Folk

Tom Mayhas been a folksinger/guitarist/songwriter/performer for nearly fifty years. He has recorded fourteen albums of original material, and produced various CDs for other artists. His touring has taken him to every state in the US-as well as to most Canadian provinces and to Europe. He has headlined concerts with symphony orchestras, been featured at music festivals across North America, and opened shows for Gordon Lightfoot, Willie Nelson, Alabama, and many others. In 1985, he began producing the nationally syndicated radio program, River City Folk. He also founded and directs "Winterfolk" in Portland, Oregon-an annual concert now in its thirty-second year of raising funds for Pacific Northwest residents in need of food and shelter.Tom's journey has truly been a "Life in Song"-a joyous romp in a challenging, competitive corner of the arts. Full of amusing stories, interesting geography, bungled romances, and excellent wine, this is a book to be savored by anyone who enjoys a story of "making it" in the music business-a process that means vastly different things to different folks-and having fun along the way. Tom's dedication to music that makes a difference has never faltered, and it shines through in this peripatetic tale.

When he was twenty-two years old Brad Sanzenbacher decided he wanted to become a folk singer. The only problem was that he had never sung or played an instrument in his entire life. Launching himself into this new endevour, Sanzenbacher begain what would become a ten year journey that would take him across the United States and in and out of the lives of what he describes as "The best people I've ever known".This is the story of his rise into obscurity.

Love folk music? Liza Mulholland invites you Inside Folk to share an insight into her experience as a contemporary Scottish musician. Drawing on more than twenty-five years in folk music, she reflects on elements of a typical year - performing, teaching, travelling, launching an album, juggling gigs and children, listening, composing - and offers a heartwarming illustration of the joys, delights and challenges of playing music for a living.Packed with humour, anecdote and thoughtful observation, Notes from a Scottish musician's year, the first volume in the Inside Folk series, is an entertaining exploration of Scottish music. Whether ceilidhing in the hollow trunk of a giant redwood at Alasdair Fraser's fiddle camp, teaching at Fèis or playing with her band, Liza dances us through a year of her musical life and many past adventures.With a background of a large Glasgow-Irish family of musicians and singers on her father's side and the Gaelic song tradition of her mother's Hebridean heritage, it was perhaps inevitable she would feel the strongest pull towards folk music. Learning piano from a young age and, later, accordion, playing and writing music became life-long passions, and her love of her subject sings off every page.Having played on more than a dozen albums, had her compositions used in film and video, and collaborated with numerous artistes, Liza writes from a place of extensive knowledge and understanding. Across the Inside Folk series she uses her own wide and varied experience to shine a little light on the everyday business of making music. Her enthusiasm is infectious, so don't be surprised if you find yourself dusting off that old fiddle you've been meaning to get back to for years!

Donald Brown follows shifting versions of Dylan, from songs of social involvement to more personal songs, exploring his influential albums, tours, and personas. In an engaging adventure, Brown provides insightful critical commentary on Dylan’s entire career in the context of its times to assess the relationship of Dylan's music to American culture.

In the autumn of 1961, an obscure recording by a little-known college folk group climbed to the top of the Billboard charts. Upon returning to campus for their senior year, the five Highwaymen found themselves with the number one song not only in the U.S. but throughout most of the world. It was the pinnacle of the last Folk Revival of the 20th century, the time of "Great Folk Music Scare". The era that began with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the Weavers, and which would eventually give birth to the legend of Bob Dylan, and those who followed, reached its popular, commercial zenith between 1960-1964. "NUMBER #1" tells the story of folk music-- especially at its commercially successful-- through the lens of the Highwaymen and their experiences. The history of folk music is traced from its roots, through the crucible of the Great Depression and World War II, and into the 1950s and 1960s, where it experienced its greatest popularity. The story continues as the legacy of folk music continues into the 21st century. The Highwaymen-- yes, the originals-- are still singing together and still celebrating the folk tradition with songs old and new. Relive the songs of yesterday, celebrate the sounds of today, and look forward to the music of tomorrow with "NUMBER #1".

