Spencer Bohren

Biography

Spencer Bohren (born Spencer Ward Bohren on 5 April 1950; died 8 June 2019) was an American roots musician, singer, songwriter, teacher, and visual artist. He played guitar, lap steel guitar, banjo, and percussion, and utilized the roots of American traditional music to write songs in blues, country, gospel and folk styles. Born into a gospel-singing family in the wind-swept prairies and Rocky Mountains of Wyoming in 1950, Bohren began singing and playing music as a young boy. At the age of fou...

Spencer Bohren (born Spencer Ward Bohren on 5 April 1950; died 8 June 2019) was an American roots musician, singer, songwriter, teacher, and visual artist. He played guitar, lap steel guitar, banjo, and percussion, and utilized the roots of American traditional music to write songs in blues, country, gospel and folk styles.

Born into a gospel-singing family in the wind-swept prairies and Rocky Mountains of Wyoming in 1950, Bohren began singing and playing music as a young boy. At the age of fourteen, inspired by the folk music he heard on the radio, Bohren picked up a guitar and within a few weeks started performing in public. The next few years found Bohren delving deeply into America’s treasure of blues, country, gospel and folk music, soaking up guitar styles and historical details from hundreds of sources, both popular and obscure. He played with several rock, country and blues bands through the sixties and seventies, always touring and performing for an endless succession of audiences throughout the western states and along the west coast. In the mid-seventies, Bohren and his wife, Marilyn, left Boulder, Colorado, and found a spiritual home in the storied music city of New Orleans, starting their family there.

New Orleans had a profound effect on Bohren, musically and personally, and he quickly became a fixture on the local music scene with weekly gigs at the now- legendary Tipitina’s and the Old Absinthe Bar on Bourbon Street. As his reputation grew in the city, Bohren once again started touring, this time primarily in the southern U.S. Before long he made the daring decision to bring his family on the road so they could be together. For seven years the Bohren family traveled while Bohren performed in countless venues all around the United States, sharing his love of America’s music with his growing audience and singing his own original songs.

In 1983, Bohren initiated a long and notable recording career with his first album, Born in a Biscayne, featuring keyboard wizard Dr. John on piano, organ and vocals. Fifteen recordings later, his most recent album, Black Water Music, features all Bohren originals. The Blues According to Hank Williams, pays homage to another of Bohren’s perennial favorites. His Long Black Line, a musical reportage of post-Katrina New Orleans, provided the soundtrack for that great city’s recovery process. He subsequently released an all-lapsteel CD. Entitled Tempered Steel, it answers the most-asked question at the sales table at concerts: Which CD has the most lapsteel?

European music lovers were quick to pick up on Bohren and his music once the recordings found their way across the Atlantic. Since 1984 he has performed over one hundred concert tours in nearly every country on the European continent.

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