Saturday, November 1, 2008

Low Rent Disrict-Stephen Lawrence Suffet


Born Stephen Lawrence Suffet in 1947, Steve Suffet is best described as an old fashioned folk singer in the People's Music tradition. His repertoire is a mixture of railroad songs, trucker songs, union songs, old time country music, blues, ragtime, Gospel, topical-political songs, and whatever else tickles his fancy. He takes songs from whatever sources he wishes and then he sings them his own way, maybe rewriting the lyrics on the spot or changing the music to fit his own particular style.
Heavily involved in the antiwar movement in the 1960s, Steve appeared at several of the legendary Broadside magazine hoots in New York City. Steve later left the organized folk scene for nearly thirty years, playing instead at political rallies and demonstrations, campgrounds, schools, day care centers, weddings, parks, pubs, and pick-up jam sessions.
Steve returned to the folk scene when invited to perform at a Sis Cunningham Tribute Concert in 1997. Since then he has played for festivals, clubs, and folk music societies throughout the northeastern USA. In 2007, Steve made his first appearance at the Jacob's Ladder Folk Festival in Israel."Low Rent District" is Steve's third full CD. It eighteen tracks include eight of Steve's own compositions, four traditional folk songs that Steve arranged, a cowboy song from 1911, a Carter Family song, a song by contemporary songwriter Si Kahn, two little known Woody Guthrie songs, and Guthrie's version of a traditional Gospel song.
Accompanying Steve on various tracks on this CD are Hillel Arnold, Jaque DuPree, Carl Fortunato, Alan Friend, Robin Greenstein, Allen Hopkins, Ray Korona, Laura Munzer, Anne Price, and Gina Tlamsa. Each is an accomplished musician in his or her own right.(listen to CD ...and BUY!)

1 comment:

  1. steve send me an email:
    Zev,

    Thank you for the publicity. Please note, however, that "Were You in Boston in
    1919?" did not make the final cut for the CD. I recorded 22 songs, but only used
    17 plus the live bonus track which brought the finished CD to 18 songs. I put
    three of the outtakes, including "Were You in Boston in 1919?," onto my
    SoundClick music page. The other two are "Wishes" and "Bring Our Soldiers Home."
    I'm not going to put up the remaining two songs. One of them, "God Bless the
    Grass," was written by the late Malvina Reynolds, and I would have to pay her
    publisher a licensing fee to use it. The other one, "Rocks and Gravel," is a
    traditional folk song in the public domain, but it still needs a lot of editing
    and mixing, and it is not worth the expense.

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