Geoff Bartley (born 1948) is an American acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter whose musical style combines
roots
A root is the part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors the plant body, and absorbs and stores water and nutrients.
Root or roots may also refer to:
Art, entertainment, and media
* ''The Root'' (magazine), an online magazine focusing ...
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a majo ...
, and traditional
folk
Folk or Folks may refer to:
Sociology
*Nation
*People
* Folklore
** Folk art
** Folk dance
** Folk hero
** Folk music
*** Folk metal
*** Folk punk
*** Folk rock
** Folk religion
* Folk taxonomy
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Folk Plus or Fol ...
. He lives in the
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...
area, where he can be found at The Can Tab Lounge in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most ...
every Monday night, hosting a singer-songwriter
open mic
An open mic or open mike (shortened from "open microphone") is a live show at a venue such as a coffeehouse, nightclub, comedy club, strip club, or pub, usually taking place at night, in which audience members may perform on stage whether t ...
, and every Tuesday night presenting bluegrass performances and jams.
Since 1994, Bartley has played guitar regularly for
Tom Paxton
Thomas Richard Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is an American folk singer-songwriter who has had a music career spanning more than fifty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2009, he was awarded the Jerry Christen Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award by the Boston Area Coffeehouse Association. In 2015 he was the winner of the Podunk songwriting contest. He has won the New Hampshire Acoustic Guitar Contest twice and, during the 1980s, won four guitars by four-second-place wins at the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championships in
Winfield, Kansas
Winfield is a city and county seat of Cowley County, Kansas, United States. It is situated along the Walnut River in South Central Kansas. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 11,777. It is home to Southwestern College.
Hi ...
. The Folk Project calls him "an insightful songwriter with an expressive baritone voice, an exceptionally clean and tasty guitarist, and one of the best damn harmonica players in the country."
Early life and influences
Geoff Bartley was born in New York City in 1948 and grew up on the eastern shore of Maryland. His mother played piano and his father, a doctor, played clarinet, and he grew up surrounded by classical music. In fourth grade, Bartley began to study clarinet, and in 1963 picked up the acoustic guitar. "I had no social life and no social skills, so I just spent a lot of time practicing acoustic guitar," said Bartley in 2012. In 1967, he moved to Boston to attend Boston University, and has lived also in Nevada, Colorado, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
His influences included original pre-war acoustic blues players and singers such as Lightnin’ Hopkins,
Robert Johnson
Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generat ...
,
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the " Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock an ...
, and
Blind Willie McTell
Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier; May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959) was a Piedmont blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont ...
, and later folk musicians and interpreters of the blues, including
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
,
Tom Rush
Thomas Walker Rush (born February 8, 1941) is an American folk and blues singer, guitarist and songwriter who helped launch the careers of other singer-songwriters in the 1960s and has continued his own singing career for 60 years.
Life and ...
,
Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Lynn Raitt (; born November 8, 1949) is an American blues singer and guitarist. In 1971, Raitt released her self-titled debut album. Following this, she released a series of critically acclaimed roots-influenced albums that incorporate ...
, and
Dave van Ronk
David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk (June 30, 1936 – February 10, 2002) was an American folk singer. An important figure in the American folk music revival and New York City's Greenwich Village scene in the 1960s, he was nicknamed the "Mayor of Mac ...
.
Career
Bartley had his first paying gig in 1970, at a Boston coffeehouse. By 1973, he was able to make a living playing in bars and coffee houses, and he toured nationally for the next decade and a half. It was during this period that he won four guitars at the
Walnut Valley Festival
The Walnut Valley Festival is an acoustic music festival held annually in Winfield, Kansas, United States. The main genre of music is bluegrass, but a wide variety of other acoustic styles are represented. The festival is held on the Wednesday ...
in Winfield, Kansas, winning every year from 1984 to 1987. During the 1980s, he also participated in and was inspired by the Fast Folk Music Cooperative. Since 1994, he has regularly accompanied folk legend Tom Paxton, who considers him one of the world's best guitar players, and Bartley was instrumental in the creation of the 2004 Tom Paxton signature model Martin guitar.
Can Tab Lounge and the bluegrass connection
In 1991, he began hosting a folk singer-songwriter open mic at the Can Tab Lounge in Cambridge every Monday evening. The success of the folk open mic led the venue asked him in 1993 to host Tuesday evenings as well, and he decided to make that a bluegrass event. Bluegrass Tuesdays eventually became what master fiddler and
Berklee
Berklee College of Music is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level cour ...
professor of music Matt Glaser called "the epicenter of bluegrass in Boston," and multiple bluegrass bands have met each other and gained experience through jamming in the Cantab's basement and stairwells and performing on its stage. In 2016, the Boston Bluegrass Union recognized Bartley's contributions to bluegrass with its Industry Heritage Award.
Songwriting
A widely respected and prize-winning songwriter and composer, Bartley's songs have been recorded by numerous artists and licensed for film and television. His song "Sunny Side of Town" won the 2015 Podunk Bluegrass Festival Songwriters Competition. His recordings ''Put the Big Stone Down'' (2009) and ''Mercy for the Dispossessed'' (2011) both reached number one on the international Folk DJ Radio chart. Through his open mics, he has been a mentor to many aspiring songwriters. The folk press has called him a world-class guitarist, a brilliant songwriter, and the prophet and spiritual godfather of the Boston folk scene.
Discography
* ''Blues Beneath the Surface'' (1984)
* ''Interstates'' (1986)
* ''I Am the Heart'' (1989)
* ''One Kind Word'' (1998)
* ''Hear That Wind Howl'' (1999)
* ''Bones and Breath'' (with Timothy Mason) (2003)
* ''Interstates'' (2005)
* ''Blackbirds in the Pie'' (2008)
* ''Put The Big Stone Down'' (2010)
* ''Mercy for the Dispossessed'' (2011)
* ''Uncle Wiggly's Bicycle Ride'' (2015)
* ''Particles of Light'' (September 2016)