Bucky & Andy Dee – Chur, Switzerland 2009 Tour
The Ghost of Woody Guthrie: Bucky Halker & Andy Dee
Bucky is joined by musical pal Andy Dee for a new double CD project that pays tribute to the influence of Guthrie’s impact on Bucky over the last fifty years. The CD features 18 of Bucky’s original tunes and 4 of Woody’s as well. The project is a tribute and a celebration to Woody Guthrie, but it’s much more than that. It’s an honest and frank response to living with Guthrie for so many years, performing his songs across America and Europe, reading the published work on Guthrie, and doing research in the Guthrie archives. Partial funding for this project was generously provided by the Puffin Foundation. Read more and listen to the album…
Company of Folk – Folksongs of Illinois
Illinois has a rich folk and ethnic music heritage that seldom receives the scholarly, journalistic, or public attention it deserves. Anyone who begins to examine the folk music history of Illinois soon discovers that the Land of Lincoln may well have the most diverse and vibrant musical traditions of any state in the nation. Bucky Halker made that discovery several years ago in his musical travels and he set out to document the state’s music traditions and to make people more aware of them as well. To do so, Bucky worked with the Illinois Humanities Council, the Illinois Arts Council, and his own Company of Folk, to produce Folksongs of Illinois, a CD series that now includes four volumes. Check back in Fall 2013 for information on vol. 5 in this series. Read more and listen to all four discs!
Caskets In The Cornfield
Bucky’s trio, Johnsburg 3, released this CD in the summer of 2010. For years Bucky had collected folksongs from around Illinois and noticed a large number songs related to death, disaster, and dying. Well, he couldn’t resist recording a batch of these great songs and letting people in on a bit of “Illinois song noir.” What history and what fun. Johnburg 3 invent a new genre—Death Folk. Read more and listen to the album!
Welcome to Wisconsin vol. 2
Wisconsin 2-13-63, Volume 2 Bucky’s new CD, Wisconsin 2-13-63, Volume 2 is out. Smart folks and hipsters world wide are picking up copies, so you better too! Order now. Roots Highway calls it “An album with thirteen small gems . . . . a great disc” (Italy, 2009). Bucky’s latest offering travels the landscape of original American roots music, skillfully drawing on honky tonk, folk rock, straight ahead rock ‘n roll, R&B and countrypolitan. Big songs, a big voice and crafty arrangements wrapped in lonesome steel guitars, twangy Telecasters, the whirl of the B-3 organ, jumbo acoustic guitars, in-the-grove percussion, jazzy trumpets, punchy bottom end, and adept harmonies. Read more…
Welcome to Wisconsin vol. 1
Wisconsin, 2-13-63, Volume 1 “Beautiful songs and arrangements. Halker has offered us an especially successful CD.” (Concerto, Austria, August 2006) The songs stylistically range from straight country, to jazz, to jingly-jangly pop rock, to New Orleans R&B, to Tex Mex, to straight-ahead rock. There’s string sections on a few tunes and horns galore on others, plus ample doses of vocal harmonies, pedal steel guitars, mandolin, electric guitars, Hammond B-3 organ, and bits of dobro and lap steel. Read more…