About Pat Donohue
As the guitarist for the Guys All-Star Shoe Band of the national radio show A Prairie Home Companion, Pat Donohue is one of the most listened-to finger pickers in the world. In addition to traveling with the show and performing on the weekly radio broadcasts, Pat plays concerts and teaches workshops at the country’s most prestigious theaters and festivals, including the Newport, Telluride and Philadelphia Folk Festivals. He was the 1983 National Finger Picking Guitar Champion and has since gone on to win a Grammy and numerous Minnesota Music Awards. His original tunes have been recorded by Chet Atkins, Suzy Bogguss and Kenny Rogers.
Pat started out playing drums in a garage band, but at age 12 he picked up guitar, learning simple chords and melodies from a Pete Seeger instructional book. The St. Paul native immersed himself in the Minnesota coffeehouses and blue venues where he could hear the guitar legends.
“I was very lucky to see some of the old-timers that aren’t around anymore,” says Pat. “The University of Minnesota had summer concerts in the early 70s and I got to see Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Joe Williams and Jesse Fuller. I wasn’t shy about going up to them and trying to befriend them and find out what I could about playing the blues. By and large, they were very accommodating. Big Joe Williams invited me to his hotel and we wound up playing guitar together.”
Taking what he learned from these blues guitar greats, Pat Donohue has gone on to make a name for himself, releasing many albums and instructional videos. He also has joined a legendary list of notables, getting his own signature guitar model made by Martin Guitars.
About Butch Thompson
In a career spanning over 40 years, pianist and clarinetist Butch Thompson has earned an international reputation as a traditional jazz and ragtime master. He has toured extensively, playing with the world’s major orchestras and with his own acclaimed ensembles, which include the Butch Thompson Trio, the eight-piece Jazz Originals band, the Butch Thompson Big Three and his unique chamber music duo with cellist Laura Sewell.
Born and raised in Marine-on-St. Croix, a small Minnesota river town, Butch got his start at age three, playing his mother’s upright piano. In high school, he went on to study clarinet and led his first professional jazz group. After he graduated, he joined the Hall Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band of Minneapolis and at age 18 became one of the few non-New Orleans natives to perform at the famed Preservation Hall in the 60s and 70s.
In 1974, Butch played on the first broadcasts of the national radio show A Prairie Home Companion, and by the time it was syndicated in 1980, the Butch Thompson Trio was the house band, a position the group held for the next six years. Since then Butch has become widely known as a leading authority on jazz. He served as a development consultant on the 1992 Broadway hit Jelly’s Last Jam, which starred Gregory Hines. He also joined the touring company of the off-Broadway show Jelly Roll! The Music and the Man, playing several runs with the show in New York and with its touring company through 1997.
As one of the most sought-after jazz and blues musicians, he has performed on many recordings, including the Grammy-winning Verve release Doc Cheatham and Nicholas Payton. He has also released 27 albums of his own, including his acclaimed 10-volume solo series and his highly anticipated new recording with Pat Donohue called Vicksburg Blues.
Butch Thompson also hosts a radio show called “Jazz Originals” that airs on Jazz88 FM in Minneapolis.
From swing to jazz to bottleneck blues to folk, Grammy-winning acoustic guitarist Pat Donohue plays it all with a flourish of artistry and melodic inspiration. Chet Atkins called Pat one of the greatest finger pickers in the world today; Leo Kottke called his playing “haunting.”
Pat is certainly one of the most listened to finger pickers in the world. As the guitarist for the Guys All-Star Shoe Band of Minnesota Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion, Pat gets to show off his savvy licks and distinctive original songs to millions of listeners each week.
His decade-long association with Garrison Keillor’s popular program has led to some unusual gigs: There was the after-show club date in Berlin, when Wynton Marsalis showed up to sit in with Pat and the Prairie Home band. Or playing music on camera for the Prairie Home Companion movie with director Robert Altman and stars Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson and Tommy Lee Jones.Besides the weekly radio broadcasts, Pat plays about 30 concerts a year nationwide and teaches at such popular music camps as Augusta Heritage Center and Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp.
Pat’s musical tastes are eclectic. Though he considers himself foremost a folk guitarist, Pat’s influences are rooted in bluesmen Blind Blake, Robert Johnson, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters and Miles Davis. He manages to blend jazz and blues with folk, and the mix is seamless. Over the years he has captivated audiences with his unique original compositions, dazzling instrumentals and humorous song parodies, including Sushi-Yucki and Would You Like to Play the Guitar?
