Home Artists
About AWT Artists

Perhaps you've heard the line, spoken jokingly, "Is that a real song... or one you wrote?"

The correct answer is, of course, "it's a real song that I wrote..."

All the artists that perform at A Winter's Tune are songwriters - most are performers as well. Some play with bands, others walk the troubador path. They make music in styles that range from "singer/songwriter" to folk, indie-pop, soul to Hip-Hop, Calypso, blues and 60's pop all mixed in. The one common trait is that all are songwriters.

Artists are invited to play AWT because:

  • Each are songwriters (while there are many good players and performers, this show is about songwriting)
  • Each are actively playing for audiences
  • Each have made and are selling recordings

The show itself requires each artist:

  • Write a NEW song relating to the winter holiday season
  • Learn and create an ARRANGEMENT (cause that's how most of us learned to write) of a song "traditionally sung" during the winter holiday season

The program is made up of local songwriters from Grand Rapids, Michigan; it's metro, suburban and rural surrounds. AWT also brings in one artist from another area of Michigan, building mutual roadways between audiences and artists.

AWT features both experienced and beginning songwriters as it's important for "young" writers to "stand beside" someone farther up the path - a way to learn things that can't be taught in words (even if using words is a primary tool for a songwriter's to learn about...)

We proud to present these performing artists at AWT concerts, but they are playing frequently and many are happy to travel. We are rightly excited about those working around us, but writers of passion, conviction, humor and beauty are your town, country and language. We hope you will support them and believe they have something as valuable as scientists, builders, farmers, lawmakers, and religion leaders to offer you.

And all you have to do is to lend them your ear.
 

Singer / Songwriters

When A Winter's Tune began over 10 years ago, a few "solo artists" began to call themselves "singer/songwriters." By not defining themselves by a genre, they could dress their songs up in whatever stylistic clothes they felt suited the mood and message of the song (it could "rock" without the artist "being a rocker;" the song could swing without it's author having to wear a zoot suit...).

Currently, a large number of performing songwriters are leaning toward an "Americana" music style; a revival tent over folk and blues, Old-timey, rootsy rock, territories of country and great forgotten mines of popular American music as far back as the birth of the nation. The catch of the past is netted up with whatever the airwaves (full of modern and vintage sounds) bring in.

Main Menu

Get AWT Recordings!

Visit Octoberday.com
For select recordings from
Past AWT Performances

Buy MP3 recordings of past performances from A Winter's Tune shows. Your purchase adds to the fund raising activities on behalf of WYCE (a portion of purchase goes to artists, too!  SEE the "A Winter's Tune" and "All Winter Long" catagories!

New recordings from 2009
coming soon!

GET THE FOLK BROS
Download Studio Single NOW
One More Holiday / Hard Times

 

Mailing List Sign-up

AWT Newsletter
Receive

Visitors Visiting

We have 11 guests online

On Special Assignement

  • Following graduation from Michigan State University, Roger MacNaughton embarked on a music career, which has spanned teaching, arranging, recording, performing, directing, and composing. Initially hired as “keyboard talent,” Roger worked and learned his way around every aspect of a recording studio – ultimately owning his own. Acoustic Arts Custom Music Production LLC specializes in creative, original music for full-length CDs, commercial broadcast, and video underscoring. Roger MacNaughton, BMI, was named Urban Institute Composer of the Year 2000 following the release of his first CD, Summer Dance.

  • Raslton has had quite a year. After returning from a European tour he was rushed to the hospital only to find out he needed surgery. Several benefit concerts helped him raise enough to cover medical expenses. Jane Stancil and other held an email campaign and Ralston played at the hugh Michigan Rothbury Festival. He soldiered on with treatments, enduring chemo while doing gigs and traveling to Boston and Nashville.

    In part a tribute, and part the results of many requests to hear him again at AWT, Ralston will be singing one of his past AWT songs "One More Holiday" with The Folk Bros and doing a second NEW original to open the second set.

  • Following their revival in the early part of 2009, The Folk Bros. (Bruce Zeeuw, Steve Aldrich and J. Oscar Bittinger) began to record a "proper album" (not satisfied with live"field recordings"). The difference is, the past has been tossed on the bonfire  - more songs from Brothers of Folk and those of contemporary regional writers.

    While playing for the Summer Heat Street Party (benefit for Ralston Bowles) the band perversely decided to cover a Winter song - Ralston's "One More Holiday." The performance was a hit and a studio recording done for a limited release single (b/w Bruce's "Hard Times"). The AWT "Special Assignment" performance will feature the band and Ralston. Download version soon from Octoberday.com - also visit FolkBros.com

  • Drawing upon early country, folk, rock, roots and jazz influences, David Molinari music flowers in the 'Americana' field. He surrounds himself with players that give his music a familiar and comforting feel but also reflects its experimental and creative leanings. For the last couple of years David has predominantly been performing with "Creolization", his high energy, improvisational, Zydeco-influenced band all dressed up in accordion, washboard, and funky Louisiana backbeats. Lately it's been getting hard to tell the difference between the driving Zydeco versions of roots music classics from David's own growing catalog of spicy originals.

    David will close A Winter's Tune 2009 with a spunky creolized sing-along that will likely help us melt some snow on our way out.