Geoff Bartley March 7, 2010

Doors 5pm, Concert 5:15pm

Reservations recommended - notlobreservations @ gmail.com

The museum is free to Newton residents earlier in the day.

Geoff writes, “My music is a mix of blues, folk and roots jazz. I play fingerstyle acoustic guitar and harmonica to support my bluesy baritone "singing". I’m also getting better...slowly... with traditional bluegrass and old-time flatpicking styles. Of the songs I’ve written, people seem to like most Who Should Know, Death is the Robber, One Kind Word, Welcome to the Spiral Dance, Noah’s Ark, Natural Law, the instrumental Blues Beneath the Surface, and the co-writes, Cut by Wire and We’re All Alike. My influences are probably as numerous as yours, but my principal ones are early Bob Dylan, Lightnin' Hopkins and Dave Van Ronk. I’ve also listened to a lot of jazz, primitive and modern. I've opened for or shared festival workshop stages with Doc Watson, Richard Thompson, Tom Rush, Jorma Kaukonen, Dr. John, Odetta, Leo Kottke, The Persuasions, Leon Redbone, and others. In my younger days I played up-down-and-sideways across the US but wasn't able to make a sustainable living at it. Now I play almost exclusively in southern New England and actively support local music.

The folk press has called me "folk music at its best" (Music Reviews Quarterly, Arden, NC), "a brilliant songwriter and a world-class guitarist" (The Boston Globe), a "local legend" (All Music Guide, now Allmusic... see www.allmusic.com) and "the prophet" (WBUR 90.9 fm, Boston) and "spiritual godfather" (Dirty Linen magazine, Baltimore, MD) of the Boston folk scene. As a consequence, my head is now too big to fit through the door. But seriously, I certainly try to send people home from a show feeling better than when they walked in. I also try to keep growing as a person, which is more difficult.

Some of my songs have been recorded by other artists in the US, Nashville, Canada and Ireland, and some are included in the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings of the Fast Folk Musical Magazine collection in Washington, DC. In the 1980s, I won four guitars at the National Fingerpicking Championships hosted by the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, and that was a thrill. As a consequence of these and other factors, I'm occasionally called to record and produce for other artists.

In addition to my own (usually) solo shows in southern New England, I play guitar and sing harmony for topical songwriter and veteran folk entertainer Tom Paxton www.tompaxton.com. I was also instrumental in bringing the Tom Paxton signature model Martin guitar into production in 2004.

I play many of the church coffeehouses in southern New England plus a few festivals, at Passim in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, roughly every eighteen months and at Johnny D's in Davis Square, Somerville, MA, occasionally. I currently have a steady gig playing acoustic pre-war country blues and Delta blues every Sunday night at Smoken' Joe's BBQ in Brighton Center, MA (www.smokenjoesbbq.com 617 254-5227). A guest soloist joins me each week on reeds, trumpet, harmonica, mandolin, fiddle, electric guitar, accordion, keyboard, upright bass, or percussion. Some of these players are reed master Billy Novick; jazz violinist Matt Glaser, Chairman of the String Department at the Berklee College of Music, Boston; upright bassist Eric Levenson; John McGann, bluegrass / newgrass / jazz guitarist / mandolinist who won the National Mandolin Championship at Winfield, Kansas in the 1980s and Berklee faculty; Jeff Stout, jazz trumpeter and Berklee faculty; and harmonica master Mike Turk. I present two nights of acoustic music each week at the Cantab Lounge www.cantab-lounge.com in Cambridge, MA. Both nights have been voted Best of Boston.

In recognition of my career as an independent music professional and for my support of local acoustic music, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mayor’s Office in conjunction with the Boston Bluegrass Union proclaimed February 13, 2004 as Geoff Bartley Day. The award was presented to me that night at the Joe Val Memorial Bluegrass Festival in Framingham, MA. On September 13, 2009 at the Boston Folk Festival, the Boston Area Coffeehouse Association (BACHA) awarded me its Jerry Christen Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award. Previous award-winners include Boston Globe folk music correspondent Scott Alarik (2003); New England radio professional and acoustic music promoter Dick Pleasants (2004); WUMB 91.9 fm founder and principal organizer of the Boston Folk Festival Pat Monteith (2005); Ken Irwin, Bill Nowlin and Marian Leighton-Levy, the founders of Rounder Records (2006); New England songwriter, singer and guitarist Bill Staines (2007); and traditional music supporter and radio host Sandy Sheehan (2008). Geoff’s Hollywood debut: My song 'A Letter from Prison' (recorded by The Infamous Stringdusters on Sugarhill Records / Welk Music Group) in which Nelson Mandela speaks to his wife, Winnie, from his jail cell on Robben Island, South Africa, appeared briefly in the independent Lionsgate film “The Lucky Ones” that opened in US theatres on September 26, 2008 starring Rachel McAdams, Tim Robbins, and Michael Pena. Thirteen is now my lucky number (26 divided by 2 = ?).

Acoustic guitar instrumentals and songs I've written have been used on the History Channel, Animal Planet, A&E, the Learning Channel, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, NOVA and Nature on PBS and in other commercial and non-commercial television programs on other stations in the US and other countries, in documentary and commercial films and in private and commercial advertising in the US and other countries. These recordings are licensed to the Sonoton Music Library in Munich, Germany and are distributed internationally by APM Music.

My latest CD is called “Blackbirds in the Pie” and was released on November 15, 2008. I play Martin guitars www.martinguitar.com and National Reso-Phonic guitars www.nationalguitars.com and string 'em all with Elixir strings www.elixirstrings.com.

http://www.geoffbartley.com

Official Website: http://notlobmusic.googlepages.com