Introducing Chico Schwall

For the latest installment about Lane Musician Collective members, I'd like to introduce you to Chico Schwall. Folksinger, multi-instrumentalist and songpoet William "Chico" Schwall believes there IS enough to go around and we CAN figure out how to make it work.

Instrumentalist and singer, traditional musician and songwriter, his music is a genre-defying tightrope walk over Folk Music Falls. He has sung at labor rallies, traveled with Northwest Touring Theatre, played in pit bands, done "side man" gigs in the studio and on stage, directed folk music camps for kids and played gigs of every stripe in half a dozen states. 

 

Chico's newest CD, "Then What's It For?" draws on blues, gospel, mountain music, Irish tunes and international acoustic sounds and puts his original songs and tunes among gems and classics from all over.

When he's not traveling, Chico fans the flames of discontent in Eugene, Oregon and teaches Everything with Strings at the Shedd Institute for the Arts.

"When I was a kid at recess time," says Schwall, "I'd go over to the place where the older kids did the high jump and the pole vault in gym class. There were two hollow metal posts set in the ground, with holes drilled in them for the pegs they used to hold the bar at various heights. When the wind blew those posts were like two giant randomly tuned flutes, singing as the wind blew across the holes. I could sit in the sand pit and listen to them until the teacher called me in off the playground. Always changing, always beautiful. I'm surprised everybody wasn't over there listening." 

To see a video of Chico Schwall performing "Mayn Rue Plats,"click here. It was recorded in February 2009 at Folk Alliance, Memphis, Tennessee. Videography is by Tom Weber. And here's Chico singing and playing "What I Know About Love."