Lincoln Durham

Singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and neo-country blues enthusiast Lincoln Durham was born in Whitney, Texas, but raised in Itasca, Texas. Adept at music from an early age, he was playing fiddle by the time he was four, competing in fiddle contests in Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma by the time he was eight, and at the age of ten, he won the Texas State Youth Fiddle Championship. Durham switched gears in high school when he discovered electric guitar, picked up a Strat, and formed a trio that specialized in Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan covers. He took a break from music following high school to concentrate on his art and design interests, and when he returned to playing music, it was with an old Gibson acoustic, a resonator and a raw, sturdy slide guitar style that, given the dark, startling songs he was writing and his gruff vocals, made him sound like a cross between Son House and Tom Waits, or maybe a deep country blues version of Townes Van Zandt. Durham developed a one-man band sound that incorporated his neo-country blues leanings with stomp boards, guitar, mandolin, blues harps, and seemingly any instrument he chose to pick up, and his haunting, riveting live shows earned him a following. Mentored by Ray Wylie Hubbard, Durham moved to Austin, releasing a self-titled EP produced by Hubbard and George Reiff. A debut full-length, The Shovel vs. the Howling Bones, again co-produced by Hubbard and Reiff and including remastered versions of some of the songs from the EP, appeared in 2012 and quickly garnered rave reviews. A second album, Exodus of the Deemed Unrighteous, produced this time by Reiff alone, followed in 2013.