American folk guitarists

Question

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about American folk guitarists

Answer 1

Julien Aklei

Julien Aklei (born November 20, 1975 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and artist.

Aklei was raised in Louisville, Kentucky where she graduated as a National Merit Scholar from Kentucky Country Day School in 1994 and went on to the University of Virginia as an Echols Scholar.

The Washington Post referred to Aklei as an "eerie-intriguing singer-songwriter" with a "haunting voice and a strangely tough-vulnerable stage presence."

Her work is characterized by deeply personal and otherworldly lyrics, and an emphasis on her voice over the music. Although she accompanies herself on several different instruments — including piano — her style of electric guitar and vocals are the linchpins of her sound. Aklei has experimented widely with differing music styles, including folk, jazz, rockabilly, and blues throughout a varied career.

Julien Aklei is a prolific songwriter with over 200 recorded and published songs, which are available as singles released from her website in blog format.

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Answer 2

AM (musician)

AM (musician)

AM is an American songwriter, musician, composer and producer born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, raised in New Orleans, and currently residing in the Los Angeles Echo Park neighborhood in California. AM or A.M. refers to his band and is also the moniker for this artist. Known for his seamless fusing of pop, soul, funk and world music, recording artist AM has released several critically acclaimed albums and toured the world. His newest collaboration with London artist/producer Shawn Lee, has been described by Rolling Stone as "hypnotic" and by Daytrotter as “intricate, groove-filled dreamscapes that are every bit organic and every bit mad genius."

AM has toured with bands such as the French band AIR, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thievery Corporation, Caetano Veloso, Shawn Lee, and Josh Rouse.

AM DJ's under the moniker George Ben Sun.

AM's side project creatively entitled "AM & Shawn Lee" is a collaboration with London-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Shawn Lee. After AM heard Lee's "Music and Rhythm" album on the radio in Los Angeles he decided to reach out to Lee on Myspace. The two became quick friends sharing a common love for 60's psychedelia and 70's Italian soundtracks. The first single from the debut album "Celestial Electric" is entitled "Dark Into Light"and was released on gold colored, limited edition 12" vinyl on the Ubiquity label in honor of Record Store Day and the full album came out on Thievery Corporation's label ESL Music (ADA Distribution/ Beggars Canada/ Naive in France.)

La Musique Numerique (Park The Van Records) is the second LP from AM & Shawn Lee (Park The Van Records).

After selling 25,000 albums on his own, AM's critically acclaimed debut album Troubled Times (released on Defend Music in the USA and Luna Records in Europe) went on to have all 10 songs featured in films and television shows which had not been done since Moby's album Play. When Gary Jules brought his PA into a little coffee shop and began booking songwriter nights, he invited AM to come up and play and this was the beginning of what is now known as one of the most established singer/songwriter venues in the country, the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, California. AM credits KCRW's Nic Harcourt who started playing AM's demos for being the first to play his music on the radio show "Morning Becomes Eclectic".

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Answer 3

Antonia Apodaca

Antonia Apodaca (born November 1, 1923) is an American musician and songwriter known for her performances of traditional New Mexico music. She came to wider prominence through her performances in the La Música de los Viejitos festival in Santa Fe, the festival's nationally circulated radio broadcasts, and her appearances at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Apodaca was born in Rociada, a village in San Miguel County, New Mexico. Her parents, José Damacio Martinez and Rafaelita Suazo Martinez, were both musicians from families of musicians. Her mother played the accordion and guitar and her father the guitar, accordion, and violin. They had a small band which entertained at local dances and weddings. Antonia taught herself to play the accordion as a child, initially on a broken one she had rescued from the trash. Her mother and uncle continued teaching her, and by the time she was a young teenager she won an accordion contest in Santa Fe where she had competed against adults. She was also taught to play the guitar by father. At the age of 18, she met her future husband Macario "Max" Apodaca, a fiddler from Carmen (a village near Mora, New Mexico) who had asked to join her parents' band. They married two months later and in 1949 settled in Wyoming where Max got a job in the uranium mines. They were to live in Wyoming for the next 30 years and raise their five children there. Max played with a band of German musicians in Wyoming for several years, and he and Antonia continued to perform together for both the Hispanic and Anglo communities at dances and local events. Apodaca later recalled how she and her husband had learned how to adapt the traditional Hispanic polkas and waltzes to a Western rhythm when they played for the Anglos.

