Biography - Tom Russell

Blood and Candle Smoke Blood and Candle Smoke, a collection of powerful observations and deliberations, takes Tom`s work to another level entirely. Now released on Shout! Factory, tour dates up.

Tom Russell has recorded 25 records and two DVDs. His songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash, Doug Sahm, Nancy Griffith, Joe Ely, Iris Dement, Ian Tyson, KD Lang, Suzy Bogguss, Ramblin´ Jack Elliott, Jeff Walker, Dave Van Ronk and other great artists.

Russell is credited, along with Dave Alvin, of inventing the Americana radio format with their Merle Haggard tribute 'Tulare Dust' in 1994. The Columbus Other wrote: 'Russell seems to have invented, and keeps re-inventing, American roots music...! He´s the strongest live performer we have seen in years.'

Tom Russell has appeared on the David Letterman TV show five times in the last few years, and his songs have appeared in a dozen movies and television series including: Tremors, Songcatcher and Northern Exposure.

Russell`s latest release Blood and Candle Smoke is a collection of powerful observations and deliberations that has the media and fellow musicians buzzing. USA Today calls the album "stunning", while the San Francisco Chronicle proclaims it "about as perfect as it gets." Robert Hunter, Greatful Dead Lyricist and co-writer of Bob Dylan`s 2009 album "Together Through Life" states that Blood and Candle Smoke is an "excellent record in all respects. Lyrics are jewels, arrangements deeply tasteful, vocals superb." Maverick UK gives the album 5 stars out of 5. "Russell raises his songwriting to new and different heights of greatness...Album of the Year (so far) hands down. Very possibly Album of the Decade!"

Russell was born in Los Angeles in 1953 and now makes his home on a 2.68 ''badland farm'' on the border of El Paso-Juarez. He graduated from the University of California with a Master´s Degree in Criminology and taught school in Nigeria during the Biafran war, befor re-locating to Vancouver to begin his musical career singing Hank Williams´ songs in skid row bars.

Tom Russell has published three books: a detective novel (in Scandinavia), a compendium of songwriting quotes with Sylvia Tyson (And Then I Wrote - Arsenal Press), and a book of letters with Charles Bukowski: (Tough Company: Mystery Island Press).

Russell is also an established painter represented by Yard Dog Folk Art in Austin(www.yarddog.com) and Rainbow Man in Santa Fe (www.rainbowman.com)

In 2008 Shout Factory released 'Veteran`s Day', a double disc Anthology with 37 songs, which were remastered, from Tom`s entire recording career. Guest artists included Dave Alvin, Nanci Griffith, Iris Dement, Ian Tyson, and many more. There are also two unreleased songs included, and a twenty page booklet. In 2009 Tom co-produced, and was a featured guest, on the critically acclaimed Gretchen Peters record One To The Heart, One To The Head which included Tom`s song "Guadalupe" and songs by Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt.

Awards

1974
Woody Guthrie Song Contest: William Oliver award:
First Prize- Earl Robinson (I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill) presents.

American Song Festival Professional Country:
First Place

1987
CMA Canadian Song of the Year, Single of the Year: 'Navajo Rug' - co-written and sung by Ian Tyseon.

1992
ASCAP: Most Performed Country Song: 'Outbound Plane'

2008
Folk Alliance Song of the Year: 'Who´s Gonna Build Your Wall?'

Quotes

Acclaimed Authors Weigh in on Tom Russell's Songs:

Tom Russell is Johnny Cash, Jim Harrison and Charles Bukowski rolled into one. I feel a great affinity with Tom Russell's songs, for he is writing out of the wounded heart of America. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (A Coney Island of the Mind)

Tom Russell is an original, a brilliant songwriter with a restless curiosity and an almost violent imagination. Annie Prouxl (The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain)

Tom Russell is the last great American voice. For decades, he has been writing/performing and enriching us with mini works of pure art that make the other so called realists seem TR-lite. With Blood and Candle Smoke he has produced his masterpiece…if Guadalupe doesn't make you want to weep, you're better off with Britney and other nonsense. Every song on this pure gold album is a rare and rarer treasure. Ken Bruen (The Dramatist, The Cross etc.)

Tom Russell's HOTWALKER is the best Sam Peckinpah movie since Peckinpah died. It's a ghostly jubilee, an audacious slab of Blue America. Narrated and (mostly) sung by noir cowboy, Tom Russell… it is a singular recording, bound to be controversial--it's not only going to ruffle feathers, but leave feathers scattered on the ground. Luis Urrea, The Devil's Highway.

Tom Russell is the most original songwriter out there. Who else can bounce off of the beatitudes and the troubadors, e e cummings and Hemingway, Salinger and Tennessee Williams, Ken Kesey and Graham Greene, all with ease and humor? He packs an amazing mixture into this Great American Novel of an album: Woodstock and Vietnam, the "lie of Western history," Apache boys on a fatal bender, Cochise and Geronimo and shapeshifters, Mother Jones and black-lung miners, Santa Ana blows and Louisiana hurricanes, nearly every river in the forty-eight, down to the Brazos and the Wabash, and always the lure and danger of the border, the ambivalent magnet of Mexico. Above it all floats the incomprehensible fact and miracle of Guadalupe's grace from the titlesong's line: "Who am I to doubt these mysteries, cured in centuries of blood and candlesmoke." There is pain and death and treachery but there is also love, a love like Tom's never quite sung before, love as grace and miracle too, love to make you cry, in "Finding You." This album--story and poetry and music, at once epic and personal--comes from a bard in the truest sense of the word, from a musical storyteller with a unique and poignant voice. Ultimately I am reminded of none of those allusions listed above and think of Tom Russell as the musical equivalent of Cormac McCarthy.
Allen Josephs, University Research Professor, University of West Florida/EH-FL. Author pf, The White Wall of Spain, Ritual and Sacrafice in the Corrida