Bill Staines

Comment

Comment by Tidewater Friends of Folk Music on February 18, 2010 at 6:02am

A TFFM performer for over 30 years. Net performance May 8t 2010

Staines started his professional career in the early 1960s in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, area. He began touring nationwide a few years later. In 1975 he won the National Yodeling Championship at the Kerrville Folk Festival. He performs about 200 times a year and has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, and The Good Evening Show. Staines' songs include "Bridges," "Crossing the Water," "Sweet Wyoming Home", "The Roseville Fair", "A Place in the Choir", "Child of Mine," and "River."

His songs have been recorded by many other artists including, Peter, Paul, & Mary, Makem and Clancy, Nanci Griffith, Mason Williams, The Highwaymen, Glenn Yarborough, Jerry Jeff Walker, Schooner Fare, Grandpa Jones, and Priscilla Herdman. Staines has recorded twenty-two of his own albums, fifteen of which are still in print as of 2005. Staines' songs have been published in four songbooks, If I Were A Word, Then I'd Be A Song; River; Music To Me: The Songs of Bill Staines, and All God's Critters Got A Place In The Choir.

Staines is left-handed and plays a right-handed guitar upside-down, with the bass strings on the bottom. Consequently, he has developed his own fingerings and picking style.