Quartz Recordings celebrates 30th anniversary
This year, Spencer Lewis performs in concert to honor the 30th anniversary of Quartz Recordings, the label he founded with the release of Weeding the Garden in January of 1988. This all-instrumental album is a series of luxuriant, pastoral guitar pieces with vocal tones and sparse synthesizer passages. It paved the way to produce 22 more albums of this best-selling “music that paint’s the rural landscape and quiet’s the mind” while selling over 130,000 copies. Evocative, engaging, meditative and uplifting, Lewis’ music has found its way into homes, cars, hospitals, and films. It is enjoyed by all generations who embrace it as a part of their daily lives. It is not uncommon for him to perform at a wedding of the children who listened to his music growing up, or having it played for souls in their last hours of life. Conversely, mid-wives have used it to calm mothers during birth, therapists of all kinds use it in their practices, while tourists who come to Vermont and New England use it as a soundtrack as they drive through its mountain hollows and two-lane highways.
Eventually, with the release of his second album In the Bosom of the Green Mountains, his signature sound became ‘the precision of the acoustic guitar with the sustained elegance of the violin’ and expanded into a plethora of styles to include old-time fiddling, bluegrass, folk rock, and classical folk. His artist guest list features Chas Eller, Eugene Uman, Bow Thayer, Jeff Berlin, Scott Paulson, Dan Haley, Eric Graham, Will Wright, Mark LeGrand, Brett Hoffman, and more. Today his music is found on Pandora, (only 3% of all music makes its way onto Pandora), Apple Music, Amazon, and the vast digital pipeline.
His live performances are ever more realistic as he performs by live-looping his guitars and violin, allowing him to virtually emulate the layered music on his 26 album catalog. He also performs as a folksinger-songwriter alternating between the confessional and spiritual, with ballads and anthems delivered in both an old-time vein and his own folk that rocks. As a fiddler he plays both standards and writes, “old-time fiddle tunes with melodies that are as timeless as any they emulate.” (Pamela Polston, SevenDays). Lewis recently released From Now To Now, his first vocal album in 16 years and his 22nd instrumental album Souls.
All his music, You Tube, Soundcloud and other exclusive material can be found on his web site http://www.spencerlewismusic.com.
“Vermont has a poet laureate, so why not a music laureate?
I propose Spencer Lewis” - MARIA BUTEUX READE, Edible Green Mountains (Fall/ Winter’15)
“A terrifically gifted guitarist and violinist. Lewis crafts inviting rustic soundscapes - Americana for the new-age set.” – Dan Bolles, Seven Days