You will be in for a special treat when you attend the opening concert of the 2018 Great Waters Music Festival season on Thursday, June 7th. Nationally recognized singer-songwriter Bill Staines will perform at the Barn at the Inn on Main in Wolfeboro at 7:30 that evening. Come as you are and enjoy light refreshments and a cash bar. Then sit back and relax as you listen to Staines dubbed “One of the best songwriters in folk music today” by the Associated Press.
For more than forty years, Bill has traveled back and forth across North America, singing his songs and delighting audiences at festivals, folksong societies, colleges, concerts, clubs, and coffeehouses. A New England native, Bill became involved with the Boston-Cambridge folk scene in the early 1960’s and for a time, emceed the Sunday Hootenanny at the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge. Bill quickly became a popular performer in the Boston area. From the time in 1971 when a reviewer from the Boston Phoenix stated that he was “simply Boston’s best performer”, Bill has continually appeared on folk music radio listener polls as one of the top all-time favorite folk artists. Now, well into his fifth decade as a folk performer, he has gained an international reputation as a gifted songwriter and performer.
Singing mostly his own songs, he has become one of the most popular and durable singers on the folk music scene today, performing nearly 200 concerts a year and driving over 65,000 miles annually. He weaves a blend of gentle wit and humor into his performances and one reviewer wrote, “He has a sense of timing to match the best standup comic.”
Bill’s music is a slice of Americana, reflecting with the same ease his feelings about the prairie people of the Midwest or the adventurers of the Yukon, the on-the-road truckers, or the everyday workers that make up this land.
Many of Bill’s songs have appeared in grade school music books, church hymnals, and scouting campfire songbooks. He is one of only a few songwriters to have eight songs published in the classic song collection, Rise up Singing. Composer David Amram recently described Bill as “a modern day Stephen Foster…his songs will be around 100 years from now.”
Great Waters Music Festival is a non-profit organization dedicated to culturally enriching New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. The festival encompasses a diversified program designed to appeal to a variety of musical tastes. Its purpose is to promote live musical performances including folk, pops, jazz, Broadway, dance, and renowned vocal and instrumental artists.
For more information and tickets please call 569-7710 or email: info@greatwaters.org.