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By Barry Alfonso
When Craig Bickhardt steps onto a concert stage, he comes equipped with his trusty acoustic guitar. A side musician or two will frequently join him. He’s also accompanied by something invisible, yet ever-present: the stories of a lifetime, vividly translated into words and melody.
From the boisterous club scene of Philadelphia to the country-rock milieu of Los Angeles to the picking parlors of Nashville, Craig has immersed himself in the sights and sounds of American music. His music reflects a life lived as a rock band lead singer, a solo troubadour, a dedicated songwriter, a husband and father. Dreams, heartaches and hard-earned lessons have fed his creativity. There is no other way he could’ve written the eloquent, often bittersweet songs that have become his trademark.
“I start a lot of songs because I feel conflicted,” he explains. “I may begin from a point of darkness, but I usually end up writing towards the light because, for me, hope is the thing worth singing about. The characters in the stories I sing aren’t heroic; they’re very ordinary. But they’re reaching for something beyond themselves, and I find nobility in that.”
Craig is a singer/songwriter of the old school – you can hear echoes of such ‘60s folk revival artists as Tom Rush, Gordon Lightfoot and Eric Andersen in his work. Added to this is the melodic sophistication of a Jimmy Webb or a Paul Simon, as well as a spare but telling lyric approach. “I admire songwriters like Woody Guthrie and poets like Robert Frost because they created functional art,” he says. “Too much music today is just for the singer, not for Everyman. I think of my work as a ‘Please Touch’ museum – I want my songs to be sung until they’re worn out.”
More Last Dance Productions events here.
Christine Lavin started her professional life as a waitress/bread baker at the Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY in 1975 where she met Dave Van Ronk who encouraged her to study guitar with him in NYC. She took his advice and is now a singer/songwriter/guitarist/recording artist/author/videographer based in New York City. Her latest solo album, her 25th, ON MY WAY TO HOOTERVILLE, includes 10 new songs and one re-worked song, “Ramblin’ Waltz,” a re-telling of her time in 1975 when she was an entourage driver for the first week of Bob Dylan‘s iconic “Rolling Thunder Revue” tour.
In 2023 Christine released “The Seasons Project,” an 80-song seasonal compilation that features the work of 63 American, Canadian, British and Irish singer/songwriters. Christine assembled this compilation to help guide future historians and folklorists to authentic music being written in the last two decades of the 20th Century and the first two of the 21st Century.
In 2024 she is completing her 26th solo album, DRUM SCHOOL DROPOUT, hoping to have it completed in 2025.
In October 2024 there were 11 performances of “InunDATEd,” a 90 minute theatrical production that showcased nine of Christine’s songs by the York Theatre in NYC. There will be one more workshop production before the show is released world-wide. The most recent production starred two thrilling Broadway veterans, Kate Rockwell and Taylor Crousore
HONORS AND AWARDS: In May 2021 Christine received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from her alma mater, the State University of New York at Brockport. In an odd twist, she has a younger brother also named Chris (born on Columbus Day) who also in May 2021 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from his alma mater, Hobart/William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY.
