Return of the Prodigious Son
Long-time FSGW favorite traditional song interpreter and collector Jeff Warner returns to our area in a house concert at Ursy Potter and Carter Hearn's just a couple of blocks outside the Beltway just a couple of exits into Virginia. He grew up on song-collecting journeys with his parents Frank and Anne Warner.
Jeff is among the nation?s foremost performer/interpreters of traditional music. His songs from the lumber camps, fishing villages and mountaintops of America connect 21st-century audiences with the everyday lives ? and artistry ? of 19th-century Americans. ?Providing more than just rich entertainment, Jeff will leave you with a deeper appreciation of the land you live in? (Caff? Lena, Saratoga, NY). His songs, rich in local history and a sense of place, bring us the latest news from the distant past.
Jeff grew up listening to the songs and stories of his father Frank Warner and the traditional singers his parents met during their folksong collecting trips through rural America. He accompanied his parents on their later field trips and is the editor of his mother?s book, Traditional American Folk Songs: From the Anne and Frank Warner Collection. He is producer of the two-CD set, Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still, the Warners? recordings of rural singers, many of them born in Victorian times.
?The scion of one of the nation?s most eminent families of folksong collectors, he represents a tradition that is fundamentally unbroken since pre-industrial times? (Stuart Frank, Senior Curator, New Bedford Whaling Museum).
Jeff has performed widely, from large festivals in the UK, to clubs, festivals and schools across America. He plays concertina, banjo, guitar and several ?pocket? instruments, including bones and spoons. And ?he inhabits a song in a way which few singers can do? (Royal Oak Folk Club, Lewes, UK).
A native of New York City, Jeff has lived in Portsmouth, NH, since the late 1990s. He is an artist for the New Hampshire Council on the Arts, a speaker for the New Hampshire Humanities Council and was a 2007 State Arts Council Fellow. He has toured nationally for the Smithsonian Institution, taught at Pinewoods, Ashokan and Swannanoa summer music programs and recorded for Flying Fish/Rounder, WildGoose and other labels. His 1995 recording, Two Little Boys received a Parents? Choice Award.
Jeff is past president of the Country Dance and Song Society, a founding officer of the Folk Alliance, a producer of the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival and a graduate of Duke University.
