John de Roo

Music:

Member Since: 08/10/2006
Influences:

The baby PRAYING MANTIS on my truck's flat tire.

The Triumvirate: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young

Hank Williams -- in a class by himself

Songsters: Woody Guthrie, Gordon Lightfoot, the Carter Family, Michelle Shocked, Lucinda Williams, Tom T. Hall, Slaid Cleaves, Gillian Welch, Iron and Wine

Bluesmen: Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson, Elmore James

Jazzers: Ornette Coleman, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Mingus, Art Ensemble of Chicago

Bands and Groups: the Byrds, the Band, the Troggs, the Kinks, Velvet Underground, MC5, Marine Girls, Shins, Zombies, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Monkees, Impressions, Supremes, The Clash, Tavia Control, Everly Brothers, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fairport Convention, Muzsikas, Freakwater, the Young Rossums

Lady Singers: Billie Holiday, Cyndi Lauper, Loretta Lynn, Tanya Tucker, Laura Cantrell, Neko Case, Reba Devine, Earlene Stuckey, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sade

Folkies with Soul: All singers of sad songs and melancholy Irish melodies, Chinese folk musicians, Andean folk musicians, Gypsy musicians

Composers: Charlie Ives, Erik Satie, Debussy, Beethoven, Bela Bartok

Scribes and Such: H. D. Thoreau, Basho, Rimbaud, William Blake, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Dylan Thomas, Herman Melville, Garcia Lorca, Tu Fu

Picture Makers: Dutchmen -- Vincent van Gogh, Bruegel the Elder, Rembrandt, Vermeer. Also Ivan Rabuzin

Friends who make beautiful things: John Shaw, Jake London, Jay Godfrey, Stephanie Frostad, Paul Nehring, Amelia Hansen, Janet K. Miller

Miscellaneous Heroes: Humphrey Bogart, Professor Marvel, Sam Phillips, Theodore Geisel, the Detroit Tigers, Carl Jung

“If you were a turtle, your head would glide just under the melting ice, your keen nose cutting the edge of spring. You would be singing, and you would sound like this. If you were a tall gorge standing and standing, against the heat of a billion desert days, you would be black and red with fire and iron, and you would sometimes hum a little tune, and you would sound like this. If you were the biggest freshwater lake in the world, you would see your flanks grow fuddled with foreign wastes, and you would wail for help and comfort, and you would sound like this. If you were a wily spirit biding time in a black feathered shadow until the payoff of an entirely justified joke, you would send signals with smooth curly roots, and you would sound like this.” --Miss Ruby
"Highly accomplished, elegant, melancholy songs." Utopian Turtletop