Tony Furtado

No genre can hold this multi-talented performer!

Tony Furtado appears in the KAFM Radio Room for a special benefit concert for the radio station on Sunday February 19 at 1 pm. Come experience great music in an intimate environment with great music lovers.

Tony’s newest album, GOLDEN, is not only loaded with impressive hits, it is also the first time the album cover features Tony’s own artwork, a sculpture of a two-headed rabbit. Tony has been recording and performing on the road for 20 years.

Tony Furtado became a banjo player in the sixth grade after doing a report on the instrument, making a rough banjo out of household items and studying the history of it. By 19, he had won a pair of National Bluegrass Banjo Championships.

As a young banjo player, Furtado found himself playing the genre of music most represented by the instrument: bluegrass. But all along, he was listening to everything including Celtic music, jazz and American folk, as well as artists like Tom Petty and Jackson Browne. At the same time, he was delving into his parents' collection of classic rock records. At the ripe age of 19, Furtado had already earned himself a reputation as a young banjo prodigy, winning two National Bluegrass Banjo Championships. Despite the press and praise as one of the most promising bluegrass artists, Furtado decided that one genre wasn’t enough for him. Creatively, he had something more to express. “I don’t think I could ever be happy staying in any one place musically,” says Tony Furtado.

Furtado then picked up the slide guitar and soon established that his dexterity transitioned with ease. Using fingers and a bottleneck, he absorbed everything he could from albums by Ry Cooder, Fred McDowell, David Lindley and Blind Willie Johnson. He was soon writing music with the slide guitar and featured it on his 1996 Rounder Records release, ROLL MY BLUES AWAY. After a move to Colorado, where he based his Tony Furtado Band (as well as Tony Furtado and The American Gypsies), Furtado started his "road-dog" life, playing as many as 250 days on the road. The music was mostly instrumental, high energy folk rock, but it wasn’t long before Furtado began writing new songs. Though his previously released banjo albums featured the vocals of talents such as Allison Krauss, Tim O'Brien and Kelly Joe Phelps, this driven artist chose to add singer to his songwriter and instrumental titles.

Looking back, he says, “I think I was kind of doomed to be a multi-genre player from the start.”

"As a banjo virtuoso, Furtado is well-known for his envelope-pushing, progressive bluegrass stylings. His picking is rapid-fire quick, sharp and clear, and puts him in the school of Béla Fleck and David Grisman." -- Katie Klingsporn, TELLURIDE DAILY PLANET

"He mixes bluegrass roots with a mainstream pop streak, easily holding the spotlight, thanks to his restrained virtuosity on acoustic and slide guitar and a warmly engaging voice reminiscent of T Bone Burnett, sans preachiness." -- PASTE MAGAZINE

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