Caren Armstrong's Biography
Award winning Singer/Songwriter Caren Armstrong has been making "big buoyant music" since the tender age of ten years old. She was awarded top honors at the Emerging Songwriter Showcase at the Napa Valley Music Festival, and the 15th Annual Songwriting Competition at the Tucson Folk Festival, and has been a finalist at the Rocky Mt. Folk's Fest and the Wildflower Music and Arts Festival. She is a member of Folk Alliance and was a featured showcase artist at the First Annual FARWest Folk Alliance conference in October 2004. The petite redhead's soaring vocals, sophisticated guitar chops and dynamic performances have endeared her to fans nationwide.
This dangerously honest, wickedly funny, and disarmingly vulnerable songwriter is "one of those rare musicians who plays and sings music from its bones on out. Caren's work has a visceral and deeply satisfying impact, which is invariably garnished with great good humor." Steve Coyle, The Waybacks Bay Area concert promoter Russ Jennings notes: "Caren has found a deeply original voice that the listener experiences as coming from within."
Her playing style references folk, country, blues, jazz, traditional and popular music yet is distinctively her own. Running the emotional gambit from the touching "I Feel Your Love" to the sassy "Stay Away From Me", she entices her listeners to explore their own inner landscapes "with a striking efficiency and fusion of melody and lyrics." Valerie Fasimpaur, Rambles Review. Written with a sharp yet compassionate pen, Armstrong's songs transcend the self-revelatory and speak universally to the human condition in all of its humor and outrage. They are, as Grammy winner Steve Seskin put it: "Songs about real life performed with passion and precision."
Born on a hot July afternoon in Dallas, Texas, raised on the sunny beaches of Southern California, Caren Armstrong taught herself to play guitar at age ten. She was teaching at a local music store by the time she was 13 years old, along side future country stars Vince Gill and Janis Oliver of The Sweethearts of The Rodeo. While still a teenager, she sang for a trio led by West Coast jazz stalwart, the late Gene Leis.
At home in virtually any musical milieu, Armstrong has opened for The Beach Boys, Nanci Griffith, Lee Ann Womack and toured with Dan Hicks as one of the Hot Licks. She has shared the stage with the late Dave Carter and Tracy Grammar, Caroline Aiken, Shawn Mullins, Steve Seskin, Johnsmith, Ellis Paul, Laurie Lewis, Lorin Rowan, Cheryl Wheeler, Garnet Rogers, The Waybacks, Richard Shindell, Richard Berman, Don Conoscenti, Daryl Purpose, Cliff Eberhart, Erin McKeown, Kris Delmhorst, Alvin Youngblood Hart, David Maloney, Tom Prasada Rao, and the much missed Rachel Bissex.
These days Caren lives in Oakland, CA when she is home. In addition to her busy touring schedule, she has hosted monthly songwriter showcases at The Sweetwater (Mill Valley, CA) and at Strings (Oakland, CA). She is currently hosting her showcase, "Celebrating Songwriters" at the Larkspur Café Theatre in Marin County. She is in high demand as a private guitar teacher, and will be teaching at the California Coast Music Camp in July 2005. Caren has produced albums for artists such as the new acoustic string band Calavaras, art-folkie Lori B, as well as for Bay Area songwriters Rachel Garlin and Ilene Adar.
Armstrong is endorsed by Santa Cruz Guitars and by Elixir Strings. She has 3 recordings to her credit: Every New Day, Independent Girl, and The Truth Stays True, the latter two recorded and released by Armstrong's label, Wildplum Recordings (Oakland CA).
