Joe Flood Featured at The Buttonwood Tree in Middletown

Playing a variety of stringed instruments, Joe Flood delivers original material in what Karen Schoemer in the New York Times called “a gravelly voice that perfectly straddles the fence between country and the blues.” His songs inhabit a place where folk and blues roots meet the craft of Tin Pan Alley and the soul of the street. They have been covered by artists as diverse as the New Orleans style jazz band The Flying Neutruinos and Alt Country Chanteuse Laura Cantrell. His individual style has made him a favored co-writer of Levon Helm of the legendary group The Band as well as producer/guitarist Eric “Roscoe” Ambel. Joe’s delivery on record and in person is straightforward, real, and engaging, a style that is a direct result of his years as a busker and journeyman musician whose survival depended on making it count every time he played or opened his mouth to sing. Joe hit the road at eighteen playing the streets of San Francisco, New Orleans, Montreal, and Boston, and seeing forty-six of the fifty states. He then headed to Europe where he honed his songwriting skills and toured the continent with, among others, the Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band, a continually evolving unit whose alumni include Joan Osborne, Madeleine Peyroux, Japanese harmonica virtuoso Chikara Tsuzuki, and such mainstays of the New York R&B scene as Mr. Thing and Ron Sunshine. While playing with the Lost Wandering, Joe wrote many of the early jazz-flavored songs that would later appear on his disc “Hotel Albert.”Performance is Saturday, July 5 at 8pm.  For tickets and more nformation visit: www.thebuttonwoodtree.org.