Beth McIntosh for Press ReleaseJanuary 1, 2005 Her first songs were penned at the age of 12.
In high school, Beth played James Taylor, Beatles, Joni Mitchell and Tom Rush songs (and original songs, too) to get into cool parties.
At Swarthmore College near Philadelphia, PA she played in the coffee houses and in her room while earning her BA in psychology and education.
In California she played in clubs and lunch houses while doing graduate work in anthropology, taking her guitar EVERYWHERE. She read Jack Keruoac, Robert Pirsig and Edward Abbey and watched Monty Python. The mighty Greyhound carried her across the nation many times, while she played her guitar and wrote more songs.
Living under a visqueen covered log, she played and wrote in Alaska on the Homer Spit while processing salmon (slimy hands on guitar strings). She hopped trains from British Columbia to Baja California, meeting the characters who would influence her songs. She travelled across the sub zero Rocky Mountain West in a VW bus with only a bunsen burner flaming away to keep the cab warm. And she kept writing.
In Jackson Hole, WY, she was drive time announcer, jazz DJ and music director at KMTN. There she listened to every conceivable form of music and met guitarists, writers and singers like Michael Hedges, Chuck Pyle, Pierce Pettis, Will Ackerman and many others.
She left home to tour with and learn from the great American blueswoman, Rory Block. The incomparable luthier Chuck Spray built her gorgeous Snake River Guitar.
She submitted songs from her demo, Original, and won the John Abercrombie Merit Based Scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. There she spent her time with William Leavitt, who developed the Berklee Method for Guitar.
Her songs won the Wyoming Performing Arts Fellowship and she began her touring career in earnest. For the next 10 years, she crisscrossed the nation many times over. She shared the stage with Leo Kottke, R. Carlos Nakai, Emmy Lou Harris, Karla Bonoff, Phil Round, Ben Winship and David Bromberg among others. She played shows for small colleges and arts councils and as well as in halls, theatres and old movie houses filled with thousands. She played clubs, festivals, radio shows, in schools, on boats and in churches.
During this period she released four full length original CD's: FIRE AND SAGE, GRIZZLIES WALKING UPRIGHT, SONGLINE and THE WILD RIDE, defining her voice as a writer strongly influenced by powerful places. Paul Schullery (author, Mountain Time) used her music in a lecture series to illustrate how music can evoke the Wild. She headlined at the Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village, WY. She performed at Kingsbury Hall and the University of Utah Fine Arts Auditorium and the Northwest Folklife Festival. She met some of the most important writers in America and performed alongside authors Doug Peacock (Wild Places, Wild Hearts Tour), Terry Tempest Williams, Charlie Craighead, Lyn Dalebout, William Kittridge and Rick Bass among others.
It was demanding, crazy and wonderful. Once, in New Hampshire at a luthier's shop, her car--filled with everything she owned (most importantly her guitar)--gently rolled into the Pemigewassett River. The luthier hopped into his canoe, paddled to the car, lifted the hatch, and saved the guitar. (The car and all its contents sunk.) The Snake River Guitar, obviously at hoome with rivers, never sounded better and remains her primary performing instrument.
Beth now performs in listening situations. Her message is a strongly hopeful one about recreating a mythology appropriate for our world that will excite, amuse and move you in extraordinary ways.
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