Steve_painting.jpg

Painting by Joe Matunis.

Steve Suffet
Old Fashioned American Folksinger

41-05 47th Street
Sunnyside, NY 11104
USA
Phone:  718-786-1533

I'm Steve Suffet and I call myself an old fashioned folksinger. I was born in 1947 and I've been singing as far back as I can remember. My Mom was a jazz singer, a pretty good one, and she played the ukulele. She couldn't stand what she called "hillbilly music," so rebel that I was, when I was about five years old I used to insist on listening to Tennessee Ernie Ford sing Sixteen Tons. Around the same time I got a harmonica as a gift and I used to go around tooting it just to annoy people. I eventually learned to play a few simple tunes, like Oh, Susannah and When the Saints Go Marching In, and that drove everyone even crazier.

My Mom showed me a few chords on the ukulele, but I really never got into it. However, when I was in high school I spent $17 and bought a Harmony Stella guitar. For another $2 I bought a copy of Jerry Silverman's Beginning the Folk Guitar, and from then on I was completely hooked. I started hanging out around the fountain in New York City's Washington Square Park on warm Sunday afternoons, and I tried to absorb everything I heard, including blues, bluegrass, ragtime, ballads, cowboy songs, hobo songs, union songs, topical-political songs, whatever. I took old Folkways records out of the library and then started buying my own. In a year or two I got my courage up to start performing at open stage nights -- hootenannies they were called then -- at various clubs and coffee house. My God, was I awful! But I certainly learned a lot, and I even met some fellow musicians whom I still know today.

Now the stuff I do I call folk music, but if you would rather call it roots music, or traditional music, or old time music, or even hillbilly music, that's OK with me. Essentially what I do is take any song I like, from whatever source, and sing it in a manner that suits me. Sometimes I change the tune a little bit, and sometimes I change the words. More and more I find that I'm making up my own songs. In fact, the well respected songwriter Jay Mankita once said, "Steve Suffet is one of the great songwriters of the decade." I certainly am not about to argue with Jay's assessment, but I'm still reluctant to think of myself as a songwriter. Old fashioned folksinger suits me just fine!


Use player above to listen to some of my songs.

For a complete listing of my upcoming performances, please click here!

Compact discs. My CDs can be ordered on-line from CD Baby. Please click here for more information. In addition, they are available in the United Kingdom from Four Dogs Music. Please click here for their website. In Israel, my CDs can be purchased from Ze'ev Verchovsky, bookseller, in the artists' village of Ein Hod. Phone 04-9841107 or click here to e-mail. Holiday special! Now through January 1, 2010, all my CDs are available from CD Baby for just $9.99 each.

Digital album. In addition to my CDs, I put together an album called Old Fashioned Folksinger which is available only as a digital download from CD Baby. It's a compilation of my favorite previously released tracks, and you get 20 songs for a mere $9.99. At that price, how can you go wrong? Click here for details.

I am proud to be a member of Local 1000,
American Federation of Musicians, AFL-CIO.

Steve's songs are about life and politics, and the music is "old fashioned" folk music,
very much in the vein of Woody Guthrie et al.
-- Mike Newman, Four Dogs Music, Felinfach, Wales.

This is the real deal: folk music as the people's entertainment,
accessible and relevant but also suitably thought-provoking where required.
-- David Kidman, Black Swan Folk Club, York, England.


I support Folk Against Fascism.

Watch me on YouTube.
Performance originally broadcast on
Joel Landy's Songs of Freedom cable TV program.
Accesses: