Bill Staines

by Craig HarrisThe American landscape has been a major theme for New Hampshire-based singer-songwriter Bill Staines. His songs have captured the beauty of rivers, mountains and the open space of the American west. Staines' ability to write songs that seem like traditional folksongs has made him a favorite source of new material. His original tunes, including "The Roseville Fair," "River," "Wild, Wild Heart," "Yellowstone Winds" and "A Place in the Choir (All God's Critters)," have been covered by such artists as Nanci Griffith, Jerry Jeff Walker, Grandpa Jones, Fairport Convention, Priscilla Herdman, Gordon Bok and Mason Williams.
Although his country-folk tunes reflect on the personalities, lifestyle and environment of such places as Wyoming, Colorado and Alaska, Staines hails from Lexington, Massachusetts, a small city northwest of Boston. As a youngster, Staines was heavily inspired by the folk scene in Boston and Cambridge in the early '60s. Together with a junior high school friend, Dick Curtis, and his younger brother, John, who later played with The Pousette-Dart Band, Staines formed a folk band, The Green Mountain Boys. Although the Curtis brothers preferred old timey string music and bluegrass, Staines remained tied to romantic folk ballads. Staines later organized and ran a student folk music coffeehouse, The Barn, at Lexington High School. The experience prepared him when he became the host of a weekly, open mic, hootenanny at folk music club, Club 47, in Harvard Square. Staines gained notoriety as a songwriter when Randy Burns and the Skydog band recorded his first original song, "That's the Way It's Going to Go in Time," in 1966. He released his debut album, Bag of Rainbows, the same year.
Staines initially attracted national attention with his yodeling. In 1975, he won the prestigious National Yodeling Championship at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville, Texas. His album, Miles, released the following year, included the heartfelt ballad, "Sweet Wyoming Home." A self-taught, fingerstyle, acoustic guitarist, Staines was heavily influenced by the playing of Jackie Washington, a regular performer at Club 47, and Tom Paxton. Staines uses a righthanded Martin D-18 guitar that he turns over and plays lefthanded.
Staines has been increasingly inspired by his experiences as an amateur pilot. His 1995 album, Looking for the Wind, included several aviation-themed songs including "Bill Hosie," about a builder of airplanes, and "Song for Tingmissartaq," written for Charles and Anne Morrow Lingbergh. In 1993, Staines composed "The Alaska Suite," an instrumental, fifteen tune, suite for strings and brass that was inspired by his many flights to Alaska.
Staines' song, "A Place in the Choir (All God's Critters)" has become a children's music classic. In 1993, he released an album of children's songs, The Happy Wanderer, that included "The Hound Dog Song" and "I Can Feel the Sweet Winds Blowing (Bless My Soul)" as well as interpretations of "Home on the Range," "The Gypsy Rover" and "Kookaburra." In the 1980s, Staines periodically performed with the Passim All Stars, an informal folk group that also included Mason Daring, Jeanie Stahl, Billy Novick and Guy Van Duser. Staines' songs have been featured in four songbooks -- If I Were a Word Then I'd Be a Song (Folk-Legacy, 1980), All God's Critters Got a Place in the Choir (Puffin, 1989), River (Viking, 1993) and Music to Me (Hal Leonard, 1994).