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Hometown: Nashville, TN
Label: Crowville Media
Management: Self-Rising Management
Website: www.kevingordon.net
Sounds Like: Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Los Lobos
Genre: Rock
"Dude's a juke-joint professor emeritus"--Rolling Stone
Over the course of twenty years of writing, recording and touring, Kevin Gordon has built an impressively consistent catalog of songs, a critically-acclaimed stack of albums, and a reputation for dynamic live performances. His new record, Gloryland, was released in early 2012. Author Peter Guralnick said about Gloryland:
"There's nothing else around today quite like Kevin Gordon’s music. I'm a huge Kevin Gordon fan. Think of John Lee Hooker tied to the hard, imagistic poetry of William Carlos Williams, and you get a little bit of an idea. It’s something like trance blues, I suppose – but then you encounter the tangled, complex story lines of 'Colfax' or 'Trying to Get to Memphis' or 'Bus to Shreveport.' There really is no way to sum it up neatly – you just have to listen. And listen again. For the pure emotional pleasure of it. For the
unmistakable, hard-driving passion of words and music, rocking together in rhythm."
Gordon's previous release, "o Come Look at the Burning" - climbed to the Top 10 on the Americana radio chart, and continues to receive significant airplay at XM/Sirius satellite radio. The album made several year-end Top Albums lists as well. Playboy magazine says, "Kevin Gordon's 'O Come Look At The Burning' may be the least classifiable of the [Nashville Underground] lot but perhaps the best, with a strange assortment of swamp rock, blues and literate lyrics."
The opening track from the Burning record, "Watching the Sun Go Down", was recently licensed for use in the new HBO series, True Blood. The title track of Kevin's 2000 Shanachie Records release, "Down to the Well"- a duet with Lucinda Williams, was featured on both the Oxford American Music issue CD and on No Depression: What It Sounds Like, Vol. 1 compilation, released by Dualtone Records.
Gordon's songs have been recorded by Keith Richards, Levon Helm, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Irma Thomas, Webb Wilder, Kate Campbell, and others. His recordings are featured in major motion picture soundtracks and in national advertising campaigns. Raised in north Louisiana and currently based in Nashville, Kevin earned a master's degree in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
““Dude’s a juke-joint professor emeritus.” (3 1/2 star review)”
Wil Hermes - Rolling Stone
"'Gloryand' [is] an often harrowing tour of the back-roads South with scenes of burning churches, a serio-comic brawl after a ZZ Top concert in Shreveport, La., and — most memorably — the time the Klan showed up when his seventh-grade marching band performed about 90 miles from there in Colfax."
Peter Applebome - The New York Times
"Four stars… The sheer brilliance of the lyrics to Colfax/Step in Time alone justifies a top rating for the first album in seven years from this Southern-raised poet/rocker. Gordon sketches a not-so-simple portrait of a junior-high marching band on a bus trip, and every single image feels, tastes, smells and sounds absolutely true."
Jerry Shriver - USA Today
"Four stars… Vivid… [Gordon] tells these Southern-based tales so exquisitely that they resonate with his listeners. 'Gloryland' certainly stands as a glorious example of Americana songwriting."
Mike Berick - American Songwriter
“Every now and then, someone writes a great song and fellow songwriters curse themselves for not coming up with the same idea . . . more rare though, is the undeniably superb song that could only have come from one mind, and from one person's experience. Kevin Gordon's "Colfax" is that song . . . about a kid in the marching band but ends up being about the heart of American darkness and the steel that it takes to move beyond. It is not yet on an album, and it will not be recorded by some famous country radio star. But we'll empty your spit-valve for life if you find us anything more stunning . . . when Gordon moves it from stage to CD.”
Peter Cooper - The Tennessean
“Kevin Gordon's O Come Look at the Burning may be the least classifiable . . . but perhaps the best . . ."”
Leopold Froehlich - Playboy
"dirty and beautiful . . ."
Roy Kasten - No Depression
“Kevin Gordon was supposed to be a poet, and he wound up playing rock n'roll. His music isn't a career choice, it's a life.”
Grant Alden - Oxford American
