Uncommon Ground ^ Jonathan Byrd

Jonathan Byrd
"The most buzzed-about new songwriter in folkdom." -Scott Alarik, Boston Globe

Jonathan Byrd was one of six winners of the 2003 New Folk competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival. How much of an honor is that? Lyle Lovett, Nancy Griffith, and Shawn Colvin have all been finalists at the legendary Texas festival.
Jonathan’s career started with a contest. In the year 2000, Byrd took grand prize in the North Carolina Songwriter's Coop Song contest in his hometown of Carrboro, NC. Inspired, he began to tour and recorded his first CD, Wildflowers. With spare production, these simple tales of love and death made a surprising impact. Other touring musicians, like Jack Lawrence and Larry Keel, began to cover these new songs that sounded so old.
Born in Fayetteville, NC, Jonathan got on his musical feet singing in a Baptist church. Jonathan headed straight from high school into the Navy, carrying a guitar behind his bunk for three tours in the Mediterranean.
Back home, Byrd began to connect with a vibrant folk music scene. At fiddle meets and festivals, Jonathan fell back in love with traditional music. And through music, he found a connection with his native ground. His writing took a hairpin turn, as he flat picked fiddle tunes and began writing new ballads. "The old world was not really different from today's world," Jonathan says. "Discovering the language and stories of that older world has shown me the essence of the human experience."
On Byrd’s 2003 CD, The Waitress, he's still telling tales of country towns, but the characters are carrying cell phones and recovering from foreign wars. The title cut's a funny but unsettling slice of romantic obsession with the lady who keeps his cup of coffee filled. Reaching back into his roots, he renders new and powerful versions of traditional stories, like “Stacker Lee.”
Live is where Jonathan really shines as a storyteller and entertainer. Arthur Wood of Folkwax called Jonathan's short set at the 2003 Kerrville Folk Festival "one of the musical highlights of this year's entire event."

The Sea and the Sky

Jonathan's third album, "The Sea and the Sky," is a suite of music that features the multi-instrumental artistry of the world-music duo Dromedary. Though the album is grounded in American roots music, Dromedary weaves in music from Portugal, Spain, South America, the Caribbean, and Africa to paint a more complete musical picture of the world that Jonathan created.

The album is built on the energy of 2 days of live group performances in the studio, with friends from all over the east coast sitting in on bass, fiddles, and accordion. From the mouths of the characters that Jonathan created --lovers, sailors, slaves, and slavers -- we hear expressions of longing, love, tragedy, and hope. Dromedary’s charango, Appalachian dulcimer, mandolin, cumbus, and flamenco guitar dart in and out of the album like the characters themselves.

On The Sea and the Sky, Byrd takes the journey with us. It’s obvious from listening to his former releases that this music is far outside his previous work, a totally new adventure, both sonically and lyrically.

What people are saying about Jonathan Byrd:

“I thought I was listening to a young Doc Watson.” -Jay Moulon
Southeast Performer Magazine

"I harbour no doubts that time will confirm Jonathan Byrd as a major songwriting find of the 2003 Kerrville Festival...frankly, one of the musical highlights of this year's entire event. His five song Contest Winners set was an accomplished tour-de-force. He already is a fully realised songwriter, and the number of folks who are acknowledging that fact grows daily." -Arthur Wood, Folkwax

Buy Jonathan Byrd CDs:

Visit the Jonathan Byrd web-site

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Uncommon Ground Past Show Dates

2004-08-12 (1421 days)