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From WWR

Autobiography

I was born in New Haven, CT, 1957. Got my first song in my head first at age 12, somber lines, beautiful and cruel. I wrote them down. Have kept on since, faithful to the lightning. When I was young I would do shows of almost all my own songs, plus usually a Scots song in dialect.

These days it matters less to me whether I wrote the songs I sing. For the last couple years I've been researching African-American spirituals and secular folk songs, acquiring many rare and out of print books. This has resulted in the Bound to Go CD, and Campground, the band.

A protracted bout of tendinitis (the cure: Active Tissue Release, acupuncture, the Graston Technique, weights) a few years ago got me into memorizing poems, and I love to perform those as well, to introduce people to Mary Oliver and pair "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas with "Mr. Tambourine Man". Also Scottish Ballads, which I translate out of dialect.

For several years I played a couple instrumental gigs a week, at places like the Blind Faith Cafe in Evanston and the Third Coast in Chicago. For these I performed Bach, Scarlatti, Renaissance and Baroque guitar pieces, some blues, UK and American fiddle tunes, mostly finger-picked. At that time I studied guitar with Shinobu Sato in Skokie, IL, a great musician and teacher.

When I was 40, I wrote the basic structure of triad chords down on a page in rows and figured out what I had been working with all those years without knowing it, and mapped out more options for harmonizing. And now 10 years later, I'm working with reducing options for harmony to the notes of the melody. I try to leave out the note I'm singing so that there will be interplay with voice and instrument.

I don't write songs unless they're given to me. My method is, mostly, to get out of the way of the energy flow, to be calm in the presence of whatever is coming through. In editing, reworking, the principle is to trust the image. What else? I always sing a Dave Carter song. I play clubs, festivals, colleges, radio shows, nursing homes, bars, but mostly house concerts and those are the gigs I love most.

External links

Website

Andrew Calhoun & Campground on MySpace

Andrew Calhoun & Campground on Wikipedia

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This artist lives in Illinois.

The gender of this artist/group is both.

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Albums on WWR

• Bound To Go

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Artist name is|Andrew Calhoun & Campground
Last played|   more than 1 month ago
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Show name|    Songs by Andrew Calhoun & Campground
Length|       15 minutes
Order by|     random
Limit|        3 songs
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Stats

• Spotlighted: Never
• Songs on WWR: 33
• Total plays: 23
• Total requests: 18
• Total listens: 659
• CDBaby referrals: 0
• CDBaby sales:

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