BUCKFIELD – The Oddfellow Theater will present folk singer John Gorka at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 12.
This is his third appearance at the Oddfellow Theater. Gorka’s last performance here was a quick sellout and brought in audience members from as far away as California and Nova Scotia.
Rolling Stone Magazine called him “the preeminent male singer/songwriter of the new folk movement.”
His deep baritone, mixed with his ability to write lyrics that make listeners feel the story, have brought him attention. His albums include “I Know,” “Land of the Bottom Line,” “Out of the Valley,” “Between Five and Seven,” “The Company You Keep” and the latest “Old Futures Gone.”
Gorka grew up in New Jersey. In high school, he started writing songs and singing with a church folk group. While attending Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa., he started performing in the school coffeehouse programs and the Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band, a non-traditional bluegrass, country, blues and folk band.
By the early ’80s, he was the virtual house opening act at the Godfrey Daniels coffeehouse in Pennsylvania. Many of the people he opened for there went on to open doors for him in other parts of the country, such as Nanci Griffith, Bill Morrissey, Claudia Schmidt and Jack Hardy. Griffith encouraged him to enter Kerrville Folk Festival’s New Folk Competition, which he won in 1984. Hardy invited him to record for the Fast Folk Musical Magazine and introduced him to the revitalized Greenwich Village folk scene.
The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $22 for all seats, general admission. They are available at Northeast Bank in Buckfield; or call the box office, 336-3306, Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. The Oddfellow Theater is on Route 117. FMI: go online to www.oddfellow.com.
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