" competition. Jerling recorded two albums on the Shanachie label, and two on Waterbug Records. He currently records on his own label Fool's Hill Music. He has collaborated with several musicians including Bob Warren, Tony Markellis, and Teresina Huxtable and recorded and produced albums for Lorne Clarke, Mike Quick, Huxtable, Christensen & Hood, Mark Tolstrup and Mallory O'Donnell.