In 1979 the couple returned to Rociada to live in the house where Antonia was born and had grown up. Max Apodaca died in 1987 and Antonia ceased performing. A year later, the New Mexican folk violinist Cleofes Ortiz convinced her to return and she went on to perform extensively with Bayou Seco (the folk musicians Ken Keppeler and Jeanie McLerie) and later formed her own group, Trio Jalapeño. She was awarded the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1992, the same year she had appeared at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.. In December 2010, her house in Rociada burned to the ground destroying what the National Hispanic Cultural Center termed "decades of musical history and treasured instruments." She escaped with only her guitar and two accordions.

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Answer 4

Zach Ashton

Zach Ashton

Zach Ashton is a self-taught musician, recording artist and producer. His musical genres include pop, bossa nova, jazz, reggae and acoustic pop. He is noted for using elements of world music within his compositions.

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Answer 5

Chet Atkins

Chet Atkins

Chester Burton "Chet" Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001) was an American musician, occasional vocalist, songwriter, and record producer, who along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, among others, created the country music style that came to be known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country music's appeal to adult pop music fans. He was primarily known as a guitarist. He also played the mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and ukulele.

Atkins' signature picking style was inspired by Merle Travis. Other major guitar influences were Django Reinhardt, George Barnes, Les Paul, and, later, Jerry Reed. His distinctive picking style and musicianship brought him admirers inside and outside the country scene, both in the United States and abroad. Atkins spent most of his career at RCA Victor and produced records for the Browns, Hank Snow, Porter Wagoner, Norma Jean, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Perry Como, Floyd Cramer, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Skeeter Davis, Waylon Jennings, and many others.

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Answer 6

Hoyt Axton

Hoyt Axton

Hoyt Wayne Axton (March 25, 1938 – October 26, 1999) was an American folk music singer-songwriter, guitarist and a film and television actor. He became prominent in the early 1960s, establishing himself on the West Coast as a folk singer with an earthy style and powerful voice. As he matured, some of his songwriting became well known throughout the world. Among them were "Joy to the World", "The Pusher", "No No Song", "Greenback Dollar", "Della and the Dealer" and "Never Been to Spain".

Born in Duncan, Oklahoma, Axton spent his pre-teen years in Comanche, Oklahoma, with his brother, John. His mother, Mae Boren Axton, a songwriter, co-wrote the classic rock 'n' roll song "Heartbreak Hotel", which became the first major hit for Elvis Presley. Some of Hoyt's own songs were also later recorded by Elvis. Axton's father, John Thomas Axton, was a Naval officer stationed in Jacksonville, Florida; the family joined him there in 1949. Axton graduated from Robert E. Lee High School in 1956 and left town after Knauer's Hardware burned down on graduation night, a prank gone wrong. Axton attended Oklahoma State for a short length of time before following his father and enlisting in the Navy. Axton served aboard the USS Ranger before pursuing a music career.

After his discharge from the Navy on the West Coast, he began singing folk songs in San Francisco nightclubs. In the early 1960s he released his first folk album titled The Balladeer (recorded at the Troubadour), which included his song "Greenback Dollar", a 1963 hit for The Kingston Trio. Axton released numerous albums well into the 1980s.

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Answer 7

Dylan Golden Aycock

Dylan Golden Aycock

Dylan Golden Aycock (born 1985) is an American Primitive guitarist and Experimental Musician from Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 2016, NPR named Dylan Golden Aycock's Church of Level Track one of the "Top 10 Solo Guitar Records of 2016" Uncut Magazine described him as "respectfully expanding on Takoma School roots, moving towards the sort of chamber folk compositions mastered by James Blackshaw and William Tyler." In the Bandcamp article "New Directions in Acoustic Guitar" Pitchfork writer Marc Masters writes "Aycock credited with nine different instruments, including violin, drums, pedal steel guitar and synthesizers add atmosphere to his thoughtful picking."

Aycock began making music as a turntablist in 2004 before later moving to drums and in 2011 he began playing solo instrumental guitar. He has released music under his own name as well as Talk West, The Doldrums, and in 2007 was a member of the band Mar who's debut album was recorded in Iceland with members of múm and The Album Leaf. His father is a songwriter, poet and radio DJ on NPR and his mother is a painter. In addition, Aycock has an older brother named Jesse Aycock who is lap steel guitar player for Hard Working Americans which is made up of Todd Snider, Dave Schools (of Widespread Panic), guitarist Neal Casal, keyboard player Chad Staehly and drummer Duane Trucks.

