American folk guitarists

Question

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

Answer 1

Jack Johnson (musician)

Jack Johnson (musician)

Jack Hody Johnson (born May 18, 1975) is an American singer-songwriter,musician, actor, record producer, documentary filmmaker and a former professional surfer. Johnson is known primarily for his work in the soft rock and acoustic genres. In 2001, he achieved commercial success after the release of his debut album, Brushfire Fairytales. Johnson has reached number one on the Billboard 200 chart with his albums Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George in 2006, Sleep Through the Static in 2008, To the Sea in 2010, and From Here to Now to You in 2013. Johnson's In Between Dreams album peaked at number 2 on the chart in 2005 and again in 2013.

Johnson is active in the ecology and sustainability movement, often with an ocean-centric focus. Johnson and wife Kim created the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation and the Kōkua Hawaii Foundation. In 2008 Johnson adopted the concept of greening (reduce and reuse), and donated 100% of the proceeds of the Sleep Through the Static tour to the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation. Similarly, the proceeds from the 2010 To the Sea album tour went to All At Once, a Johnson backed collaborative of greening charities promoting fan involvement.

The son of well-known surfer Jeff Johnson, Jack was born and raised on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii. He began to learn how to surf at the age of five. At seventeen he became the youngest invitee to make the finals of the Pipeline Masters, one of surfings most prestigious surfing events, on Oahu's North Shore. One week later, however, his stint as a professional surfer ended when he suffered a surfing accident at the Pipeline that put more than 150 stitches in his forehead and removed a few of his teeth; this later became the inspiration for the song "Drink the Water".)

...

Wikipedia

Answer 2

Michael Johnson (singer)

Michael Johnson (singer)

Michael Johnson (born August 8, 1944), is an American pop, country and folk singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for his 1978 hit song "Bluer Than Blue". To date, he has charted four hits on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and nine more on the Hot Country Songs charts, including two Number One country hits in 1986's "Give Me Wings" and "The Moon Is Still Over Her Shoulder". He also co-wrote "Cain's Blood", the debut single of 1990s country group 4 Runner.

Johnson was born in the small town of Alamosa, Colorado, in the south-central part of the state; he grew up in Denver. He started playing the guitar at 13. In 1963, he began attending Colorado State University to study music but his college career was truncated when he won an international talent contest two years later. First prize included a deal with Epic Records. Epic released the song "Hills", written and sung by Johnson, as a single. Johnson began extensive touring of clubs and colleges, finding a receptive audience everywhere he went.

Wishing to hone his instrumental skills, in 1966 he set off for Barcelona, Spain, to the Liceu Conservatory, studying with the eminent classical guitarists, Graciano Tarragó and Renata Tarragó. Upon his return to the States, he joined Randy Sparks in a group called the New Society and did a tour of the Orient. When the band dissolved in 1967, he signed on with the Chad Mitchell Trio for a year, spending some of that time co-writing with another member, John Denver. The group was renamed Denver, Boise & Johnson. When the trio came to an end, Johnson made a radical departure from everything he had done previously by taking on a major supporting role in the off-Broadway production of "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris." The show visited New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago over the next year; by then, Johnson was ready to return to creating and performing his own music.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 3

Orville Johnson

Orville Johnson is an American resonator guitar player and musician, born in 1953 in Edwardsville, Illinois. He came up in the St. Louis, Missouri music scene and now lives in Seattle, Washington. A frequent session musician, he also has released a number of solo and group albums. He has appeared on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion and on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on television.

Johnson made his film debut in Georgia, appearing as a musician.

He is a singer, instrumentalist, record producer, songwriter, session player, and teacher. As his entry in the Encyclopedia of Northwest Music (Sasquatch Press 1999) states, he has become a vital figure on the Northwest music scene. He has appeared on over 400 CDs, movie and video soundtracks, and commercials, produced 22 CDs for other artists, and hosted a roots music radio show.

As a music teacher, Johnson has taught often at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop as well as the International Guitar Seminar, Pt. Townsend Blues Workshop, Euro-Blues Workshop, B.C. Bluegrass Workshop and others.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 4

Glenn Jones (guitarist)

Glenn Jones (born October 1, 1953) is an American guitarist, He is most recognized for his work in the experimental rock group Cul de Sac.

