Chuck Brodsky returns to Sundilla on Thursday, April 10. Showtime at the AUUF is 7:30, and admission is $15 at the door, though advance tickets can be purchased for just $12 from Spicer’s Music, Mama Mocha’s Coffee, and online at www.sundillamusic.com. Free coffee, tea, water and food will be available, though everyone is invited to bring his or her own favorite food or beverage.
Chuck Brodsky is a storyteller, a songwriter, a troubadour, a modern day bard. His acoustic guitar and voice draw you in with genuine, down-to-earth warmth and quirky, rootsy, finely crafted songs. Chuck’s wit and irony, set to haunting melodies delivered over syncopated guitar strumming or sweet fingerpicking, tells stories of oddball and underdog characters. His songs celebrate the goodness in people, the eccentric, the holy, the profound, the courageous, the inspiring, the beautiful. They poke fun at what needs poking, and sometimes challenge what needs to be challenged. They’re sworn to tell the truth.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, a very young Chuck fell in love with the piano and despite taking lessons, still managed to teach himself to play. Years later, on his first day at university orientation, gazing out the window he was inspired by two guys playing guitars. Chuck bought a guitar and enrolled in the school of life. Influenced by Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Lowell George, John Hartford, Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Greg Brown, The Rolling Stones, and Nic Jones, Chuck began writing songs in a unique style of his own while paying homage to the traditions.
After hitch-hiking to San Francisco and performing weekly at the Tattoo Rose Café open mic, Chuck spent a few years singing for tips on the streets of Europe, and worked as a fruit picker back in the USA. He played in coffeehouses throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1980’s. Chuck won the “Emerging Songwriter Award” at the Napa Valley Folk Festival in 1992, and was warmly embraced at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas the following year. Over the past 20 years Chuck has performed at festivals and in concert all across the USA, Canada, Ireland, Denmark, England, Israel, Lithuania, Latvia, Wales, and the Shetland Islands of Scotland.
His ten albums have received worldwide critical acclaim, including Chuck’s recent release “The Baseball Ballads 2” (2013). Early CDs were produced in Atlanta by Sugarland’s Kristian Bush. His most recent four studio recordings were produced in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, by J.P. Cormier.
Chuck’s passion for our National Pastime and its colorful, off-beat cast of characters is evident in two albums devoted entirely to Baseball tales. The first white man to play in the Negro Leagues. A pitcher who threw a no-hitter while hallucinating on LSD. A catcher who was also a spy during World War II. A baser-runner who cost his team the pennant by not touching a base. The Clown Prince of Baseball (Max Patkin). And Chuck’s favorite player from childhood getting booed by hometown fans.
Chuck has performed three times at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and 18 of his celebrated Baseball story songs have been enshrined in the Hall’s sound recording library.
His beloved Philadelphia Phillies featured the song “Whitey & Harry” as well as an interview with Chuck in the documentary film about their legendary Hall of Fame player and broadcaster Richie Ashburn. Sony Pictures release, “Radio” (2003), included a cameo appearance by Chuck as well as his closing title track. “Moe Berg: The Song” can be heard in the PBS film “Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story” (2010). Kathy Mattea’s recording of his “We Are Each Other’s Angels” is the closing track for the film “Dear Mr. Goodlife” (1998). Eleven of Chuck’s songs appear in the motion picture “The Deposition” (2011). His song “Blow ‘em Away”, recorded by David Wilcox and many others, appears on the Christine Lavin produced “Laugh Tracks.”
QUOTES
“If Mark Twain were reincarnated as a musician, his name might be Chuck Brodsky
Florida Today
“One of the greatest storytelling artists we know…We dig Chuck Brodsky”
Asheville Citizen-Times
“One of the finest singer-songwriters in America. There are a lot of good ones, but when it comes down to the really great ones it boils down to a select few – he’s one of them.”