Aycock was first a member of The Doldrums and Mar, which started in 2006, this was before he became a solo artist. Aycock formed The Doldrums with Mark Kuykendall at the age of 19. Before releasing music under his own name, Aycock used Talk West as working title for his solo music. Most of the Talk West releases were focused around the Pedal Steel guitar and cassette. In 2016, Aycock released a critically acclaimed solo album entitled Church of Level Track, The album takes its name from the infamous train moniker artist Colossus of Roads. Aside from solo and collaborative works, Aycock founded the record label Scissor Tail Editions in 2010 at the age of 24. The label released albums from Scott Tuma of Souled American, Scott Hirsch of Hiss Golden Messenger, Nadia Reid who's album Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs received critical acclaim from The New York Times, The Guardian, Pitchfork and NPR, BBC Music and many others. Aycock's most notable contribution to Scissor Tail was reissuing the soundtrack for Peter Fonda's 1971 American western film The Hired Hand. The film score was composed by Bruce Langhorne who is most known for his session work in Greenwich Village in the early 60's. Bruce Langhorne accompanied Bob Dylan, Odetta, Richie Havens, Joni Mitchell and many others. In 2017, a few months before Langhorne's death, Aycock compiled tribute album to Bruce Langhorne with Loren Connors. The tribute album featured John Fahey, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Gunn, Susan Alcorn, Eugene Chadbourne, Califone, Elliott Sharp and many other notable instrumentalists. Following the release of the tribute album Aycock organized two tribute concerts for Bruce Langhorne, one in New York City with Steve Gunn, Steven Shelley of Sonic Youth and one concert in London.

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Answer 8

Daniel Bachman

Daniel Bachman (born 1989) is an American Primitive guitarist and drone musician from Fredericksburg, Virginia. In 2015, Rolling Stone named him one of "10 Artists You Need to Know."NPR described him as an "established and thoughtful voice in the solo guitar music scene" who contributed "languid slide guitar" in one piece, and with hammer-ons "piercing like a floodlight out of darkness" in another.Stereogum describes him as "from the same acoustic-instrumental world that gave us the great folk visionary William Tyler (musician), and his music has the same sort of out-of-time float that Tyler’s does."

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Answer 9

Joan Baez

Joan Baez

Joan Chandos Baez (/baɪz/; born January 9, 1941) is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician, and activist whose contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 55 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has recorded songs in at least six other languages. She is regarded as a folk singer, although her music has diversified since the counterculture days of the 1960s and now encompasses everything from folk rock and pop to country and gospel music. Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets other composers' work, having recorded songs by the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, The Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan and many others. In recent years, she has found success interpreting songs of modern songwriters such as Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle and Natalie Merchant. Her recordings include many topical songs and material dealing with social issues.

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Answer 10

Danny Barnes (musician)

Danny Barnes (musician)

Danny Barnes (born December 21, 1961) is a banjo player, singer, and composer whose music is influenced by country, jazz, blues, punk, metal, and more. He has been described as a "banjo virtuoso" and is "widely acknowledged as one of the best banjo players in America." He was a founding member of the Austin trio the Bad Livers, with whom he toured and recorded extensively from 1990 to 2000. Since then, he has performed and recorded as a solo artist, as well as collaborating with Bill Frisell,Dave Matthews,Jeff Austin and other musicians. In 2013, Barnes and Max Brody formed the Test Apes. In September 2015, Barnes was awarded the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, in recognition of his role as "one of bluegrass music’s most distinctive and innovative performers." Martin’s website said of Barnes’ work: "The raw and unpolished musical breadth of his compositions has propelled him across the industry today."

Born in Temple, Texas and raised in Belton, Barnes was exposed to music at a young age: he recalls picking up a love of country and bluegrass from his father and grandmother, Delta blues from one brother and punk from another. He was inspired to learn to play the banjo after seeing Grandpa Jones and Stringbean in concert when he was ten. Seeing John Hartford on television and watching Hee Haw were also early influences. He attended the University of Texas and graduated with a degree in audio production in 1985.

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