Kevin Gordon's Page

Over the course of twenty years of writing, recording and touring, Kevin Gordon has built an impressively consistent catalog of songs, a critically-acclaimed stack of albums, and a reputation for dynamic live performances that make first-time listeners life-long fans. He is currently completing his next full-length album, to be released later this year. Among the new material is a 7-minute piece titled “Colfax”. The song has already generated some great press:

"Every now and then, someone writes a great song and fellow songwriters curse themselves for not coming up with the same idea . . . . More rare, though, is the undeniably superb song that could only have come from one mind, and from one person’s experience. Kevin Gordon’s ‘Colfax’ is that song. It clocks in at well over six minutes. It’s ostensibly about a kid in a marching band but winds up being about the heart of American darkness and the steel that it takes to move beyond. It is not yet on an album, and it will not be recorded by some famous country radio star. But we'll empty your spit-valve for life if you find us anything more stunning than ‘Colfax’ in 2009, when Gordon moves it from stage to CD."
--Peter Cooper, The Tennessean

Gordon talks about “Colfax”: “It’s based on an experience from junior high. This song, like others on the new record, draw from my memories of growing up in the land of strangeness that is northern Louisiana, during a time when this very provincial place was going thru post-civil-rights-movement growing pains with plenty of resistance from what was then a very powerful ‘old guard’. The song touches on a lot of different things, but ends up a celebration of the stoic heroism and determination of our band director.”

Other songs recorded for the new release include “Side of the Road”, a montage of film-like images and characters spanning from childhood memory to the Iraq war, and “Pecolia’s Star”, based on the life of African-American quilter Pecolia Warner, and inspired by a chapter in Local Color, a book on Mississippi folk artists by Dr. William Ferris. Look for the new release this summer or fall.

A north Louisiana native, Gordon grew up hearing music that shares the same raw emotion and spontaneity that he now puts into his own. “My folks would have people over on the weekends, and I remember hearing a lot of Jerry Lee Lewis . . . a live record on Smash, I think; and Ray Charles. Green daquiris in the blender, wet glass rings on the console, ‘Great Balls of Fire’ and ‘What’d I Say’. That music—it hit me hard. I loved it so much—that’s what drove me to want to sing, play, and write. “ A variety of musical pursuits followed: punk, rockabilly, blues, and now a Nashville-based career as a recording artist and songwriter.

Gordon’s songs have been recorded by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, Levon Helm of The Band, Ronnie Hawkins, Kate Campbell, Blackie & the Rodeo Kings, and others. The title track from his Down to the Well CD, a duet with Grammy-winner Lucinda Williams, was featured on two prominent compilations: the 2001 Oxford American Southern Music Sampler, and No Depression: What It Sounds like, Volume 1, released by Dualtone in 2004.

Gordon tours regularly throughout the U.S., and is a regular performer at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and others. Also a published poet, Gordon holds an MFA degree from the renowned University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Nashville with his wife and two children.