Joe Crookston is an American folk singer

Folk Singer

Folk Singer is a 1964 album by Muddy Waters. Waters plays acoustic guitar, backed by Willie Dixon on string bass, Clifton James on drums, and Buddy Guy on acoustic guitar...

. As of 2011, he has released three albums on the Milagrito Records label: 2004's Fall Down as the Rain, 2008's Able Baker Charlie & Dog, and 2011's Darkling & the BlueBird Jubilee.

Biography

Crookston's family origins include Hungary, and his web site reports that polka

Polka

The polka is a Central European dance and also a genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia...

s and Eastern European food figured in his upbringing. Crookston was born and raised in rural Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

 and attended Kent State University

Kent State University

Kent State University is a public research university located in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university has eight campuses around the northeast Ohio region with the main campus in Kent being the largest...

. In 1987, while at college, he attended the Kent State Folk Festival and his musical interests shifted to focus on folk music, causing him to sell his electric guitar and acquire a steel stringed acoustic. Crookston lived in Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

 from 1996 until 2004. For about a year during this time he worked with troubled youth in a prison.

As of 2011 he is based in Ithaca, New York

Ithaca, New York

The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...

 and tours extensively to perform.

Awards and recognition

Crookston has been relatively successful for a self-published beginning folk singer. His first label album, Fall Down as the Rain, was selected by Performing Songwriter Magazine as one of 2004's top 12 self-produced independent recordings, and was featured on National Public Radio's All Songs Considered

All Songs Considered

All Songs Considered is a weekly online multimedia program started in January 2000 by NPR's All Things Considered director Bob Boilen. At first, the show featured information and streaming audio about the songs used as bumper music on All Things Considered. The program has turned into a source of...

, The Midnight Special

The Midnight Special (radio)

The Midnight Special is a syndicated radio show broadcast on Chicago, Illinois radio station, WFMT-FM since 1953. It is a showcase for folk and roots music from historical and contemporary artists. The show also features comedy sketches and show tunes...

 and Folkscene. Crookston was a finalist in the Mountain Stage

Mountain Stage

Mountain Stage is a two-hour music radio show, first aired in 1983, produced by WV Public Broadcasting and distributed worldwide by National Public Radio and the Voice of America's satellite radio service. Hosted by Larry Groce, the program showcases diverse music, from the traditional to modern...

 NewSong contest.

In 2007, Crookston received a Rockefeller Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...

 grant for a project called "Songs of the Finger Lakes". Emulating Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...

, he spent a year traveling in the Finger Lakes

Finger Lakes

The Finger Lakes are a pattern of lakes in the west-central section of Upstate New York in the United States. They are a popular tourist destination. The lakes are long and thin , each oriented roughly on a north-south axis. The two longest, Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake, are among the deepest in...

 region of New York state, collecting stories to turn into songs. Four songs from this project were incorporated into his second album.

In the summer of 2007, audiences at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival

Falcon Ridge Folk Festival

The Falcon Ridge Folk Festival is an American annual folk-oriented music festival and dance festival formerly held at the Long Hill Farm in Hillsdale, New York, USA. In 2006, the event moved to nearby Dodds Farm, just off Rt. 22, five miles north of the Rt. 22/Rt. 23 intersection in Hillsdale, on...

 selected him as one of the artists they most wanted to have perform at the following year's festival. In Spring 2008, Crookston and the other "Most Wanted" award winners (Anthony da Costa

Anthony da Costa

Anthony da Costa is an American singer-songwriter based in Pleasantville, NY. He performs frequently at coffeehouses, theaters, and festivals across the Northeast and beyond. He names Ryan Adams, Dan Bern, and Josh Ritter as some of his biggest songwriting influences...

, Randall Williams and Lindsay Mac

Lindsay Mac

Lindsay Mac is a singer/songwriter/cellist raised in Iowa City, Iowa and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.-Biography:Mac began playing the cello at the age of nine. She attended Dartmouth College, and her interest in becoming a classical cellist led her to study abroad at the Royal College of...

) were sent on a 23 concert promotional tour in the northeastern U.S., with venues including the Kennedy Center and Club Passim

Club Passim

Club Passim is a folk music club in the Harvard Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was opened by Joyce Kalina and Paula Kelley in 1958, when it was known as Club 47 , and changed its name to simply Passim in 1969...

