BIOGRAPHY

Cam Waters has spent the last twenty-odd years crisscrossing the country and honing his unique style on the stages of coffeehouses, clubs, concert halls, and festivals. Music writers across the country and in Europe consistently commend his understated, expressive singing and his simple yet inventive fingerstyle and slide guitar playing.

His literate, tradtion-based songwriting mixes seamlessly with his arrangements of rural blues, jug band songs, and American folk music. He has appeared in concert with Doc Watson, Dave Van Ronk, David Bromberg, Maria Muldaur, Greg Brown, Spider John Koerner, Roy Book Binder, Steve James, Bob Brozman, Robin and Linda Williams, and many more of acoustic music's most well-respected performers.

Waters also spent five years playing National metal-bodied guitars, singing, and stomping on a thrift store hi-hat cymbal with a jug band-influenced trio called The Sugar Kings, which also included Clint Hoover (harmonica, vocals) and Steve Sandberg (tuba). The group enjoyed critical raves and performed at several major Midwestern music festivals before disbanding in early 2002.

Waters has released a number of recordings since his first in 1988. His most recent, Central Standard, is the best studio representation to date of what he does on stage: one third original material, one third vintage blues, and one third traditional music, with a jug band version of Sam The Sham and the Pharaohs' 1966 radio gem, "Little Red Riding Hood," thrown in to complete the picture (the howling has been omitted to facilitate repeated listenings).

He was also involved in one recording project with The Sugar Kings entitled Take Your Time, Mr. Brown, which was released in early 2000 and, like Waters' solo CDs, quickly became a Minnesota Public Radio favorite.

A native of lowa's only bona fide tourist trap (Spirit Lake and its environs), Waters spent six years in Iowa City, IA, seven on the Mississippi River in Red Wing, MN, and six more in St. Paul before recently settling in Rochester, MN with his wife, Tracy. In addition to being an inveterate music addict, he has studied graphic design and guitar building, and holds a degree in elementary education.