Songwriters in the Round with Terry Kitchen, Mark Stepakoff, Rob Siegel

TERRY KITCHEN

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.

MARK STEPAKOFF

Boston area singer-songwriter Mark Stepakoff is widely admired on the local folk and roots music scene for his trademark mix of wry humorous material and poignant ballads, in the vein of songwriters such as Loudon Wainwright III and John Prine, to whom he has often been compared. He has won numerous songwriting awards and his songs have reached as high as Number 3 on the national folk radio airplay chart.

Mark performs frequently in the Boston area. He has headlined on a number of occasions at Cambridge's legendary Club Passim, and has also headlined or been featured at (among many other venues) Johnny D's, the Burren, Tupelo Music Hall, Nashville's Bluebird Cafe, and the Center for Arts in Natick, where he hosts the bi-weekly folk open mike. Mark has also appeared on WCVB/Channel 5's "Chronicle" program and New England Cable News' "Coffeehouse" program. Among the artists he has opened for are Bill Morrissey, Steve Forbert, Buskin & Batteau, Christine Lavin, Cheryl Wheeler, Don White, Kevin So, Geoff Bartley, Claudia Schmidt, Susie Burke & David Surrette, and the James Montgomery Band.

ROB SIEGEL

Rob Siegel is well known in Boston folk music circles as an innovative songwriter who draws from his idyllic yet stressed-out middle-class suburban existence and produces memorable, intelligent, well-crafted songs. Rob has opened for Bill Staines, Vance Gilbert, Catie Curtis, Jack Hardy, Geoff Muldaur, and others. His 2000 debut CD Shaker Chair received airplay on the WUMB radio network, and his 2004 CD Voices from the Right Brain charted on FolkDJ.

Rob took his foot off the gigging pedal in the mid-2000s in order to send his three kids to college, but now that they’re grown, he’s back. His first new CD in 14 years, A Landscape of Ghosts, was released in April 2019 at a sold-out show at Club Passim in Cambridge, and received national airplay.

Rob’s music has been described as fearless, truthful, and deeply personal yet universal. He’s been compared to John Prine, Bob Franke, and Richard Shindell, with a delivery that is engaging and intimate, wry and tender, funny and unflinchingly honest. Rob says: "Some folks who live and breathe traditional folk music think I’m too wordy and too metaphor- and reference-heavy. What I try to be is challenging – somewhere between William Faulkner and Robin Williams. I don't like songs that aren't memorable, and I try not to write them myself."

www.robsiegel.com