Album Notes

"Dan Kahn is the hottest damn songwriter you've never heard of. Like Dr. John meets Leon Redbone, with the soul of John Sinclair, Kahn is not only an amazing multi-instrumentalist/playwright/poet, he also typifies the youthful ethos that reminds us that music without heart is just a bunch of noise." --Metro Times

Dan Kahn's "River Mouth" flows from a sweaty New Orleans shotgun studio, out across the country like the muddy and turbulent floodwaters illustrated on its cover. Country accordions meet broken harmonicas on the side of the road while cigar box ukuleles hop boxcars with dented tubas and honky-tonk pianolas. These are ghost songs, full of history, heartache and humor.

A compelling and versatile performer, Dan plays piano, guitar, accordion, harmonica and ukulele, frequently switching among them in live performance, as a vaudeville clown would change his hats. From country to jazz, folk to punk, klezmer to classical, his music transcends genre. Inspired by such a spectrum of artists as Tom Waits, Nina Simone, and Woody Guthrie, Dan's music is rich with irreverence, revelry, romance, revelation, social relevance and romance.

A Detroit area native, Dan grew up in theatre and creative writing. He attended the University of Michigan where he studied acting, directing, playwriting and poetry, winning the University's most prestigious writing award, the Hopwood, three times and publishing "Daylight Savings," a collection of his poems, with Ornithology Press. After graduating and traveling, he settled down in New Orleans to focus on music and theatre. There he has done everything from piano lounge gigs to bluegrass jams, punk circus parades to drag shows, union organizing to bicycle constuction. He was also successful in his production of Bertolt Brecht's Man Is Man at the ARK Theatre (One of "the best productions of the year"-Times-Picayune), for which he was actor, director, producer, composer and conductor.

Since leaving New Orleans he has lived, played music, recorded, acted, directed plays and composed theatre music in New York and Detroit and on a farm in Northern Michigan, where he helps produce a folk fest every fall. The farm is also headquarters for Earthwork Music, a collective label of Michigan indie folk artists. Info can be found at www.earthworkmusic.com