Honors include a 2005 Grammy for his participation on Pink Guitar, a compilation of Henry Mancini tunes on acoustic guitar, several Minnesota Music Awards, and the title of 1983 National Finger Picking Guitar Champion. His original tunes have been recorded by Chet Atkins, Suzy Bogguss and Kenny Rogers. Pat has also been a featured performer at major music festivals including the Newport, Telluride and Philadelphia Folk Festivals. Pat joins a legendary list of notables, as The Martin Guitar Company recently introduced a Custom Signature Edition Series OM-30DB guitar designed to his specifications.
Pat has been obsessed with the guitar since he first picked one up at age 12 and began learning simple chords and melodies from a Pete Seeger instructional book. His background as a drummer in a garage rock band helped with the transition and he never looked back. As a youth, the St. Paul, Minnesota native pestered guitarists playing at Twin Cities coffee houses and blues venues, seeking tips on playing. Borrowing bits and pieces of the styles of finger picking pioneers he admired, he taught himself to play, building a repertoire flavored by Blind Blake, Django Reinhart and Chet Atkins.
Dean Magraw is a consummate guitarist, playing with wit and soulful abandon. A performer like no other, he is part-comedian, part-philosopher and all-around musical genius. Transcending genre, he has performed with a cornucopia of collaborators from jazz organist Jack McDuff to folk icon Greg Brown, trad Irish supergroup Altan to classical violinist Nigel Kennedy.
Growing up in a musical household, Dean soaked in a smorgasbord of musical influences. His parents danced to big band swing; his sister listened to show tunes and his guitar and veena playing brother’s record collection was full of folk, jazz, rock, and classical Indian albums. But it was the opening riff to the Rolling Stones’ “19th Nervous Breakdown” that caused him to fall in love with the guitar.
In his formative years Dean quickly expanded his musical knowledge by incorporating his love of myriad musical styles into his playing and writing. With his eclectic background and musical versatility, he quickly evolved into one of the most innovative guitarists on the international scene as well as one of the most accomplished and original composers, arrangers and producers around. From playing on public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion to leading up his own experimental jam band Eight Head, Dean has literally generated a new world of music.
In addition to his role as an in-demand sideman on over a hundred recording projects, Dean has proven pivotal in creating more than a dozen albums, including four for Red House Records: Wise-Magraw (1985), Broken Silence (1994), Seventh One (1998) and Duo (1991), an album he recorded with Emmy Award winning multi-instrumentalist Peter Ostroushko.
Diagnosed with MDS in 2009, a new chapter has opened in Dean’s life perspective and artistic endeavors. A bone marrow transplant prevented him from performing…but not recording. During the early stages of his medical treatment, Dean went into the studio with his longtime friend and collaborator Marcus Wise. Proving the healing power of music, Dean and Marcus Wise released How the Light Gets In, an engaging collection of highly original compositions nurtured in a refreshingly distinctive soundscape. As is evident on this new album, Dean continues to radiate positive energy through his music. Playing with insight, passion and joy, he shows why he is one of the most ground-breaking musicians of our time.
In 2014, Dean collaborated with the iconic jazz drummer Eric Kamau Gravatt (Weather Report, McCoy Tyner) for their improvisational masterwork, Fire on the Nile. The spare yet full sound of Dean’s guitar and Eric’s drumming, created a aural journey that only musicians of their caliber could create.
David Francey is a Scottish-born carpenter-turned-songwriter, who has become known as “one of Canada’s most revered folk poets and singers” (Toronto Star). Born in Ayrshire, Scotland to parents who were factory workers, he moved to Canada when he was twelve. For decades, he worked in rail yards, construction sites, and the Yukon bush, all the while writing poetry, setting it to melodies in his head and singing it to himself as he worked.
A truly authentic folk singer, Francey is a documentarian of the working person who never imagined earning a living from his music. But when he was in his 40s, his wife, artist Beth Girdler, encouraged him to share his songs and sing in public. The reaction was instant. His first album Torn Screen Door came out in 1999 and was a hit in Canada. Since then, he has released eight albums, won three Juno Awards and has had his songs covered by such artists as The Del McCoury Band, The Rankin Family, James Keelaghan and fellow Red House artist Tracy Grammer.
With Francey’s latest album So Say We All, he returns to Red House Records, the US label where he released his acclaimed folk/Americana album The Waking Hour, featuring Nashville veterans Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane and Fats Kaplin. One of his most personal albums to date, So Say We All delves deep into his recent struggles with depression and loss. With songs about hope and perserverence, the album sounds like a classic folk record that will appeal to folk fans of all ages.
Austin, Texas native Danny Schmidt has built a cult following as a modern day poet and classic troubadour. A true renaissance man and consummate artist, his work is rich and wide-ranging. His lyrics have been published as poetry in literary journals. His photographs from the road have been included in photo exhibits and sold as fine art prints. He has written children’s stories. He designs his own album artwork and codes his own website. And, he has produced albums for friends, including Red House artist Carrie Elkin. Danny is a man of many media.
His life has followed a similar multi-dimensional path. He dropped out of college to pursue a more holistic and connected life on a self-sustainable communal farm. He worked as a sawyer at a sawmill in rural Virginia and as a preschool teacher in Texas. He helped found a musician’s cooperative in Charlottesville, and he is now currently working on a web-based cooperative of musicians.
While the creative expressions along his unorthodox path have taken many forms, it’s Danny’s music, and songwriting in particular, that have garnered him the most notoriety, winning him the 2007 Kerrville New Folk Award and attracting the attention of venerable roots label Red House Records.
Danny’s label debut Instead the Forest Rose to Sing was recorded in Austin by Mark Hallman (David Byrne, Ani Difranco, Eliza Gilkyson) and mixed folk, Americana and indie-rock sounds. It garnered rave reviews and made No Depression’s “Best of 2009” list. The #2 most played folk album that year, it also solidified Danny’s place as one of today’s most important voices and led him to be highlighted by Rich Warren in the Chicago Tribune as one of the top 50 most significant folk songwriters in the last 50 years.
On his latest solo album Man of Many Moons, Danny returns to an intensely intimate solo acoustic sound. Both thoughtful and playful, the songs dance around themes of personal evolution and an ever-fluid relationship with commitment.
Danny and fellow Red House artist Carrie Elkin have been performing together for the last few years and have teamed up for their duo debut For Keeps. This release from two of Austin’s award-winning songwriters contains many of the songs that have been enjoyed by thousands of fans at their live shows.
When not on the road, Danny lives in Austin where he likes to cook, brew beer and wine and take in as many Texas Longhorns games as he can.
Colorblind James Experience were an alternative roots/pop/rock band founded in 1980 in San Francisco, California . Bandleader and singer/songwriter/guitarist “Colorblind” James Charles Cuminale was originally from Rochester, New York but assembled early versions of what would become the Experience in Oswego, New York before relocating to San Francisco. After a couple years of mixed results there, the band regrouped and moved again–back to Rochester, which remained its home base until Cuminale’s premature death in 2001.
The band enjoyed a brief flirtation with fame in the UK and Europe after BBC DJ John Peel gave the Experience some exposure, and their music has made a deep and lasting impression. Their “Dance Critters” single reached number 10 on the UK Indie Chart, while their albums Colorblind James Experience and “Why Should I Stand Up” reached numbers 5 and 13 respectively. Often humorous and parodic–and just as often laced with a profoundly questioning spirituality–their music blended elements of polka, country, cocktail jazz, blues, rockabilly, Tex-Mex, rock & roll and other genres. The band’s sound was to a large extent inspired by the “old, weird America” famously chased by Bob Dylan and The Band during their Basement Tapes period, but other prominent influences included Ray Charles, Randy Newman, and Van Morrison.
Colorblind James Experience Red House release, Solid! Behind the Times (1992) was a witch’s brew of jug band and Stax/volt-era rhythm and blues laced with country, jazz, and manic rock guitar leads. A profound and sometimes humorous album, Solid!… captured the human relationships and bedraggled American experience.
Cliff Eberhardt knew by age seven that he was going to be a singer and songwriter. Growing up in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, he and his brothers sang together and their parents played instruments. His dad introduced him to the guitar and he quickly taught himself to play. Fortunate enough to live close to the Main Point (one of the best folk clubs on the East Coast), he cut his teeth listening to the likes of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bonnie Raitt, and Mississippi John Hurt — receiving an early and impressive tutorial in acoustic music. At the same time, he was also listening to great pop songwriters like Cole Porter, the Gershwins, and Rodgers and Hart, which explain his penchant for great melodies and clever lyrical twists.
At fifteen, Cliff and his brother Geoff began touring as an acoustic duo, playing the Eastern club circuit until Cliff turned twenty-one and moved to Carbondale, Illinois. There he found space to develop his own voicewithin a vibrant and supportive music scene that included Shawn Colvin. After a couple of years there and a short stay in Colorado, Cliff moved to New York in 1978.
Because the clubs were great (the Bitter End, the Speakeasy, Kenny’s Castaway, Folk City) and the company amazing (John Gorka, Suzanne Vega, Lucy Kaplansky, Julie Gold, Steve Forbert, Christine Lavin, and Shawn Colvin), New York was an ideal musician’s boot camp. Though he put in long hours as a taxi driver, Cliff worked steadily on his music throughout the 80’s, doing solo gigs and studio work, and playing guitar on the road with Richie Havens, Melanie and others. Singing advertising jingles for products like Coke, Miller Beer and Chevrolet (“The Heartbeat of America” campaign) allowed him to devote more time to his songwriting.
In 1990 Cliff’s song “My Father’s Shoes,” appeared on Windham Hill’s Legacy collection, leading to a deal with the label. They released Cliff’s first album, The Long Road (1990), a work featuring a duet with Richie Havens. The critical response to this debut was outstanding (The Philadelphia Inquirer called the album a “repeatedly astounding collection”). He followed with two more records on Windham Hill before releasing 12 Songs of Good and Evil (1997) on Red House Records, which stemmed from a chance meeting with Red House founder Bob Feldman at John Gorka’s wedding. Cliff recorded two more albums before his critically acclaimed The High Above and the Down Below, named the #5 album of 2007 by USA Today. Produced by legendary musician and Red House Records president Eric Peltoniemi, it was recorded in Minneapolis with noted jazz players Gordy Johnson, J. T. Bates and Rich Dworsky and was his first album after spending several years recovering from a car accident. With a new lease on life and a fresh batch of songs, Cliff embarked on what has turned out to be an artistic renaissance. Recorded in the Texas Hill Country, Cliff’s new album 500 Miles: The Blue Rock Sessions may be his finest to date. An intimate album of powerful originals and unique covers, it features a reworking of his hit “The Long Road,” a song made more poignant after nearly two decades of touring and recording.
Long one of the most respected songwriters on the club scene, his peers often mine his catalog for themselves. Cliff’s song “Memphis” was included on Cry Cry Cry, an album of collaborative covers by the “folk supergroup” of the same name (comprised of Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell). Other performers who have recorded his songs include Richie Havens, Shawn Colvin, Russ Taff and Buffy Sainte Marie. A collection of his songs has been published in The Cliff Eberhardt Songbook (Cherry Lane Publishing).
Claudia Schmidt is a powerful vocalist and adventurous artist, who combines lively folk, jazz and blues with rich poetry and playful humor.
Hailing from Michigan, she knew at a young age that she was destined to be a singer. Performing in numerous choirs throughout her youth, Claudia soon pursued a professional career while in Chicago, leading her to Wisconsin and Minnesota, where she was a frequent guest on the early days of A Prairie Home Companion. More than thirty years and 16 albums later, Claudia continues to perform on the road to her loyal legions of fans across the country. Mixing folk, jazz, traditional ballads and breathtaking originals, there’s not a style she can’t master. Claudia ‘s incredible voice and charismatic stage presence makes her a marvel in concert.
In the middle of her career Claudia took a detour from her music and opened a bed and breakfast with her husband on Beaver Island in the middle of Lake Michigan. But Claudia always kept music as a close companion, leaving for short tours during this period. Eventually the muse struck her again and Claudia returned to recording and touring fulltime.
Claudia has recorded 16 of her own albums, including five on Red House Records and two with singer-songwriter Sally Rogers. She was also featured on Gales of November, a musical theater piece written by Eric Peltoniemi featuring Prudence Johnson, Ruth MacKenzie, Peter Ostroushko, Dan Chouinard and Jeff Wilkomm.
With an infectious energy and joy, Claudia continues to tour the country, delighting audiences with her spectacular vocals and instrumental prowess. Now living in Minneapolis, she releases Bend in the River: Collected Songs. A fun, wide-ranging collection of her finest Red House material, it is the album that fans have been waiting for.
In 2012 she released a retrospective, Bend in the River: Collected Songs, a fun, wide-ranging collection of her finest Red House material.
Her 2014 studio album, New Whirled Order, saw Claudia returning to the Red House Records fold for her first new album since 2000. With an infectious energy and joy, she continues to delight audiences with her spectacular vocals and instrumental prowess.
A Chenille Sisters performance is a blending of three uniquely gifted souls into a musical phenomenon that’s more poignant, funny and entertaining than any single performer anywhere – and oh, those exquisite harmonies! What these three women have in common are heavenly voices, a lot of witty wisdom and a passion for connecting with their audiences. But as in a constellation, each Chenille shines her own particular kind of light.
Cheryl Dawdy draws on her background as a balladeer to tell stories that shimmer with human emotion, from sorrow to wonder to tenderness – all delivered with a sly smile that slowly grows wider, warming the heart.
With her broad vocal range, Grace Morand can project a powerful note clear to an auditorium’s restrooms. Her performance is as much musical theater as it is singing, with one reviewer inviting the audience to relish the experience of her “silly putty face.”
Connie Huber’s musical acumen is as varied as it is powerful. Her deft guitar playing is a strong element in the musical mix, and her rich vocal presence can transport an audience to places they could otherwise visit only in their dreams.
So while these are very different women with very different histories and experiences, it’s the union of the three that makes them a bona fide force of nature. Their paths first merged and converged on the small stage of an Ann Arbor bistro in 1985. Over the years they’ve criss-crossed the map, amassing tens of thousand of fans young and old.
Chuck grew up in the Philadelphia. As a teenager he worked at a legendary folk club, the Main Point, where he was introduced to a lot of great songwriters and performers (such as bluesman George Gritzbach and Steve Forbert). Others who influenced Chuck include Bob Dylan, Nic Jones, Jackson Browne, David Massengill, and further toward the literary side, Mark Twain. They say that to tell great stories you have to live an adventurous life. It’s a tip that Chuck Brodsky took to heart. In 1981, he took his guitar and hitchhiked to California. He’s worked as a migrant fruit picker, drove an ice cream truck, labored on an Israeli Kibbutz, worked for a book distributor, was a bank courier (until he lost a check for ten million), and spent two years street-singing in Europe. In the process, Chuck learned what all great writers know–that the best stories are the little things in the lives of everyday people who are trying to muddle through with some grace. Chuck’s great gift as a writer is to infuse these stories with humanity and humor, and to make them resonate profoundly with his listeners.
In 1996, Chuck (who now lives near Asheville, NC) signed with Red House Records and released Letters in the Dirt, introducing us to great characters such as a roadside peach vendor still wondering after thirty years if he married the right woman (“Bill & Annie”), and the first white baseball player in the Negro Leagues (“The Ballad of Eddie Klepp). The album earned critical raves from around the country. His 1998 release Radio was even more widely acclaimed for its great stabs at our laughable culture, like “The Come Here’s & the Been Here’s,” “Our Gods,” and “On Christmas I Got Nothing.” For a three month period shortly after its release Radio was the 3rd most frequently played album on Americana stations nationwide.
Chuck has toured everywhere from the US to Canada, Ireland and Israel. He has played at many of the major folk festivals including Kerrville Folk Festival and Winnipeg as well as appeared on many of the major syndicated radio programs such as “Mountain Stage” and “Acoustic Cafe.” His songs have been recorded by Kathy Mattea and Sara Hickman and his song “Radio” was used by NFL Films for a national broadcast on ESPN about a man with Down’s Syndrome who is adored by his whole community.
His down-to-earth presence, touching storytelling, and his dry, barb-witted social commentary bring both tears and laughter to the listener, often during the course of the same song.
Carrie Elkin is a soulful singer with a gypsy spirit, a songwriter with a keen eye. Inspired by her travels and the many places she has called home–Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Boston, Austin–she documents the human condition with sensitivity and humor, crafting songs that have garnered attention at prestigious songwriting contests, including Mountain Stage New Song and the Falcon Ridge Emerging Artist Showcase.
