Leo Kottke is an acoustic guitarist. He is known for a fingerpicking style that draws on blues, jazz, and folk music, and for syncopated, polyphonic melodies. He overcame a series of personal obstacles, including partial loss of hearing and a nearly career-ending bout with tendon damage in his right hand, to emerge as a widely recognized master of his instrument. He resides in the Minneapolis area with his family.
Jandek is an American lo-fi music project centered around Sterling Smith, though the pseudonym is often used to refer to Smith directly in the context of this work. Their output is distributed by Corwood Industries, a Houston, Texas record label which is also operated by Smith.
Terrence Orlando 'Terry' Callier was an American soul, folk and jazz guitarist and singer-songwriter.
Anjani Thomas is an American singer-songwriter and pianist, best known for her work with singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, as well as Carl Anderson, Frank Gambale, and Stanley Clarke. She became a solo artist in 2000.
Susan Kay Bogguss is an American country music singer and songwriter. She began her career in the 1980s as a solo singer. In the 1990s, six of her songs were Top 10 hits, three albums were certified gold, and one album received a platinum certification. She won Top New Female Vocalist from the Academy of Country Music and the Horizon Award from the Country Music Association.
Loudon Snowden Wainwright III is an American songwriter, folk singer, humorist, and actor. His sister is Sloan Wainwright. He is the father of musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Lucy Wainwright Roche, and is the former husband of the late folk singer Kate McGarrigle.
Kate Victoria 'KT' Tunstall is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician. She first gained attention with a 2004 live solo performance of her song 'Black Horse and the Cherry Tree' on Later... with Jools Holland.
Glen Hansard is an Irish songwriter, actor, vocalist and guitarist for the Irish group The Frames, and one half of folk rock duo The Swell Season. He is known for his acting, having appeared in the BAFTA-winning film The Commitments, as well as starring in the film Once, which earned him a number of major awards, including the Academy Award for Best Original Song for 'Falling Slowly', with co-writer and co-star Markéta Irglová.
Jeanne-Paule Marie 'Jeannine' Deckers, better known as Sœur Sourire and often called The Singing Nun in English-speaking countries, was a Belgian singer-songwriter and a member of the Dominican Order in Belgium as Sister Luc Gabriel. She acquired widespread fame in 1963 with the release of the Belgian French song 'Dominique', which topped the US Billboard Hot 100 and other charts. Owing to confusion over the terms of the recording contract, she was reduced to poverty, and also experienced a crisis of faith, quitting the order, though still remaining a Catholic. She committed suicide with her lifelong partner, Annie Pécher.
Joan Chandos Baez is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages.
Sonya Kitchell is an American singer-songwriter. Kitchell formed her first band and began writing music in 2001. In 2004 Sonya signed with Velour Records and was named the second Starbucks Hear Music Artist, releasing her first international-selling record, Words Came Back to Me on Velour Records. She has toured globally to Japan, Europe and across the U.S. many times in support of the album.
Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, known professionally as Rodriguez, is an American singer-songwriter from Detroit, Michigan. Though his career was initially met with little fanfare in the United States, he found success in Australia, touring the country twice, and New Zealand. Unbeknownst to him for decades, his music was also extremely successful and influential in South Africa, where he is believed to have sold more records than Elvis Presley., as well as other countries in Southern Africa. Information about him was scarce, and it was incorrectly rumored there that he had committed suicide shortly after releasing his second album.
Raul Santos Seixas was a Brazilian rock composer, singer, songwriter and producer. He is sometimes called the 'Father of Brazilian Rock' and 'Maluco Beleza', the last one roughly translated as 'Groovy Nutcase'. He was born in Salvador (Bahia), Brazil, and died of pancreatitis in São Paulo. Every year on Seixas' birthday, legions of fans, including thousands of impersonators, throw a parade in his honor in downtown São Paulo.
Angel Olsen is an American singer-songwriter and musician from St. Louis, Missouri who lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
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.'
Edward Christopher Sheeran is an English singer, songwriter, record producer, musician, actor, and businessman. After first recording music in 2004, he began gaining attention through YouTube. In early 2011, Sheeran independently released the extended play, No. 5 Collaborations Project. He signed with Asylum Records the same year.
