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French As part of the podcast series, “ArtsAbly in Conversation,” Diane Kolin interviewed Mark Erelli, an American singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and touring folk musician living in Massachusetts.
This post presents the resources that Mark Erelli mentioned during the conversation.
Mark Erelli
Mark Erelli turns adversity into finely embroidered rock songs that burn with urgency on his 2023 album Lay Your Darkness Down. Following full-bodied rock forebears Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Roy Orbison, Erelli’s songwriting explores the unknown glories of this planet and love’s transformational power. Over his two decade-long career, the singer-songwriter-sideman-producer-writer has proven himself equally at home in a multitude of roles: producing albums for artists like GRAMMY-winner Lori McKenna; serving as a sideman guitarist for artists like Paula Cole, Marc Cohn, and Josh Ritter; writing and producing his own material, like 2018’s “By Degrees,” for which he was nominated for Song of the Year at the Americana Honors and Awards; and most recently, becoming an advocate for low-vision artists and working with venues to make their spaces more accessible. Written in the wake of his diagnosis with a degenerative retinal disease, Erelli’s 2023 album Lay Your Darkness Down is the next step on Erelli’s journey, following up on 2020’s Blindsided, which garnered praise from Rolling Stone Country, the Associated Press, NPR, The Boston Globe, and more.
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter Cooder is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.
David Lindley
David Perry Lindley was an American musician who founded the rock band El Rayo-X and worked with many other performers including Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Warren Zevon, Curtis Mayfield and Dolly Parton. He mastered such a wide variety of instruments that Acoustic Guitar magazine referred to him not as a multi-instrumentalist but instead as a “maxi-instrumentalist.” On stage, Lindley was known for wearing garishly colored polyester shirts with clashing pants, gaining the nickname the Prince of Polyester.
Learn more about David Lindley
Jackson Browne
Clyde Jackson Browne is an American rock musician, singer, songwriter, and political activist who has sold over 22 million albums in the United States.
Learn more about Jackson Browne
Lori McKenna
Lorraine McKenna is an American folk, Americana, and country music singer-songwriter. From her home base in Boston, she has carved out an enviable niche for herself as one of Nashville’s most in-demand songwriters, all while maintaining a prolific and remarkably consistent career as a solo artist.
Josh Ritter
Joshua B. Ritter is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and author who performs and records with the Royal City Band. Ritter is known for his distinctive Americana style and narrative lyrics.
Marc Cohn
Marc Craig Cohn is an American singer-songwriter and musician. After winning a Grammy for his soulful ballad “Walking in Memphis,” Marc Cohn solidified his place as one of this generation’s most compelling singer-songwriters, combining the precision of a brilliant tunesmith with the passion of a great soul man. Rooted in the rich ground of American rhythm and blues, soul and gospel and possessed of a deft storyteller’s pen, he weaves vivid, detailed, often drawn-from-life tales that evoke some of our most universal human feelings: love, hope, faith, joy, heartbreak.
Paula Cole
Paula Dorothy Cole is an American singer-songwriter and producer. From whispering poetry in a low alto range, to opening her throat in primal scream, Paula Cole’s voice is more commanding than ever, revealing battle scars, deep wisdom, the soulfulness of gospel, the urgency of rock, and the sensitivity of folk. Cole plays piano, Rhodes, acoustic guitar, clarinet and sings her artfully arranged background-vocals. She is a poet with a funky groove.
Bruce Cockburn
Bruce Douglas Cockburn is a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist. His song styles range from folk to folk- and jazz-influenced rock to soundscapes accompanying spoken stories. His lyrics reflect interests in spirituality, human rights, environmental issues, and relationships, and describe his experiences in Central America and Africa.
Visit Bruce Cockburn’s website
Barnstar!
Barnstar! began as the brainchild of Zachariah Hickman (bassist for Josh Ritter, musical director for Ray Lamontagne) for a local bluegrass supergroup featuring some of Boston’s best musicians and songwriters. Using the familiar tools of the genre—guitar (Mark Erelli), fiddle (Jake Armerding), mandolin (Taylor Armerding) and banjo (Charlie Rose)—Barnstar! forges its own brand of song-based bluegrass, gloriously harmonized and raucously played.
Andrew Leland
Andrew Leland is the author of The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight (Penguin Press, 2023), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Memoir/Autobiography. It was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and others.
The Country of the Blind, by Andrew Leland
We meet Andrew Leland as he’s suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind: he’s midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades. He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in. Soon— but without knowing exactly when—he will likely have no vision left.
Learn more about The Country of the Blind
The Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in Palo Alto, California in 1965. Known for their eclectic style that fused elements of rock, blues, jazz, folk, country, bluegrass, rock and roll, gospel, reggae, and world music with psychedelia, the band is famous for improvisation during their live performances, and for their devoted fan base, known as “Deadheads”. According to the musician and writer Lenny Kaye, the music of the Grateful Dead “touches on ground that most other groups don’t even know exists.” For the range of their influences and the structure of their live performances, the Grateful Dead are considered “the pioneering godfathers of the jam band world”.