Tom Russell

Growing up in 1940s Los Angeles, Tom Russell saw blues heroes Lightnin' Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb at small clubs, heard Buck Owens and Johnny Cash on country radio, discovered the beat poets and was inspired by the great songwriters like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. His generation of friends were partly defined by those who dropped out and went to the Woodstock Festival and those who were sent to the Vietnam War; but Russell instead found himself in war-torn Nigeria teaching criminology, reading Graham Greene novels and hanging out playing guitar with King Sunny Ade. He lived in Norway and Spain, played carnivals in Puerto Rico and Skid Row strip bars in Vancouver and had a wealth of adventures and experiences that would later form the basis of many of his songs.

Not able to fit in with the songwriters of Nashville or Texas, he was driving a taxi in New York in the 1980s when the Grateful Dead's Robert Hunter got into his cab, took a liking to his work and helped him land gigs on the Greenwich Village folk scene. It restarted his career, and he developed a host of vivid characters in his songs with evocative tales from old America and the seedy cracks of society. Telling of a Mexican fighting cock and its owner's desperate gambling attempts, his song 'El Gallo del Cielo' from the album 'Heart On Sleeve' became one of his great signature tracks and was covered by Joe Ely, whilst 'Blue Wing' told of a prisoner's dreams and was recorded by Dave Alvin and Johnny Cash.

He traced his family history and told stories of Irish immigrants, American pioneers and his Norwegian ancestors on 'The Man from God Knows Where' in 1999, and his 2004 album 'Indians, Cowboys, Horses, Dogs' became a favourite of David Letterman, who had him on his talk show to play his outlaw anthem 'Tonight We Ride'. On 'Hotwalker' (2005) he created the character of fairground midget Little Jack Horton to capture the spirit of outsider Los Angeles and reminisce about Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Edward Abbey and Woody Guthrie, before he moved down to live in rural El Paso, Texas, where the troubles on the border and the sounds and myths of Mexican culture increasingly informed his work. It led to him writing another rousing, signature song in 'Who's Gonna Build Your Wall', which told of the land developers employing illegal Mexican workers to build a border wall to keep out illegal Mexican workers. His life's rambling journeys and wild dreams all came together on double album 'Rose of Roscrae' in 2015, on which he created a folk opera that drifted from his forefathers in Ireland to tales of the Wild West and post-WWII America. In 2017 he released 'Play One More', featuring the songs of Ian and Sylvia Tyson.