At the age of fourteen Jones picked up playing the acoustic guitar, which he purchased after hearing Axis: Bold as Love. During the early seventies, Jones discovered American Primitivism and became influenced by Robbie Basho and John Fahey. It wasn't until he was asked by Robin Amos to join Shut-Up that he began playing an electric guitar. In 1989, he founded Cul de Sac with Amos in Boston, Massachusetts.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 5

Guy Juke

Guy Juke (born 1951), aka De White, has been an Austin, Texas–based graphic artist and musician since moving there in 1973 from nearby San Angelo, Texas. He started his career by writing and illustrating underground comics. As a poster artist he has created memorable imagery for nightclubs such as Armadillo World Headquarters along with Sam Yeates, Michael Priest and Jim Franklin. His work is recognized for its darkly detailed, often shadowy and angular figures inspired by horror films, haunting western landscapes, and loopy cartoon characters. Performers such as Joe Ely, B-52s, Willie Nelson, Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, Pavarotti and Asleep at the Wheel, Roy Buchanan are all immortalized via his graphic design. As a musician he has performed as a guitarist with Butch Hancock, Doak Snead, Ponty Bone and lately as Blackie White in the Cornell Hurd Band. He recently designed the logos and posters for author and musician Kinky Friedman's 2006 campaign for Texas Governor. He is also credited with the cover art of The Ramones 1981 album Pleasant Dreams.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 6

Sara K.

Sara K.

Sara Katherine Wooldridge, known professionally as Sara K., is an American singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist. She withdrew from the music business in 2009.

Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, she grew up in a family surrounded by music: her mother sang in a church choir, her father in a barbershop quartet, her brother played in a band, and her sister played guitar. However, her family considered music a hobby, not a job.

In the early 1970s, at the age of 15, she started playing the guitar, using a flamenco guitar that her sister had left behind. She removed the remaining strings and added four bass strings, (tuned to an open A). This gave it a fuller tone than a conventional acoustic guitar while not sounding as deep as a bass. This tuning became one of her trademarks.

After graduating and moving out, she spent a few years taking work wherever she could find it, singing back-up vocals, jingles, and making demo tapes. When she felt out of place in Dallas, she moved to Ruidoso, New Mexico. She led the band Sara K. and the Boys Without Sleep. From 1978 to 1983, she toured mainly New Mexico and Los Angeles. She also toured with country musician Gary Nunn for two years.

She released her debut album, Gypsy Alley, in 1989. Many of the songs were influenced by years of a nomadic life. These years ended when she rented a place on Gypsy Alley (off Canyon Road in Santa Fe), won a goldfish at a country fair, and got her dog, Bebe, who is mentioned many times in her songs. She won a best album award from the New Mexico Music Industry Coalition.

One of the musicians she worked with on Gypsy Alley was guitarist Bruce Dunlap, who was signed to Chesky Records, a record label in New York City aimed mainly at audiophiles. Dunlap brought her to the label and she signed for more than ten years until 2001. The change was marked by contrasts: between her home in Santa Fe and Chesky's home in New York City, between her analog acoustic music and the high-tech equipment at Chesky, and between her dream of fame and wealth and the reality of the record industry. She recorded six albums for Chesky.

She toured Europe and planned to moved to San Francisco but remained where she was. At the end of her contract with Chesky, she felt she had "been ripped off in many directions by labels and touring companies".

On her last tour through Germany under the Chesky contract, the owner of the German label , Günter Pauler, was called to be her sound specialist. He gave her a tour of his studio and offered her a contract and the prospect of having guitarist Chris Jones as a guest musician. Her first Stockfisch album, Water Falls (2001), was followed by a tour, which provided material for a live DVD and the album Live in Concert (2003). She won the Hi-Fi Music Award in 2003 from the German magazine Audio/Steoreoplay.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 7

Ray Kamalay

Ray Kamalay is an American jazz guitarist and singer from Detroit, Michigan who has recorded several jazz records with his group, the Red Hot Peppers. Kamalay is noted for his work with many folk music groups and notable jazz artists such as the Chenille Sisters, Johnny Frigo, and Howard Armstrong. Kamalay is also well known for his work in music education, giving lectures and demonstrations on folk music topics.

After completing a degree in philosophy from the University of Detroit, Kamalay began his career as a professional musician in 1974, concentrating on historic American music such as folk and jazz. In 1983, he formed his regular band, the Red Hot Peppers. The Red Hot Peppers has included several notable jazz musicians over the years, including the Chenille Sisters, Johnny Frigo, and Howard Armstrong, and trumpet player Walter White, who formerly played with the Harry Connick, Jr. orchestra. His collaboration with Armstrong earned Kamalay a W.C. Handy Award nomination in 1998.

In 2008, Kamalay began a music education program named "Freedom, Slavery and the Roots of American Music" in which he uses the guitar to demonstrate sounds from a variety of musical movements. He connects those movements with major periods and events in American history, such as the time of slavery. He has performed the program in celebration of Black History Month throughout Michigan.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 8

Robert Earl Keen

Robert Earl Keen (born January 11, 1956) is an American singer-songwriter and entertainer. Debuting with 1984's No Kinda Dancer, the Houston native has recorded 18 full-length albums for both independent and major record labels, while his songs have also been covered by several different artists from the country, folk and Texas country music scenes (including George Strait, Joe Ely, Lyle Lovett, The Highwaymen, Nanci Griffith, and the Dixie Chicks).