Larry Groce, Mountain Stage (National Public Radio)
If the authors John Steinbeck and Flannery O’Connor had been musicians, they’d probably sound something like Chuck Brodsky.”
John Sewell, Bristol Herald Courier, Tri-Cities.com (Bristol, TN)
“What a wonderful insightful storyteller Chuck Brodsky truly is. Nobody else comes close currently…With a deceptively gentle delivery and a preposterous arsenal of warm, disarming humor laced with cunning, caustic barbs, his striking songs take aim at a variety of social and political ills…Brodsky’s unquestionably the best folk ballad songwriter currently in America – bar none.”
Penguin Eggs (Canada)
“This guy will simply knock you out… a font of great songwriting…someone you want to get to know if you consider yourself a fan of Americana but wish a lot of the songwriting had that certain something extra. “
Midwest Record
“A world class songwriter…a musical poet moonlighting at times as a grand court jester.”
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
“Chuck Brodsky can sing, fingerpick, and strum with the best of ’em…a storyteller, and a riveting one at that…an underlying tone of warmth and compassion runs through all his carefully observed narratives.
Acoustic Guitar Magazine
“Biting satire, comic moments and the occasional lump in the throat moment are all held together with dazzling acoustic guitar work. How he’s not as famous as Dylan or Neil Young has to be one of the mysteries of the universe.”
Get Ready To Rock! Best of 2008
“A genuine troubadour with no soap box, no urban boho contentions, and a few axes to grind, Brodsky picks and grins with the best of the Woody and Ramblin’ Jack descendants.”
San Francisco Bay Guardian
“If indeed God is in the details, Chuck Brodsky has a direct line to the powers that be…character studies that are bittersweet, biting, and insightful…a low laying, loose-collared folkie with rockist irreverence and bluesy swagger: an American stranger in a familiar land. A man who’s seen it all and done it all, or close to it…[he] renders character studies that are bittersweet, biting and insightful.”
No Depression
“One of the top singer-songwriters of our time. He is certainly the most underrated. He covers so many topics and uses satire and irony better than anyone I’ve ever heard…unassuming and down to earth. Simply brilliant.”
Ron Olesko WFDU (Fairleigh Dickinson University)
“As a reviewer for decades, Brodsky’s ever burgeoning catalogue of songs (1991 – to date) has been a pleasingly wonderful reviewing experience, whether it involved shedding a tear (there have been a few), releasing a deep belly laugh (same there), or learning a lesson (there have been many)…this guy skillfully pens knockout songs with frightening regularity…Chuck’s message is simple, honest, and truly true, and his observations deserve your undivided attention…Listen to him today, tomorrow, and every day after that…you’ll come away “rich from the journey.”
Arthur Wood (FolkWax)
“Social commentary fused with dry wit and excellent acoustic guitar work.”
Arkansas Times
“Down-to-earth lyrics about ordinary folk sung in an often jocular, and always entertaining style . . . He may be compassionate, but there’s always at least a modicum of black humour somewhere along the line to keep his audiences on their toes.”
The Jerusalem Post
“Passionate observer—twister, re-maker, syncopator of the simple tale, the not-so-simple cliche.”
Village Voice
“Chuck Brodsky can take the everyday aspects of existence and bring them to life much the same way that John Prine, Bob Dylan, and Woody Guthrie could…knockout tales of genuine human triumphs…this is great stuff…even the ones that aren’t true sound like they must be when he gets through with them.”
Good Times (Santa Cruz)
“Before you know it, you got them chills running down the back of your nexk. Maybe even a lump in your throat. He’s that good.”
The Glass Eye (Lansing, MI)
“Brodsky specializes in wonderful folk songs about baseball.”
Sports Illustrated
“It’s to Brodsky’s credit that these baseball songs can appeal to people (like me) who don’t even like baseball much, and it’s because whatever subject he touches, Brodsky is able to give it powerful human interest.”
The Canton Voice (Ohio)