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A singer-songwriter is a musician who writes, composes, and performs their own musical material, including lyrics and melodies. In the United States, the category is built on the folk-acoustic tradition with a guitar, although this role has transmuted through different eras of popular music. Singer-songwriters often provide the sole musical accompaniment to an entire song. The pianoforte is also an instrument of choice.
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."
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.
Kate Anna Rusby is an English folk singer-songwriter from Penistone, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Sometimes called the "Barnsley Nightingale", she has headlined various British folk festivals, and is one of the best known contemporary English folk singers. In 2001 The Guardian described her as "a superstar of the British acoustic scene." In 2007 the BBC website described her as "The first lady of young folkies". She is one of the few folk singers to have been nominated for the Mercury Prize.
A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are used in a broad range of popular music, traditional music, and world music styles.
Kate Wolf was an American folk singer and songwriter. Though her career was relatively short, she had a significant impact on the folk music scene. Her best-known compositions include "Here in California", "Love Still Remains", "Across the Great Divide", "Unfinished Life", “Green Eyes” and "Give Yourself to Love". She recorded six albums as a solo artist. She was elected to the NAIRD Independent Music Hall of Fame in 1987. Her songs have since been recorded by Nanci Griffith and Emmylou Harris.
Paul Karl Siebel was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, born in Buffalo, New York. He is best known for other artists' cover versions of his songs, most notably "Louise". Other frequently covered Siebel songs include "Spanish Johnny", "Long Afternoons," "Any Day Woman," "Nashville Again," "She Made Me Lose My Blues," and "Then Came the Children".
Jamae Kathryn Campbell is an American folk singer-songwriter.
Andrew Calhoun is an American folk singer-songwriter based in the Chicago area.
William Pint and Felicia Dale are folk musicians based in Seattle. Known primarily for nautical music and sea chanties, they are among the best-known performers in that genre in the United States. Their albums have been favorably reviewed in Dirty Linen magazine, Sing Out! magazine, and Folk Roots magazine. They tour regularly in the UK as well as the United States and have also performed in The Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Estonia. Between 1988 and 1991 they performed with Canadian performer Tom Lewis.
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.
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.
This Is the New That is the fourth album by American singer-songwriter Jonathan Byrd. It was officially released on March 21, 2007, although it's online availability began in late December 2006. While Byrd's earlier recordings have been in more of a traditional folk vein ranging at times from bluegrass to world music, this release places Byrd's song craft in somewhat more of a rock setting. According to Byrd, some of his diverse influences here include Bob Dylan, Anaïs Mitchell, The Beatles & Merle Haggard.
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).
Jimmy LaFave was an American singer-songwriter and folk musician. After moving to Stillwater, Oklahoma, LaFave became a supporter of Woody Guthrie. He later became an Advisory Board member and regular performer at the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival.
Wildflowers is the 2001 debut album by Jonathan Byrd. The songs are mostly original songs with a few traditional tunes. Here he mixes contemporary singer-songwriter storytelling with Appalachian folk roots. There is even a murder ballad; "Velma" is a song about serial killer Velma Barfield whose victims included Byrd's own grandfather. Sing Out! says, "[Jonathan Byrd's] songwriting melds the lyricism of Celtic music with the stark storytelling of the finest traditional balladeers."
Danny Schmidt is an American singer-songwriter based in Austin, Texas, where he now lives with his wife, fellow musician and singer-songwriter Carrie Elkin.
The discography of Kate Rusby, an English folk singer, consists of twenty solo albums, four albums as part of a duo or group, four extended plays (EPs), two video albums, fourteen singles, and seven music videos. Rusby's debut was Intuition, an album recorded in collaboration with five other female singers from Yorkshire, which was released on a small label in 1993. Her breakthrough came with an eponymous album recorded with Kathryn Roberts, another of the singers featured on Intuition. This album, which was named as the best of the year by Folk Roots magazine, was the first release on Pure Records, a label set up by Rusby's father on which all her subsequent solo recordings have been released. Rusby and Roberts also formed the band the Equation in conjunction with the Lakeman Brothers, but Rusby left the group after their debut EP. In 1996 she joined the all-female folk group the Poozies, with whom she released one EP and one full-length album.
Sarah McQuaid is a singer, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist. She has recorded six solo albums: When Two Lovers Meet, I Won't Go Home ’Til Morning, The Plum Tree And The Rose, Walking into White, If We Dig Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous and The St Buryan Sessions. Three songs on McQuaid's Walking into White album were inspired by the Swallows and Amazons books by English author Arthur Ransome. After recording her first three albums in Ireland with producer Gerry O'Beirne, McQuaid enlisted her cousin, Adam Pierce to serve as producer for Walking into White. Her fifth album, If We Dig Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous, was produced by veteran English guitarist and singer-songwriter, Michael Chapman. Under the band name Mama, she and Zoë Pollock recorded Crow Coyote Buffalo (2009), an album of songs co-written by the pair. McQuaid has also guested on albums by Clodagh Simonds, Wendy Arrowsmith, Colin Harper and the Cafe Orchestra amongst others.
Kate McDonnell is an American folk singer/songwriter.
References
- ↑ Winters, Pamela Murray, "Linen Lites: Andrew Calhoun – Call Me 'Colquhoun'", Dirty Linen , 112, June–July 2004, p.14-15
- ↑ "Bound to Go: Illuminating Legacy of African American Folk Tradition", All About Jazz, May 23, 2008
- ↑ Calhoun, Andrew, "Hey Rube!: Success", Sing Out! , 41:2 August–October 1996, p.110-111