Craig Bickhardt: A Bio
Copyright 2011 By Barry Alfonso
When Craig Bickhardt steps onto a
concert stage, he comes equipped with his trusty acoustic guitar. A side
musician or two will frequently join him. He’s also accompanied by something
invisible, yet ever-present: the stories of a lifetime, vividly translated into
words and melody.
From the boisterous club scene of
Philadelphia to the country-rock milieu of Los Angeles to the picking parlors
of Nashville, Craig has immersed himself in the sights and sounds of American music.
His music reflects a life lived as a rock band lead singer, a solo troubadour,
a dedicated songwriter, a husband and father. Dreams, heartaches and
hard-earned lessons have fed his creativity. There is no other way he could’ve written
the eloquent, often bittersweet songs that have become his trademark.
“I start a lot of songs because I
feel conflicted,” he explains. “I may begin from a point of darkness, but I
usually end up writing towards the light because, for me, hope is the thing
worth singing about. The characters in the stories I sing aren’t heroic;
they’re very ordinary. But they’re reaching for something beyond themselves,
and I find nobility in that.”
Craig is a singer/songwriter of
the old school – you can hear echoes of such ‘60s folk revival artists as Tom
Rush, Gordon Lightfoot and Eric Andersen in his work. Added to this is the
melodic sophistication of a Jimmy Webb or a Paul Simon, as well as a spare but
telling lyric approach. “I admire songwriters like Woody Guthrie and poets like
Robert Frost because they created functional art,” he says. “Too much music
today is just for the singer, not for Everyman. I think of my work as a ‘Please
Touch’ museum – I want my songs to be sung until they’re worn out.”
Also crucial to Craig’s art is
his virtuosic guitar work, interweaving folk, blues, country and ragtime
influences into a unique whole: “The guitar isn’t just an accompanying
instrument for me – sometimes it’s the front man and my voice is the
accompanist.”
Craig came to music as something
of a family inheritance. His father Harry worked at WIP radio in Philadelphia
and moonlighted as a big band musician. As a youngster, Craig absorbed
everything from Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins to Stan Kenton and Duke
Ellington. At 14, Craig found an old guitar in the family attic and taught
himself to play. Soon he was writing songs and performing at venues like
Philadelphia’s famed Main Point.
The Philly club scene shaped his
emerging musical style. “I was lucky to grow up in a town that was a melting
pot for musicians,” Craig says. “I got to hear lots of R&B as well as the
great folk performers of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. It taught me that
nothing moves people like a great song sung with some passion.”
By the mid-‘70s, Craig was co-lead
singer/guitarist with Wire and Wood, an eclectic country-rock quintet that won
a fervent East Coast following. The
group opened for the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Stephen Stills before
relocating to L.A. in search of a record deal.
Craig and his compadres succeeded in attracting the interest of Bob
Dylan’s former manager Albert Grossman, who signed them to his Bearsville/October
Records label. Unfortunately, Wire and Wood’s album was never completed and the
group called it quits soon after.
Craig went through another life-changing ordeal while
living in L.A. One night, he awoke to find that the house he shared with his
band mates was on fire. He barely managed to escape before the place collapsed
in flames – and came away with a revelation: “At that moment, everything in the
world felt luminous again, like it did when I was young. That experience made
me realize that my happiness didn’t depend on possessions or status. I suddenly
felt free and very grateful to be alive.”
This brush with mortality also re-motivated him as a
musician. After Wire and Wood dissolved, Craig secured an assignment to write
and sing songs for Tender Mercies, a country music-themed film starring
Robert Duvall. This led to a lengthy residency in Nashville, where he saw his
songs recorded by such legends as Ray Charles, B.B. King, Johnny Cash, the
Judds, Tony Rice and Alison Krauss.
All the while, Craig continued playing his music live at
the Bluebird Café and other clubs in the Nashville area. The call to the stage
grew stronger after he released his first solo album, Easy Fires, in
2001. Five years later, he returned to his Pennsylvania roots and fully came
into his own as a solo performer. By the end of the decade, Craig had won a new
legion of fans on the East Coast and beyond through opening gigs for the likes
of Judy Collins, Kathy Mattea and Billy Joe Shaver and club dates on his own.
A Craig Bickhardt live set is a mix of absurd anecdotes
and personal confessions, accompanying a well-stocked bag of original tunes and
the occasional choice cover. His decades in music have given his performances
the depth of experience – his love songs seem sweeter and more poignant, his story-song
narratives more true-to-life than they could have in the past.
“I think people come to my shows to be reminded that
there’s something profound in the small stuff we experience every day,” he
says. “My goal is to get an audience to look deeper at the things we all take
for granted.”
Craig Bickhardt travels light to his gigs – but he brings
a great deal to the stage. He combines a seasoned troubadour’s easy command of
his art with a beginner’s passion to win over his next audience and top his
next song. The stories of his lifetime are simply too good not to share.
-- Barry Alfonso
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