DATE: Saturday - March 27, 2010
TIME: 8:00PM (doors open at 5:30PM)

TICKET PRICES:
   Members - Advanced $10.00, At door $12.00
   Non-Member - Advanced $12.00, At door $14.00



GENRE:

BIOGRAPHY:

Joe Crookston's music and songwriting is deeply rooted in the grand celebration of life, death, ancestry and the interconnectedness of us all. It's music that is real, music that connects and music that tells stories with precision and craft. Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, with Hungarian music roots, he inherited his love of music and song from his late mother, a prolific songwriter and accordion player. Whether it's his mesmerizing guitar sound or bubbling banjo, his music draws from his rural Ohio roots and exudes a remarkable intergenerational, universal and timeless quality. His audience rapport, musicianship and playful stage presence is intense, mesmerizing and refreshingly dynamic. "Crookston's music surrounds you like a warm bedtime tale." -SINGER MAGAZINE

His keen musicianship as guitarist, clawhammer banjo player, fiddler, singer and songwriter fuse contemporary and traditional styles, and his writing simply and beautifully paints pictures with words.
In a project inspired by Woody Guthrie, Joe was recently awarded a year-long grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to travel around the state of New York, interview local residents, gather stories and write songs based on his experiences. The project was called "Songs of the Finger Lakes." "Joe's songs are powerful, simple, distilled lyrical paintings weaving together cycles of life and decay, cycles of joy and pain, and eventually they thread the needle through all of us..." -VICTORY MUSIC REVIEW

His song "Fall Down as the Rain" was chosen by Performing Songwriter Magazine as a 2004 "Top-12-Do-It-Yourself" independent recording and was featured on NPR's "All Songs Considered" as well as Syndicated Minnesota Public Radio, The Midnight Special and Folkscene. It was also named "Best Folk Recording" by Seattle's KBCS radio and WXOU in Auburn, MI. He has shared festival stages with the likes of Livingston Taylor, John McCutcheon, Arlo Guthrie, Tim Reynolds, John Gorka and many others. "I've watched audiences glued to their seats at the end of Joe's shows simply not wanting the evening to end. There is a spirit in his music that is simultaneously sacred, celebratory, artful and solidly grounded in tradition... Go see this man perform, and don't be surprised if you drive home singing his songs with a renewed sense of what's possible." SEATTLE FOLKLORE SOCIETY