Leo Kottke at the Paramount [With Idgy Idgy Vaughn and Will Sexton]

Born in Athens, Georgia in 1945, Kottke was influenced by folk and delta blues, especially the music of Mississippi John Hurt. Noise from firing practice while he served in the United States Navy Reserve picked up where an unfortunate run-in with a firecracker left off, rendering Kottke’s hearing impaired in both ears. His parents traveled so much during his childhood that Kottke describes being "raised in twelve states," which may have lent an ease to his hitchhiking days later on, during which he busked for a living. Folk music being such a labor-intensive genre in which to build a following, Kottke had to continue traveling, performing at hundreds of folk festivals internationally before achieving cult status.



Stylistically, the only feasible comparison to Kottke’s technique is to John Fahey, his mentor. But Leo Kottke is also a deeply literate soul, most apparent in his 2008 commencement address to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which granted him an honorary Doctorate in Music Performance. He chose the topic of sadness, and his speech spanned literary genres the way his musical career had incorporated bluegrass, folk, rock, jazz, and classical guitar.



He said "One access to sadness is to be too literary for one's own good, to suffer with Moby Dick in an ocean of Calvinism. You could cheer up, maybe, with Henry James: Take a dilletante's interest in melancholy and recline on somebody else's croquet lawn. Or you could go trout fishing with Hemingway, and sadness could become style: A clean, well-lighted place. Or sadness could become habit--and us mammals (or the tragic view)...smaller." Indeed, the music of Leo Kottke seems very at home alongside American icons like Hemingway, and we can hardly imagine a more delightful setting in which to enjoy it than Austin’s historic Paramount Theatre. -Rachael Sawyer