TOM PALEY - April 4th

Because The Lord Nelson will not reopen until March 11th we have had to cancel once again. Rowan & Rosie have been rescheduled for October. We resume on April 4th when TOM PALEY will be joined by his son, BEN, on fiddle and vocals.


A pivotal figure of the great American folk revival, he influenced Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan and gave lessons to Ry Cooder and Gerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead.

After leaving Yale he took the New York folk scene by storm, “...as if John The Baptist had flown into town!” according to one reviewer. And Happy Traum remembers how, “Tom Paley became one of the best guitar and banjo pickers in the city, and was the inspiration of many, many other aspiring folk musicians.”

He formed a duo with Woody Guthrie, who praised his “slick, fine expert music”   and he was a regular at the jam sessions at Leadbelly’s house, along with Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee.

“Tom Paley was one nifty dude,” says fiddler Peter Stamphel. “More than anyone else he introduced the modern acoustic guitar and banjo-picking styles to New York. Before him, nearly everybody thrashed grossly on the nylon stringed guitar. Paley brought Travis and Scruggs to the Big Apple, clear as a bell.”

Later, Tom formed The New Lost City Ramblers, of whom Bob Dylan wrote: “Everything about them appealed to me  -   their style, their singing, their sound. I liked the way they looked, the way they dressed and especially I liked their name. Their songs ran the gamut in styles, everything from mountain ballads to fiddle tunes and railroad blues.”


“The New Lost City Ramblers pioneered the renaissance of southern mountain music and brought many traditional musicians into the mainstream folk music scene. They played music as used to be sung. In Tom Paley they had a superb guitarist and banjoist whose sardonic wit had become a hallmark of the Ramblers' stage shows.”    Ray Allen, Folkways Magazine

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