.

In February 2009, his second CD, Able Baker Charlie & Dog was given the "Album of the Year" award by the International Folk Alliance in a ceremony in Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....

, indicating that it received more radio airplay than any other folk album released in 2008.

"If you can dream it, you can achieve it" -Joe Crookston.

Earlier Albums

Joe Crookston released three CDs on his own independent label. These albums were Nobody Told Me, Michaelangelo Knew, and Rounding the Square.

Fall Down as the Rain (2004)

• Fall Down as the Rain
• Don't Bring Me Flowers
• The Good Stuff
• The Sylvan Song
• Satisfied (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children's book by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of the eccentric chocolatier, Willy Wonka....
  
  )
• Mostly
• If I Say Yes
• Dance and Sway
• Blue
• Little Pink
• Poor Me / (May There Always Be Sunshine)
• Mostly (the Chaco Canyon live mix)

Able Baker Charlie & Dog (2008)

• The Logical Song
  The Logical Song
  "The Logical Song" is a hit single on Supertramp's 1979 album Breakfast in America, sung by band member Roger Hodgson. It is the band's biggest chart hit in both the United States and their native United Kingdom, and is among their most widely recognized radio hits.-Composition and Lyrics:"The...
  
  , a cover version of a Supertramp
  Supertramp
  Supertramp are a British rock band formed in 1969 under the name Daddy before renaming to Supertramp in early 1970. Though their music was initially categorised as progressive rock, they have since incorporated a combination of traditional rock and art rock into their music...
  
   song
• John Jones, from the Finger Lakes Project, about an escaped slave who relocated to Elmira, New York
  Elmira, New York
  Elmira is a city in Chemung County, New York, USA. It is the principal city of the 'Elmira, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area' which encompasses Chemung County, New York. The population was 29,200 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Chemung County.The City of Elmira is located in...
  
   and became part of the Underground Railroad
  Underground Railroad
  The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
  
  
• Wandering Shephard
• Freddy the Falcon, based on a prison inmate Crookston worked with
• Brooklyn in July
• Red Rooster in the Mash Pile, from the Finger Lakes Project, based on the story of a family's chickens getting drunk from the wastage of an illegal still during Prohibition
  Prohibition in the United States
  Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...
  
  
• Able Baker Charlie and Dog, based on his grandfather Joe Gnap's memories of working as a Seabee
  Seabee
  Seabees are members of the United States Navy construction battalions. The word Seabee is a proper noun that comes from the initials of Construction Battalion, of the United States Navy...
  
   to construct the runways on Tinian
  Tinian
  Tinian is one of the three principal islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.-Geography:Tinian is about 5 miles southwest of its sister island, Saipan, from which it is separated by the Saipan Channel. It has a land area of 39 sq.mi....
  
   island that were used to launch the atomic bomb attacks on Japan.
• Mending Walls
• Hands Metal and Wood
• Blue Tattoo, from the Finger Lakes Project, about an Auschwitz survivor explaining her tattoo
  Identification in Nazi camps
  Identification of inmates in Nazi concentration camps was performed in two ways: by special badges and by identification numbers.-Badges:...
  
   to her young daughter.
• Bird by Bird
• Red Rooster in the Mash Pile (Live in Ithaca, NY)
• The Rutabaga Curl (Live in Ithaca, NY)

Darkling & the BlueBird Jubilee (2011)

• I Sing
• Caitlin at the Window, about Caitlin Thomas
• Mercy Now, by Mary Gauthier
  Mary Gauthier
  Mary Gauthier is an American folk singer-songwriter.-Life and career:Gauthier was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Given up at birth by a mother she never knew, Gauthier was adopted by an Italian Catholic couple in Thibodaux, Louisiana...
  
  
• Good Luck John
• The Nazarene
• Darkling & the BlueBird Jubilee
• Everything Here is Good
• Wilderness Alone
• Blue, also on his 2004 album
• A Friend Like You
• To Keep You Warm
• Darkling/BlueBird (Fear & Transcend)

Unreleased

Songs Crookston has written that do not appear on any of his Milgarito albums include:

• Crooked Frame
• Ruby Red Dress and Rattlesnake's Tail
• a song based on a challenge from a friend to write a country song using the words "cheatin", "pickup truck", "beer", and "tofu"