He’s like a next door neighbor.
He’s like a little brother.
That’s the unassuming, down-to-earth, mischievous kind of guy he is.
The kind of songwriter he is is altogether different.
He is a folk songwriter, guitarist and singer, one part traditional, one part classical (in training) and one part experimental, in the finest sense.
How else to come to terms with a CD title like “soffty fasnfftof” — an acronym for “some old folk for the young folk and some new folk for the old folk”?
You can find his work here, where his favorite, “Frybread,” illustrates his love of family.
In my personal favorite, “Little Things,” he sings of lost love, something we all know a little something about — and how to move forward in spite of it, which none of us knows enough about.
I asked the multiple music prize nominee (once up for two Whalies and a Native American Music Award and now up for an Indian Summer Music Award) who his influences are. He names the usual suspects — Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and lesser known folk like Lauro Nyro and Melanie Safka. Yet, one of the strongest influences is part of his history: the year he spent living on a Navajo reservation “where my life,” he says, “was changed forever.”
He didn’t say how the Navajo changed him. Spiritual wisdom, perhaps? Clever survival instincts? Reverence for the earth and sky? Because that is what comes through in his songs.
Marco joins me at Captain’s Pizza in New London, CT, on June 8 from 5-7 p.m. to share those songs.
Join us. Meet him. He just might change you.
Pat Daddona's Songwriting Blog 