Caleb Klauder Country Band
Caleb Klauder’s warm sound, authentic and familiar, feels all at once contemporary and vintage, as though it’s coming from the porch next-door. Raised between Orcas Island, Washington and Little Cumberland, Georgia, Klauder took his first steps in Knoxville. If his music could invent a genre, it would be New-school Americana, infusing old standards with Northwestern attitude and spinning out modern classics made elegant with Southern charm. Klauder writes his rough-hewn lyrics among the chickens scratching in his garden in Portland, Oregon, where he works as a musician and carpenter and is raising his 13-year-old son, Elijah.
Winner of the Portland Music Awards Outstanding Achievement in Country Music in 2008, Caleb Klauder has been on tour for the last fifteen years performing with Calobo, Pig Iron, The Caleb Klauder Band, The Foghorn Stringband, and with Dirk Powell. He’s opened for acts such as JJ Cale, Iris Dement, David Bromberg, and the Del McCoury Band and has shared the stage with Tim O’Brien, Kevin Burke, The Wilders, Uncle Earl, and Justin Townes Earle. Klauder regularly collaborates with Dirk Powell, Riley Baugus, Betse Ellis, Reyna Gellert, and Justin Townes Earle.
Klauder has toured extensively with both the Foghorn Stringband and the Caleb Klauder Country Band throughout the US, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Malaysia playing a variety of stages including the Tonder Music Festival, the Newport Folk Festival, the Rainforest World Music Festival, the Chicago Folk and Roots Festival, Pick-a-thon Roots Music Festival, The Seattle Folk Life Festival, The Bristol Rhythm and Roots Festival, Bumbershoot and the ROMP Festival.
Audio
From “Western Country” (2010)
Buy at CD Baby
From “Dangerous Mes and Poisonous Yous” (2007)
Buy at CD Baby
Videos
Check out these hot videos of The Caleb Klauder Country Band in the studio with Joel Savoy and Jesse Lege at KEXP on Greg Vandy’s Roadhouse July, 2010
Caleb Klauder Country Band – Worn Out Shoes (Live on KEXP)
Caleb Klauder Country Band – Hole In My Heart (Live on KEXP)
Joel Savoy and the Caleb Klauder Country Band – Ouvrez La Porte (Live on KEXP)
Joel Savoy and the Caleb Klauder Country Band – La Valse D’Orphelin (Live on KEXP)
The Scuttlebutt
The name Caleb Klauder may be more familiar to devotees of old-time music than those of the country persuasion, largely due to his involvement in the venerable Foghorn String Band. Klauder’s musical alter ego happens to be old-time country with an acoustic-oriented, lo-fi sound that falls somewhere between 30-40’s stalwarts The Delmore Brothers and early 50s honky tonk with its cloppy backbeats. On this mostly original affair [Western Country, Hearth Music, 2010], Klauder doesn’t play up the hot solos from steel/electric guitarist Paul Brainard, though there are plenty of those. Instead, what’s really on tap here are Klauder’s vocals, which aren’t polished like a natural crooner’s, but are unvarnished enough to have plenty of character. The end result is a better lyrical focus, hence making this as real as it gets. -Dan Willging, Driftwood Magazine, Nov 25, 2010
Sometimes the best musicians, and the best people you will ever meet in music, are not the ones that stand at stage center, but the ones who spend the majority of the time standing to the right or left … with a selfless attitude, a willingness to do whatever it takes to make good music great … The first time I saw Caleb was in 2003, when the only other outlets for resurgent traditional country were folks like Wayne Hancock, BR549, and Hank Williams III. I would see him again in 2009, picking mandolin for Justin Townes Earle. Musicians like Caleb Klauder will never spend enough time promoting themselves. They’re too much about the music, and the community that music builds. And so it is up to us, the fans and the writers and podcasters to help spread the word, so that Caleb Klauder’s music can find a wider audience. Think of it as a music version of affirmative action, where certain artists are given extra support to compensate for their sometimes selfless approach in a medium dominated by egos. – Saving Country Music, October 19, 2011
Here’s to hoping that the country folk revival of the new millennium goes on for a long time. … Honky-tonk is, on Western Country, explored as a smooth style of easy-rolling music, complete with old-time and bluegrass and the spirit of the first half of the twentieth century. Klauder’s incorporation of a extra vocals by bandmates Stephen Lind and Sophie Vitells works perfectly to take us back to musical times we all know hold the key to the perfect country sound. – Sophia Strosberg, John Shelton Ivany’s Top 21, Nov. 22,2010
At its best, Bumbershoot is a source of new discoveries and an encounter with longtime favorites. This year there were several discoveries for me on Saturday. First, there was young Caleb Klauder, a baby-faced Portland country musician who rekindles the spirit of the old-time honky-tonk. Raised in Georgia by way of Orcas Island, Klauder is a fine mandolin picker, and his band has those classic pedal steel guitar and fiddle riffs down. Klauder’s pleasingly reedy vocals channel the Hank Williams generation, and his repertoire — sweet-tempered tunes of his own, and classics like Dolly Parton’s “Rockin’ Years” — is mighty tasty.” – Misha Berson, Seattle Times (Sep. 3, 2011)
The clean, country sounds of the Caleb Klauder County Band carried us through the noon hour at the Mural Stage at Bumbershoot. The straight-ahead old-timey five-piece from Portland played to an older, mellow crowd, and a sizable contingent of whirling toddlers and carefree adults. Klauder’s high and lonesome raspy twang belted out Dolly Parton (“Rockin’ Years”) and George Jones (“Lonesome Me”) covers along with songs of his own, and the band leader alternated between a string-popping mandolin and acoustic guitar through the set.” – Gwendolyn Elliott, Seattle Weekly’s Reverb (Sep. 4 2011)
I just can’t get over how well he channels the spirit of some of the early country acts, while still making his songs relevant to our times. Calvin Powers, Taproot Radio
Though we’re about as far west as can be, Portland doesn’t have a lot of go-to honky tonk music. Caleb Klauder is the exception: He plays top-shelf classic honky tonk (and occasionally, bluegrass) with the pained enthusiasm of a grizzled Southerner twice his age. On the brand-new Western Country, Klauder tackles canon staples (like the Red Hayes/Jack Rhodes anti-envy rant “Satisfied Mind” and the aching “What Was I Supposed to do?”) with the same passion as his originals, and the line between them pretty much evaporates. Few voices in modern country carry the world-weary authenticity (think Hank Williams Sr., Charlie Monroe, Dwight Yoakam) that Klauder puts forward so effortlessly. Casey Jarman Willamette Week
Check out the review of Caleb’s new CD “Western Country” on KEXP.
Caleb Klauder is one of my favorite mandolin players. He just stands straight and delivers true tone and time. There’s no pushing or trying to prove anything, but the groove lifts you every time. Caleb’s singing and song writing come from that same casually essential place. Call it “old time stream lined”. It’ll get you down the road. Tim O’Brien
If this were somewhere between 1927 and 1949, Caleb Klauder would be a radio star. Dangerous Mes and Poisonous Yous is the mark of a budding Americana master. The Oregonian
Caleb Klauder turns out to be a singer-songwriter with a rich country-flavored voice that sounds like Townes Van Zandt one minute and Doug Sahm the next. His honkytonk ditties could easily coax half the bar into that city cowboy shuffling-waltz thing they call dancing these days. Willamette Week
Press Materials
All press materials can be found at calebklauder.com/press-kit/