New CD!

Terry Kitchen is a musical storyteller, and more.

Award-winning Boston singer/songwriter Terry Kitchen pares songwriting to its most essential - a voice, a guitar, a story, a glimmer of hope.  Whether in concert or on record, Kitchen brings his songs to life with gentle wisdom, a sharp eye for detail, and unexpected humor.  His latest album We All Dream is an intimate portrait of who we are at this critical moment, and why we all need each other. As the title song says, we may be tired and beaten up, but we keep trying, and we change the world when we all dream.

While centered around Kitchen's distinctive vocals and supple guitar playing, We All Dream features talented guests including singers Susan Levine, Louise Coombe, Rebecca Lynch, Bob Vivona, and Michael Holland, and players Jackie Damsky (violin), Eric Kilburn (mandolin), Seth Connelly (Dobro) and Don Barry (upright bass).  Songs range from story songs (Loretta's Icebox, dedicated to country singer Loretta Lynn, and the caper-gone-wrong tale Crane's Ledge) to more serious songs (Older Than Yesterday, about the Uvalde school shooting) and no-illusions love songs (The Pros and Cons of Being Mine), but all, like the title tune, with a glimmer of hope.  The voices and instruments add lustre, but keep the focus squarely where it belongs: on Kitchen's razor-sharp songwriting.  Whether reaching for the sky or gazing into a mirror darkly, Kitchen's songs always go just a little farther than one expects, creating a mood where nothing is assumed and every sliver of daylight matters.

We All Dream follows Kitchen's 2021 collection Lost Songs (#13 on the national Folk-DJ chart), a covid survival project featuring unrecorded songs from all phases of Kitchen's career.  Guests on Lost Songs were recorded on Kitchen's backyard patio, with mic cables running out the window of Terry's home studio.  It includes Nickel Bag, Kitchen's wry comment on a George Floyd-type incident and how the races are treated differently by the legal system, the love song Here's to Us, and the topsy-turvy, so-bad-it's-funny Opposite Day. >>

2020's Next Time We Meet, which reached #5 on the national Folk-DJ chart (with its wry broadside Party on the Roof reaching #4 on the song chart).  The album is a celebration of life and love, especially that of Terry's longtime friend and bandmate Bill Kuhlman, who passed away from cancer in 2018.  (The cover photo shows the 2 of them at an early gig, Terry in red, Bill in blue.)  The album's title song illuminates the hard truth that we're just not programmed to accept that we only get one chance at life.  Luckily, within each life we get countless opportunities to live, love and grow.  The album also includes How Many Horses (about not learning life's lessons) and the ironic Empty Mansion.  Closing the album is an open-tuned arrangement of the Beatles' Norwegian Wood, also a nod to Kitchen's deep musical history with his childhood friend.

In 2019 Kitchen released the live/covers collection Rubies in the Dust, which reached #23 on the national Folk-DJ airplay chart, and includes live recordings of some of his best-loved songs including Life Is Hard Enough and Heaven Here on Earth as well as unique covers of Brian Wilson's In My Room, the Stones' Ruby Tuesday and Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door. Kitchen's 2017 CD The Quiet Places includes Enjoy It While It Lasts, which reached #8 most-played song on Folk-DJ.  Featuring Mara Levine on harmony, Bob Harris on mandolin, Don Barry on bass, Roger Williams on Dobro, Sam Dechenne on trumpet, and Barry Singer on clarinet, the album also includes a timely cover of the ecologically-themed Nature's Way, originally by the band Spirit.  Kitchen's 2015 album The Post-American Century (#19 on Folk-DJ) features Sequel, Kitchen's update of Paul Simon's America, and Eternity, his touching duet with Mara Levine.

In addition to his music and songwriting, Terry is an author and playwright.  COPING MECHANISMS, his first collection of short stories, is now available as an ebook from Amazon.  His debut novel NEXT BIG THING (2013), which received 4 stars from the San Francisco Book Review, is available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook.  Terry is currently working on an original musical, Once More with Hurt Feelings.

Terry Kitchen was born in New Jersey, and grew up in Easton, PA on the music of the 1960s before moving to small town Findlay, Ohio in the '70s.  He attended Occidental College in LA (with Barack Obama) and G.I.T. in Hollywood, then moved to Boston where he played in the '80s rock band Loose Ties (the basis for his novel NEXT BIG THING) before realizing that acoustic music was the most natural setting for his distinctive narrative songwriting.

For the past twenty-five years he has performed on the New England and national folk scenes at clubs and coffeehouses including Club Passim and The Nameless Coffeehouse in Massachusetts, The Postcrypt Coffeehouse and Cafe Lena in New York, Godfrey Daniels in PA and The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, and at festivals including Falcon Ridge, the South Florida Folk Festival, VT Solarfest, and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.  He's appeared in 20 states, including Texas, California and Alaska, and Canada.  He's released twelve CDs, and his songs have appeared in numerous films.  His songs have won the Mid- Atlantic and USA song contests and been runner-up in the John Lennon Song Contest and been recorded by Barbara Kessler, Mara Levine, Rebecca Lynch, Andrew Dunn, and Janet Feld. Terry also leads songwriting workshops and is the coordinator of the NSAI Boston workshop.

In addition to performing as a solo artist, Terry and New Jersey folksinger Mara Levine perform as the contemporary folk harmony duo Terry Kitchen & Mara Levine.  Together they perform an eclectic selection of Terry's songs, songs from Mara's solo recordings, and songs they love from the folk and folk-rock traditions.  They began performing together in 2008 and released a duo EP in 2012.  They've appeared together at the Troubadour Acoustic Concert Series, the Hurdy Gurdy Concert Series, Godfrey Daniels, the People's Voice Cafe, the Borderline Folk Music Club, the Rockwood Music Hall (as part of John Platt's On Your Radar series), and the Falcon Ridge and South Florida folk festivals.  For more on Terry and Mara, visit terrykitchenmaralevine.com.

Terry Kitchen is a member of the Massachusetts Cultural Council's Touring Artists Program.  The MCC, in partnership with the New England Foundation for the Arts, makes funds available to organizations that present Touring Artists.  Please click www.creativeground.org for how to apply for funding for a Terry Kitchen performance.