Terry Kitchen

Contemporary folk singer/songwriter Terry Kitchen, called "one of New England's finest songwriters" by Dirty Linen magazine, writes songs that are portaits of ordinary people and emotions, captured with extraordinay honesty, compassion, & humor. His latest CD is 'blues for cain & abel'.

Contemporary folksinger Terry Kitchen is a performing songwriter who’s as much a storyteller as a musician. He’s been writing songs since gradeschool as a way of making sense of himself and the world around him.

blues for cain & abel, his fifth and finest CD, follows 1997’s blanket (which was heard on over 100 folk radio programs worldwide and voted #21 best CD of that year by Folk Digest) and 1995’s I Own This Town. blues for cain & abel is called by Kitchen a collection of “songs of doubt and faith” and includes 12 new originals plus his bluesy rendition of the Beatles’ “Let It Be.”

Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Kitchen grew up on Easton, PA’s College Hill (home of Lafayette) surrounded by the music and spirit of the 1960s. As a bored teenager in the ‘70s, Terry roamed the small town streets of Findlay, Ohio (the setting for “I Own This Town”) before escaping to Los Angeles for college (Occidental) and music school (GIT). He moved to Boston and fronted the original pop/rock band LOOSE TIES in the mid 80s (whose video was played on MTV exactly once) before settling on the intimacy of acoustic music as the most natural setting for his songs.

For the past ten years Terry has performed on the New England and national coffeehouse and folk festival circuits (including Club Passim in Cambridge, Cafe Lena and Fast Folk in New York, Godfrey Daniels in Pennsylvania, and the Bluebird in Nashville, and the Falcon Ridge, Telluride and Napa folk festivals) and shared the stage with such artists as John Gorka, Cheryl Wheeler, Dan Bern, Vance Gilbert, the Nields, Susan Werner and Kristina Olsen. He was a finalist in the 1992 Falcon Ridge songwriter showcase (and a featured performer ever since) and a ’94 Telluride Troubadour.

In addition to his songwriting Kitchen has written 2 plays, a children’s novel, and collection of autobigraphical stories. He’s worked as a summer camp counselor, ice cream fountain engineer and bicycle messenger, has a brief but distinguished FBI record for anti-nuclear protests, and has finished last in a Boston Marathon.

Kitchen is a veteran of the Boston “Songos” writers group and the Kerrville songwriting school, and he leads songwriting workshops and songswaps in conjunction with performances. His songs “Stonecutter,” a faithful retelling of the Japanese folktale, and “Three If By Air,” about a Boston inventor who in 1754 made his own wings and flew, have become staples of New England folk radio, and his “Christmas Is Homeless” was recorded by Barabara Kessler on the 12 Steps of Christmas CD.

Boston has a great folk scene, & all the little towns around it have coffehouses, so I spend a lot of nights in the basements of Unitarian churches singing by candlelight & gorging on carrot cake.

Jules Shear / Warron Zevon / Leonard Cohen / John Lennon

Taylor 812 Grand Concert acoustic guitar, Alvarez classical guitar

-Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?

-I think it would be a good idea.