Timothy Charles Buckley III was an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, and producer. His music and style changed considerably through the years. Buckley began his career based in folk music, but his subsequent albums experimented with jazz, psychedelia, funk, soul, the avant-garde, and an evolving voice-as-instrument sound. He died at the age of 28 from a heroin and morphine overdose, leaving behind sons Taylor and Jeff.
Rosi Golan is an Israeli singer-songwriter. Since 2008 she has released two LPs and two EPs. Her songs have been featured in feature films such as Dear John and Tiger Eyes, TV shows such as Vampire Diaries, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Brothers & Sisters, One Tree Hill, Ghost Whisperer, and numerous commercials.
John Benson Sebastian is an American singer/songwriter, guitarist, harmonicist, and autoharpist. He is best known as a founder of The Lovin' Spoonful, as well as for his impromptu appearance at the Woodstock festival in 1969 and a US No. 1 hit in 1976, 'Welcome Back'.
Jackie Leven was a Scottish songwriter and folk musician. After starting his career as a folk musician in the late 1960s, he first found success with new wave band Doll by Doll. He later recorded as a solo artist, releasing more than twenty albums under his own name or under the pseudonym Sir Vincent Lone.
Yusuf Islam, commonly known by his stage names Cat Stevens, Yusuf, and Yusuf / Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His musical style consists of folk, pop, rock, and, later in his career, Islamic music. He returned to making secular music in 2006. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, lyricist, and a civil and human rights activist, often referred to as 'The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement'. Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. Time magazine included her recording of 'Take This Hammer' on its list of the 100 Greatest Popular Songs, stating that 'Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music.'
Chester Burton 'Chet' Atkins, known as 'Mr. Guitar' and 'The Country Gentleman', was an American musician, occasional vocalist, songwriter, and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nashville sound, the country music style which expanded its appeal to adult pop music fans. He was primarily known as a guitarist. He also played the mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and ukulele.
Francis Edward Turner is an English punk and folk singer-songwriter from Meonstoke, Hampshire. He began his career as the vocalist of post-hardcore band Million Dead, then embarked upon a primarily acoustic-based solo career following the band's split in 2005. In the studio and during live performances, Turner is accompanied by his backing band, The Sleeping Souls, which consists of Ben Lloyd, Tarrant Anderson (bass), Matt Nasir and Callum Green (drums).
Hannes Wader is a German singer-songwriter ('Liedermacher'). He has been an important figure in German leftist circles since the 1970s, with his songs covering such themes as socialist and communist resistance to oppression in Europe and other places like Latin America. He both wrote new songs and played versions of older historical works.
Atahualpa Yupanqui was an Argentine singer, songwriter, guitarist, and writer. He is considered the most important Argentine folk musician of the 20th century.
William Rory Gallagher was an Irish blues and rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, and producer. Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, and brought up in Cork, Gallagher formed the band Taste in the late 1960s and recorded solo albums throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His albums have sold over 30 million copies worldwide.
Frank Boudewijn de Groot is a Dutch singer-songwriter, known for 'Welterusten Meneer de President' (1966).
Ketevan 'Katie' Melua is a Georgian-British singer and songwriter. She moved to the United Kingdom at the age of eight – first to Belfast, and then to London in 1999. Melua is signed to the small Dramatico record label, under the management of composer Mike Batt, and made her musical debut in 2003. In 2006, she became the United Kingdom's best-selling female artist and Europe's highest selling European female artist.
Iain Matthews is an English musician and singer-songwriter. He was an original member of the British folk rock band Fairport Convention from 1967 to 1969 before leaving and forming his own band, Matthews Southern Comfort, which had a UK number one in 1970 with a cover version of Joni Mitchell's song 'Woodstock'. In 1979 his cover of Terence Boylan's 'Shake It' reached No. 13 on the US charts.
Nelly Kim Furtado is a Canadian singer and songwriter.
Michael Riley Mogis is an American producer/engineer and multi-instrumentalist who, along with his brother A.J. Mogis, founded Presto! Recording Studios. Mogis currently runs ARC in downtown Omaha.
Peter Seeger was an American folk singer and social activist.