In the 1940s and 1950s, Richard Dyer-Bennet (1913-1991) was among the best known and most respected folk singers in America. Paul O. Jenkins tells, for the first time, the story of Dyer-Bennet, often referred to as the "Twentieth-Century Minstrel." Dyer-Bennet's achievements were many. He became the first solo performer of his kind to appear in Carnegie Hall. This book argues Dyer-Bennet helped pave the way for the folk boom of the mid-1950s and early 1960s. It also posits strong evidence that Dyer-Bennet would certainly be much better known than he is today had his career not been interrupted midstream by the anticommunist, Red-scare blacklist and its ban on his performances.Paul O. Jenkins is the director of library services at College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has published articles in Old-Time Herald and College and Research Libraries News. He received the New York Times Academic Librarian Award in 2006. Bonnie Dyer-Bennet is the daughter of Richard Dyer-Bennet.

Donovan's autobiography charts his life from a post-war, Glaswegian childhood to the height of an international career as one of the leading figures of the 1960's music scene.<BR><BR>Always feeling like an outsider he found relief through music and poetry. The book reveals how he came to be influenced by Buddhist teachings and the music of Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez. The book explores the significance of falling deeply in love with the woman who was to become his muse, and the profound sense of loss he felt when their relationship came to an end, and how the loss affected him both personally and creatively.<BR><BR>A leader of the folk revival in both Britain and America, the book recounts how he rose to be an international star, releasing songs such as Mellow Yellow and Catch the Wind, and his most successful album, Sunshine Superman. Donovan is acknowledged as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 1960's.<BR><BR>The book provides a frank account of his early experiments with drugs and his search for self. He reveals the story of how he developed friendships with Baez, Dylan and the Beatles, with whom he a shared spiritual sojourn to meditate with the Maharishi in India. Donovan's autobiography offers first-hand insights into his music and poetry, recollects his rise to fame and the way in which destiny was to play a hand by re-uniting him with the lost love of his life through a chance meeting.

When Jeff Buckley drowned at the age of thirty in 1997, he not only left behind a legacy of brilliant music -- he brought back haunting memories of his father, '60s troubadour Tim Buckley, a gifted musician who barely knew his son and who himself died at twenty-eight. Both father and son made transcendent music that mixed rock, jazz, and folk; both amassed a cadre of obsessive, adoring fans.This absorbing dual biography -- based on interviews with more than one hundred friends, family members, and business associates as well as access to journals and unreleased recordings -- tells for the first time the intriguing, often heartbreaking story of these two musicians. It offers a new understanding of the Buckleys' parallel lives -- and tragedies -- while exploring the changing music business between the '60s and the '90s. Finally, it tells the story of a father and son, two complex, enigmatic men who died searching for themselves and each other.

Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) is frequently considered the most significant American female composer in this century. Joining Aaron Copland and Henry Cowell as a key member of the 1920s musical avant-garde, she went on to study with modernist theorist and future husband Charles Seeger, writing her masterpiece, String Quartet 1931, not long after. But her legacy extends far beyond the cutting edge of modern music. Collaborating with poet Carl Sandburg on folk song arrangements in the twenties, and with the famous folk-song collectors John and Alan Lomax in the 1930s, she emerged as a central figure in the American folk music revival, issuing several important books of adaptations (transcriptions and arrangements) and pioneering the use of American folk songs in children's music education. Radicalized by the Depression, she spent much of the ensuing two decades working aggressively for social change with her husband and stepson, the folksinger Pete Seeger.This engrossing new biography emphasizes the choices Crawford Seeger made in her roles as composer, activist, teacher, wife and mother. The first woman to win a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in music composition, Crawford Seeger nearly gave up writing music as the demands of family, politics, and the folk song movement intervened. It was only at the very end of her life, with cancer sapping her strength, that she returned to composing. Written with unique insight and compassion, this book offers the definitive treatment of a fascinating twentieth-century figure.