Michael Jerling

Acoustic guitarist, singer, and songwriter Michael Jerling blends blues with traditional and contemporary folk material, along with jazz-inflected folk and country-folk. He regards both blues and early rock & roll as legitimate folk idioms, setting him apart from many committed folk traditionalists, and he further distances himself by finding the lone singer-songwriter format accompanied only by guitar uninteresting. His guitar and vocal style draws inspiration from a wide array of players that includes Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, and Chuck Berry.

Raised in Illinois, Jerling first picked up music during high school and later enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. While there he co-managed a campus coffeehouse, an experience shared with fellow folk performer John Gorka, before eventually leaving school. Relocating from Illinois to New York City, he quickly became active in the Greenwich Village folk and coffeehouse circuit during the early 1980s and participated in the “Fast Folk” cooperative. Following his appearance on the 1992 “New Voices, New Visions” tour, he captured the “New Folk” songwriting prize at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, entering the company of earlier recipients such as Nanci Griffith, Shawn Colvin, and Lyle Lovett.

Jerling resides in upstate New York. His catalog includes the self-produced albums Blue Heartland and Top of Fool's Hill together with two Shanachie Records releases issued from Newton, New Jersey—My Evil Twin (1992) and New Suit of Clothes (1994). The Shanachie debut My Evil Twin was tracked across multiple studios with support from Peter Ostroushko, Robin and Linda Williams, and Peter Ecklund, who had previously worked with David Bromberg. Both Shanachie projects highlight Jerling’s distinctive guitar work and his command of various American-rooted styles, blues among them. His most recent recording, In Another Life, appeared on Waterbug Music in 1997.