It’s the typical story: boy meets girl in high school, they play in folk bands, they marry, then divorce and form a fresh guitar/accordion duo, producing songs that are being sung by amateurs and professionals all over the world. OK, perhaps it’s not typical. But then there is very little that is conventional about Lou and Peter Berryman. Frequent comparisons to Will Rogers and Dorothy Parker, and Burns & Allen notwithstanding, these two are originals, melding midwestern culture with st...
It’s the typical story: boy meets girl in high school, they play in folk bands, they marry, then divorce and form a fresh guitar/accordion duo, producing songs that are being sung by amateurs and professionals all over the world. OK, perhaps it’s not typical. But then there is very little that is conventional about Lou and Peter Berryman. Frequent comparisons to Will Rogers and Dorothy Parker, and Burns & Allen notwithstanding, these two are originals, melding midwestern culture with street smart savvy. Lou & Peter have a songwriting style that is a welcomed throwback to the days of Tin Pan Alley, where one wrote the words, the other the music, all with complete devotion to the craft. But when it comes to the craft of composing songs they have redefined subject and device and their unusual take on the world has led to creations that are unlike any others. They are admired by, not only thousands of music fans, but by some of our greatest living songwriters. In their more than 35 years together, Lou & Peter have recorded 18 albums of their original songs, and produced 3 songbooks. Such venerable and prestigious venues as Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage, The Old Town School of Music in Chicago, The Ark in Ann Arbor, New York’s Caffe Lena and Passim in Cambridge have hosted them regularly. They have performed frequently on national public radio including Minnesota’s A Prairie Home Companion, and they have played at most major folk festivals across North America. They tour throughout the year, and make their homes in Madison, Wisconsin. Originality and invention pervades the careers of these two, as, in addition to writing words and music, they run their own mom-and-pop musical enterprise, handling booking and tour arrangements, scheduling, promotion, recording, artwork, layout and record distribution themselves.
show more...