Although both his albums and live performances span many different styles, from folk, country, and bluegrass to rock, he is most commonly affiliated with the Americana movements. Additionally, although Keen has toured extensively both nationally and internationally throughout his career, he has long been heralded as one of the Lone Star State's most popular and consistently acclaimed musical ambassadors, leading to his induction into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012 along with Lovett and the late Townes Van Zandt.

Keen grew up in southwest Houston. His father was a geologist and his mother an attorney. He has an older brother and a younger sister. He attended Sharpstown High School, graduating in 1974. As a teenager, Keen was an avid reader who excelled in writing and literature classes, and a fan of both the English rock band Cream and, thanks to the influence of his older brother, country music by artists like Willie Nelson.

His younger sister, Kathy, introduced him to the Houston music scene in the early seventies. "My sister was a couple years younger than I was, and she was like the world-champion Foosball player of downtown Houston", Keen explained in a 2011 cover story for LoneStarMusic Magazine. Keen would accompany his sister to the bars where she played, many of which featured singer-songwriters playing both covers and original tunes. He started playing guitar himself shortly thereafter, teaching himself to play classic country covers out of a song book the summer before starting college at Texas A&M.

Keen attended Texas A&M University in College Station, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1978 and began writing songs and playing bluegrass and folk music with friends including his childhood running buddy (and a future longtime fiddle player in his band), Bryan Duckworth. It was during his college years that Keen met future famous musician Lyle Lovett.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 9

Richard Kiser

Richard Kiser (born February 23, 1947), is an American CCM guitar player. Kiser has received over seventy industry awards and was voted the 2009 Instrumentalist of the Decade.

Kiser taught himself to play the guitar when he was thirteen and joined a gospel group three years later. He began playing professionally and touring in the late 1960s, but stopped about five years later to raise his family, working occasionally as a session musician and playing at his local church. In the 1990s he resumed touring, this time as a solo concert guitarist. He has recorded eight acoustic albums and has two instructional videos.

Kiser is a featured guest artist each year at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society which holds its annual convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Kiser has shared the stage with performers such as Roy Clark, Charlie McCoy, Boots Randolph, David L Cook, Terri Gibbs, Phil Driscoll, The Oak Ridge Boys and Barbara Fairchild.

Kiser's finger picking style has been defined as being closely related to that of guitar legend, Chet Atkins. Kiser attributes his style to Atkins and designs shows with fellow musicians that showcase the same. Kiser finds himself mostly in religious venues, but has stepped out of those venues to perform with fellow artists such as Country Music Hall of Fame member Charlie McCoy and Jason Coleman who is the grandson of the late Floyd Cramer. In 2013 Kiser received an Emmy Award nomination for his work on the soundtrack for the "Hands of Hope" project. A song that was written by David Meece, David L Cook and Bruce Carroll which brought attention to domestic violence upon women and children.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 10

Danny Kortchmar

Daniel Kortchmar (born April 6, 1946) is an American guitarist, session musician, producer and songwriter. Kortchmar's work with singer-songwriters such as Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, David Crosby, Carole King, David Cassidy, Graham Nash, Neil Young, and Carly Simon helped define the signature sound of the singer-songwriter era of the 1970s. Jackson Browne and Don Henley have recorded many songs written or co-written by Kortchmar, and Kortchmar was Henley's songwriting and producing partner in the 1980s.

Kortchmar is the son of manufacturer Emil Kortchmar and author Lucy Cores. Kortchmar first came to prominence in the mid-1960s playing with bands in his native New York City, such as King Bees and The Flying Machine, which included the then-unknown James Taylor (Kortchmar having been a long-time friend of Taylor's; both of them summered in Martha's Vineyard in their teens); in Taylor's autobiographical composition "Fire and Rain", the line "sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground" is a reference to the breakup of that band. During 1966, Kortchmar traveled to England, where he spent time as a session musician.

In 1967 Kortchmar joined The Fugs, appearing on their 1968 Tenderness Junction album before following bassist Charles Larkey to California, where they joined Carole King in forming a trio named The City. The group produced an album in 1968, Now That Everything's Been Said, which received scattered good reviews but was not a commercial success. The group subsequently broke up, but Kortchmar continued backing King on her more successful solo career, including the groundbreaking 1971 album Tapestry. In 1970, Kortchmar reunited with Taylor on his breakthrough album Sweet Baby James. Kortchmar's work with Taylor and King made him one of the top LA session guitarists in the 1970s and 1980s. He toured and recorded extensively with Linda Ronstadt during this time, even appearing in several of her classic 'Get Closer' era music videos. In 1983, he played Linda's love interest in the music video for "What's New?".

...

Wikipedia