Carrie is a born performer, possessing an infectious energy that cannot be contained. As Maverick Magazine so eloquently put it: “We have never seen a performer so in love with the act of singing. Onstage Elkin was simply a force of nature.” With her dazzling voice and unpretentious charm, she wins over new fans at every show, whether playing at a headlining club gig, singing the national anthem in front of 20,000 at a Chicago Bulls game or opening for artists like Jesse Winchester, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Greg Brown.
Although Carrie got her musical start young, singing in church and playing the saxophone, she lived an extremely diverse and active young life. She competed as a National Champion acro gymnast, which led to an eventual invitation to join the circus. Instead, she studied physiology at Ohio University and became an organic chemist. But music never left her blood, and the attention she was gaining from her songwriting quickly stole her away from the academic world, as she began to record and tour across the country.
After settling in Austin, Texas in 2007, she recorded her album The Jeopardy of Circumstance. Produced by Colin Brooks (The Band of Heathens), the album received rave reviews in the US and the UK that shot her up the Euro-Americana Charts and landed her a spot on Bob Harris’ national BBC Radio show and several prestigious festival invitations.
Following the success of Carrie’s latest album Call It My Garden, she has teamed up with award-winning Austin artist Danny Schmidt for their Red House duo debut For Keeps, which has been enjoyed by thousands of fans at their live shows.
For more than 45 years, Bill Staines has been the quintessential folk troubadour, singing his songs at the country’s top festivals, concerts, clubs and coffeehouses. Playing 200+ dates a year and driving over 65,000 miles annually, his music is a slice of Americana, filled with cowboys, Yukon adventures, fisherman and everyday working people. He writes lovely, infectious melodies, and his story-filled lyrics recall with compassion and depth the landscapes and characters he’s known. His songs evoke a remarkably strong sense of emotional and physical place, and in the words of the Austin American Statesman, they have the “ability to translate the common details of common lives into songs of uncommon eloquence and beauty.”
Bill Staines has spent over four decades on the road singing his songs and entertaining audiences. A New England native, Staines became involved in the Boston-Cambridge folk scene in the early 1960s and, for a time, emceed the Sunday hootenanny at the renowned Club 47 in Cambridge. He quickly became very popular in the Boston area. In 1971, after one of his shows, a reviewer for the Boston Phoenix insisted that Staines was “simply Boston’s best performer.” A decade later (in 1980 and 1981) the annual Reader’s Poll of the Boston Globe named him one of Boston’s favorite artists. In the meantime, his reputation as a songwriter and troubadour grew across North America. Staines also made his mark yodeling. He learned the traditional art by studying the recordings of great yodelers such as Jimmie Rodgers and Montana Slim. He won the National Yodeling Championship at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville, Texas in 1975, and has become a perennial instructor of yodeling workshops.
With his wonderful songs, his warm, smooth baritone, his prowess on guitar, his charm and his gentle humor, Staines is consistently one of the most popular singers on the folk music circuit today. He’s also a favorite of other folk singers and a significant influence on many. His songs have been recorded by other musicians, including Peter, Paul & Mary, Nanci Griffith, Makem & Clancy, Grandpa Jones, Priscilla Herdman and Jerry Jeff Walker. Over eighty of Staines’ songs have been published in three songbooks: If I Were a Word, Then I’d Be a Song; Music to Me: The Songs of Bill Staines; and All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir. His radio and television appearances have included A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, The Good Evening Show, and he has hosted local programs on PBS and network television.
Staines has recorded 26 critically acclaimed solo albums, many of which have been released on Grammy-winning Red House Records, the label with which he has enjoyed the longest association. He has recorded two children’s recordings–One More River and The Happy Wanderer, which topped Pulse’s yearly Children’s Music and Folk Top Ten lists in 1993 and was honored with a Parents Magazine Parents Prize. A much loved live performer, he has released several retrospective albums, including October’s Hill and The Second Million Miles. He also continues to write and release new original music. His 2007 release Old Dogs charted on folk and Americana radio, and his latest album Beneath Some Lucky Star is among his fans’ favorite.
A veteran performer, Staines can be considered a model for artistic longevity and vitality. He continues to satisfy his huge nationwide fan base with great new albums and performances, while continuing to write the classic songs that have always won him praise.
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