Ed Masuga is an American singer, musician, and songwriter from

Big Bear Lake, California Big Bear Lake is a small city in San Bernardino County, California, located in the San Bernardino Mountains along the south shore of Big Bear Lake, and surrounded by the San Bernardino National Forest. The city is located about 25 miles (40&n ...

. Ed Masuga's music is characterized by

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

fingerpicking Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar or bass guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking (plucking individual notes with a single plectr ...

and a strong yet mellifluous vocal style. Although best known for his intricate guitar work, Masuga also accompanies himself on

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

ukulele The ukulele ( ; from haw, ukulele , approximately ), also called Uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings. The tone and volume of the instrumen ...

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

, and

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica in ...

. He has released four independent albums; a self-titled debut album "Ed Masuga", "Lonely Dog", "Let Me Tune My Heartstrings", and "Old Moon."

Biography

Ed Masuga is the youngest of ten siblings. After bringing him home as a newborn with the birth tag "Boy Masuga" on his wrist, his parents ended up calling him "Boy" for the first few years of his life. When they started calling him "Danny," a shortened version of his given name, he refused, preferring to go by his middle name. So struck was he by a popular country star of the time, young Ed Masuga would reply to those calling him "Danny" by saying, "I'm not Danny. I'm Eddie.

Eddie Rabbit Edward Thomas Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American country music singer and songwriter. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as " Kentucky Rai ...

." His drifting family was never satisfied in any one place for too long, and he grew up bouncing between shacks,

motel A motel, also known as a motor hotel, motor inn or motor lodge, is a hotel designed for motorists, usually having each room entered directly from the parking area for motor vehicles rather than through a central lobby. Entering dictionaries ...

casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live enterta ...

trailers Trailer may refer to: a Transportation * Trailer (vehicle), an unpowered vehicle pulled by a powered vehicle ** Bicycle trailer, a wheeled frame for hitching to a bicycle to tow cargo or passengers ** Full-trailer ** Semi-trailer ** Horse trai ...

, forests, and barroom kitchens. At the age of two years he saw his dad compete on the game show "

Name That Tune ''Name That Tune'' is an American television music game show. Originally created and produced by orchestra conductor Harry Salter and his wife Roberta Semple Salter, the series features contestants competing to correctly identify songs being pl ...

," and though the appearance netted just a

jukebox A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that will play a patron's selection from self-contained media. The classic jukebox has buttons, with letters and numbers on them, which are used to selec ...

and a trip to

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...

, Ed's future as a traveling musician had been fully inspired. Masuga moved to the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

to attend college at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

, and initially became known in the

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has ...

community while performing at student

co-op A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...

houses. His sister is the writer

Katy Masuga Katy Masuga (born 1975) is an American writer. Biography Katy Masuga is an American writer near Paris, France. Masuga grew up in the San Bernardino National Forest of southern California. She received a B.A. in Philosophy with a Special Opti ...

Discography

*''Old Moon'' (2016) *''Let Me Tune My Heartstrings'' (2010) *''Lonely Dog'' (2008) *''Ed Masuga'' (2006)

References

External links

Official Ed Masuga websiteSan Francisco Bay Guardian review

Performer Magazine 'Let Me Tune My Heartstrings' album review
{{DEFAULTSORT:Masuga, Ed American folk musicians American folk guitarists American male guitarists Musicians from Berkeley, California 1978 births Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni People from Big Bear Lake, California Berkeley Student Cooperative alumni Singer-songwriters from California Guitarists from California 21st-century American male singers 21st-century American singers 21st-century American guitarists American male singer-songwriters