Recipients of the 2011 Woodstock Folk Festival Lifetime Achievement Award at 4:15 p.m.
The Festival will honor Joann and Lee Murdock with its Tenth Annual Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of their many contributions to folk music and the folk community.
Though she has never been a musician, and is shy of being on stage, Joann Murdock knew she had found her life’s work when she founded Artists of Note in 1985. It came as an epiphany, a sudden realization that being a booking agent means so much more than just being a sales person; it’s a creative endeavor in support of a performing artist’s career and artistic growth. Her art school training (in Design) gave her a first-hand understanding of the artistic process, and taught her to look for possibilities outside of the expected norms. Through blind trial and error, hard work, networking and sharing throughout the arts and folk communities, Joann slowly built an agency based on strong partnerships with artists and the organizations who support the arts.
She has been rewarded with deep and enduring friendships with performers and presenters across North America, and especially by seeing the growth in repertoire and stage craft that only comes with experience. Some of these relationships have extended over decades and nearly the entire life of her agency, including Lee Murdock, Mark Dvorak (a previous winner of the WFF Lifetime Achievement Award), Michael Smith (also a previous winner of the WFF Lifetime Achievement Award), Mike Offutt, and Shanta, but also such names as Bob Gibson, The Special Consensus, Anne Hills, GrooveLily, Kim and Reggie Harris, Lance Brown, Weavermania, David Massengill, Jan Marra, Annie Gallup, and Claudia Schmidt. Though she works with a limited and exclusive roster of folkies she has come to know very well, she has also given back to the performing arts community by sharing some of what she has learned via workshops and networking.
Noted as a fluent instrumentalist on the 6- and 12-string guitars, Lee Murdock combines ragtime, Irish, blues and folk styles with his flair for storytelling in songs. His musical influences span 15 generations. Murdock began his folk career in the Chicago area in the mid-70s, expanding his repertoire of blues and popular music as his interest in folk music and the maritime tradition grew.
Lee Murdock has uncovered a boundless body of music and stories in the Great Lakes. There is an amazing timelessness to this music. Great Lakes songs are made of hard work, hard living, ships that go down and ships that come in. Lee has been compared to the late Canadian songwriter, Stan Rogers, with a singing voice and a respect for musical traditions that is reminiscent of the great Burl Ives. His repertoire is a seamless blend of old work songs and his own original compositions and the work of songwriters such as Shel Silverstein, Woody Guthrie, and Larry Penn (another previous winner of the WFF Lifetime Achievement Award). Lee composed the music for a documentary on Unsolved Mysteries: The Shipwreck Thomas Hume, which is part of an exhibit at the Muskegon Museum of Art this year. Sing Out! Magazine said Lee did “a fine job of recreating history and holding it up to a poet’s light.” Since 1980, Lee Murdock has released a total of 16 recordings, including 2 CDs with books.
Joann and Lee co-authored the 2004 book, Lake Rhymes: Folk Songs of the Great Lakes Region, which includes an 18-song CD and historical photos and background. The book is enjoyed by adult collectors of music and maritime lore, but it also contains classroom-ready lessons which are used in schools in the U.S. and Canada. Joann has participated in CD and album design and photography for some of the books, records, and CDs.
Visit Lee and Joann Murdock at ArtistsOfNote.com and LeeMurdock.com.
