Dan & Peggy Reeder

Dan Reeder, Oh Boy Records’ longest signed artist besides John Prine, is a self-sufficient artist in every aspect of his work. The cover of each one of his albums bears artwork he created himself. He’s built a majority of the instruments you hear. From guitar pickups to microphones, preamps and mixers. He’s built steel string guitars, electric guitars, banjos, drums, basses, cellos, violins, clarinets, and even a saxophone (note from Dan: “I’ll never do that again”). He constructed his own recording computers with fanless power supplies and solid-state drives to keep them quiet — and before those were around, stored the computer in an old refrigerator. Each note you hear was carefully crafted and individually manifested — the melodies, the harmonies, the instrumentation, the recording and mixing process (with the exception of a few minor mastering adjustments).

Reeder is an anomaly in more ways than one. Born in 1954 Lafayette, Louisiana, he moved to California at six, where he would eventually study art. He began his creative career at Chapman College, eventually progressing to California State Fullerton, where he met his wife. When her visa expired, Reeder, with just one semester left of university, decided to move to Nuremberg, Germany. Even though his intentions were to finish out his degree in California after a six month stay, Nuremberg won Reeder over and he never returned to school. Since his move over 30 years ago, Reeder has lived a full life as an esteemed visual artist. He got married and raised three children. He has won various visual art awards, participated in numerous exhibitions, led art seminars, and took on a visiting professorship at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (aka, Germany’s Academy of Fine Arts). He published an overview of his work in 2012, Art Pussies Fear This Book. In between all of his artistic accolades, sometime in the early 2000’s, Reeder sent a burned CD to John Prine. Prine listened — and signed Reeder to his label, Oh Boy Records.

To date, Oh Boy has released all of Reeder’s records, the albums garner glowing reviews; publications like No Depression deemed him “brilliant,” and NPR’s Fresh Air compared Reeder to Prine himself. The New Yorker’s Ben Greenman coined him as “one of the foremost outsider artists in modern folk”. His music has been featured on the Emmy award-winning show Weeds (“Work Song”) and the show Joe Pickett (“Stay Down, Man”).

The bluntness of Reeder’s lyrics are softened by his crooning; yet, even with multi-layered harmonies, his voice maintains its iconic “wisp”. Reeder’s musical intelligence is as present as ever. You’re hearing every piece of a self-made artist and his multifaceted skill set — from the soulful, smoky vocal overlay to a singular, meticulous guitar sound, but best of all, you’re hearing the ingenuity that is Dan Reeder.

Reeder understands the fragility of life and meets it with comedy and stoicism. According to Reeder, “If you take out the bullshit, most songs will be short.”, and that is what Reeder accomplishes.