Dan Bern and Robbie Fulks w/ Jenny ScheinmanDan Bern is best known for his prolific songwriting and electric live persona. He has released a dozen albums while spending well over a decade performing everywhere from coffee shops to Carnegie Hall. Since releasing his first album in 1997, Bern has built a strong underground following based on prodigious touring and output of songs in all forms. Since 2007, Bern has focused much of his talent and sharp wit on writing songs for movies and other projects he composed over a dozen songs for the Jake Kasdan/Judd Apatow spoof-biopic Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and wrote the title song for Jonathan Demme’s documentary, Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains. Bern also composed songs that are included in the Judd Apatow film Get Him to the Greek, starring Russell Brand and Jonah Hill, due out this June. He has also contributed original songs for the off-Broadway production Family Week, directed by Jonathan Demme, including a duet with Emmylou Harris.
A true Renaissance man, Dan Bern comes with an eclectic blend of talents and accomplishments. In addition to countless songs, he has written several books of short stories, plus a full-length novel, Quitting Science. His paintings have been dis- played in hotels, art galleries and purchased en masse through his online art gallery. He is an award winning sports columnist in the state of New Mexico; a tennis pro who taught tennis to the late Wilt Chamberlain; and he did a vocal impression of Howard Cosell for NFL’s Monday Night Football.
And, in the spirit of Cool Hand Luke, he even won an egg eating contest at the 2008 Truth or Consequences Fiesta, scarfing 17 eggs in 10 minutes.
What’s next for Dan Bern? Be sure it will include profound and insightful social commentary, a generous dose of humor, a little tennis, and lots and lots of songs. ?
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Singer/songwriter Robbie Fulks was one of the more heralded talents in the alternative country movement, displaying an offbeat, sometimes dark sense of humor in many of his best moments. As time passed, Fulks moved away from the country twang of his early work and into a crunchier roots rock hybrid. Fulks divided his childhood between Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, and received his schooling at Columbia University. He moved to Chicago in 1983, and first served as vocalist and guitarist in bluegrass band the Special Consensus, appearing on their Grammy-nominated 1989 album A Hole in My Heart. He later performed in the musical revue Woody Guthrie's American Song, and formed his own rock band, the Trailer Trash Revue, with whom he cut a locally popular single, "Little King" b/w "Jean Arthur." Fulks got his first significant exposure via Bloodshot Records' 1994 compilation Insurgent Country, Vol. 1: For a Life of Sin, which included his track "Cigarette State"; the 1995 follow-up, Insurgent Country, Vol. 2: Hell Bent, featured Fulks' "She Took a Lot of Pills (And Died)." Both cuts were produced by Steve Albini, who also helmed Fulks' Bloodshot debut, Country Love Songs, in 1996. The album received highly positive reviews, and featured backing from roots rockers the Skeletons, as well as former Buck Owens steel guitarist Tom Brumley. The follow-up, South Mouth, took a similarly retro-minded approach, drawing from classic honky tonk and Bakersfield country. With a growing cult reputation, Fulks earned a major-label shot with Geffen, but many critics felt that his 1998 label debut, Let's Kill Saturday Night, undermined the organic strengths of his previous work with overly slick roots rock production. Fulks returned to Bloodshot for the bleak follow-up, 2001's Couples in Trouble, a more creatively successful foray into roots rock. He followed it up later that year with 13 Hillbilly Giants, a covers collection that spotlighted lesser-known songs from country's earlier days.?
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Jenny Scheinman is a singer, violin player, composer and arranger. She grew up on a homestead in Northern California in a family of folk musicians, studied at Oberlin Conservatory, graduated with a degree in English literature from UC Berklee, and has been performing since she was a teenager. She has taken the #1 Rising Star Violinist title in the Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll and has been listed as one of their Top Ten Overall Violinists for a decade. She has garnered numerous high-profile arranging credits with Lucinda Williams, Bono, Lou Reed, Metallica and Sean Lennon, and has toured and recorded with Bill Frisell, Bruce Cockburn, Norah Jones, Madeleine Peyroux, Nels Cline, Vinicius Cantuaria, Rodney Crowell, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Mark Ribot. She has seven CDs of original music to date; Mischief & Mayhem, Jenny Scheinman, Crossing The Field, 12 Songs, Shalagaster, The Rabbi’s Lover and Live At Yoshi’s.?