Spider John Koerner

3 Sep 2010 / Studio Theatre

American folk blues legend and Dylan influence!

"With my newly learned repertoire, I then went further up the street and dropped into the Ten O'-Clock Scholar, a Beat coffeehouse. I was looking for players with kindred spirits. The first guy I met in Minneapolis like me was sitting around in there. It was John Koerner and he also had an acoustic guitar with him. Koerner was tall and thin with a look of perpetual amusement on his face. We hit it off right away. When he spoke he was soft spoken, but when he sang he became a field holler shouter. Koerner was an exciting singer, and we began playing a lot together. I learned a lot of songs off Koerner..." (Bob Dylan, in Chronicles Vol 1, 2004)

Spider John Koerner, traditional American folk and country blues musician, rhythmic guitarist, song-crafter, singer and living legend, shapes his musical style from a solid foundation of study of the old blues masters, respect for traditional songs, and a firm command of his source material.

Now aged 71, Spider John first hit US national fame in the early 1960s as a member of folk blues trio Koerner, Ray & Glover. They made a great series of Blues, Rags & Hollers albums for Elektra which even the Beatles admitted to being fans of, and stormed events like Newport Folk Festival. With his trademark 9 and 7-string guitars, harmonica on a rack and long legs that seemed to go on forever, Koerner himself became a massively popular solo performer, a stomping, freewheeling favourite who regularly hit the UK from the mid-1960s onwards.

Somewhere in the early 1970s he briefly quit music to live in Denmark, returning later to dedicate himself to a lower-key career performing classic American traditional folk blues songs in a funky, entertaining bar-room style. Apart from a single, sold out and wildly acclaimed London club gig on a flying visit last autumn, he last toured the UK in 1981 when he appeared at Cambridge Folk Festival.

He's continued to record sporadically, solo or in the company of other UK folk legends like Ramblin' Jack Elliott. In the mid 1990s Koerner, Ray & Glover reformed following the re-issue of their early albums, recorded afresh, appeared at major North American festivals and were subject of a film documentary. Since the passing of Dave Ray in 2002, Koerner and Tony Glover still occasionally appear as a duo and just released a new album together more than 45 years after their Elektra debut.