Elijah Wald – Biography

Elijah Wald has been a musician since age seven and a writer since the early 1980s. He has published over a dozen books, including Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, Jelly Roll Blues,How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music, The Mayor of MacDougal Street (Dave Van Ronk's memoir, which inspired the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis), and Dylan Goes Electric! (the basis for the movie A Complete Unknown) -- as well as books on Mexican drug ballads (Narcocorrido), insult rhyming (The Dozens), and hitchhiking (Riding with Strangers).

I have toured coast to coast in the United States numerous times, and recorded an LP, Songster, Fingerpicker, Shirtmaker (I have lots of copies left, and ship in bulk, if desired) and a CD, Street Corner Cowboys, which is much better. (There is more about both of these projects at my  music page.) I released an instructional DVD on the Bahamian guitar style of Joseph Spence, have taught at various blues and guitar camps, am currently booking shows in the US and abroad. Please let me know if you're interested in booking or hosting something.

As a musician (and to a great extent as a writer as well), my mentor was Dave Van Ronk, who gave me a year of guitar lessons and many years of staying up late at night, arguing politics and listening to records of everything from Bulgarian folk music to Bing Crosby. Dave was a brilliant and omnivorous intellect, and I did my best to capture his voice and a sample of his memories, wit and wisdom in The Mayor of MacDougal Street. I spent several years as sideman for the legendary Black string band master Howard Armstrong, played numerous gigs with Eric Von Schmidt, and studied in Lumbumbashi, Zaire, with the Congolese master Jean-Bosco Mwenda. I have a bunch of Bosco’s tunes online, and also guest on a CD by my friend Dominic Kakolobango. And I  learned a great deal from Perry Lederman, whose posthumous CD is one of my treasures, as well as from infinite records by folks like Mississippi John Hurt, Joseph Spence, Blind Willie McTell, Woody Guthrie... for more on that, check out the Songobiography.

As a writer, I have mostly concentrated on music and musicians, with occasional forays into other areas such as culture, politics and hitchhiking. My books can be found on their own pages or on the writings page, which also has links to archived articles written for various magazines and during my years with the Boston Globe. (Unfortunately, in June of 2000, the Globe presented its freelance contributors with the demand that they sign away reprint rights, in all media and forever, to everything they had ever written, with no payment of any kind. Several hundred freelancers organized in an attempt to preserve our traditional rights, but in the end the Globe won a pyrrhic victory and we went our separate ways.)

For what it's worth, I've won a bunch of writing awards, including a 2002 Grammy for the liner notes to the Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Box, an honorable mention for the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society for Escaping the Delta, and an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for The Mayor of MacDougal Street. I also took off a few years and got a PhD in ethnomusicology and sociolinguistics, and have taught at various universities.

For those wishing to delve further into my past, I have pages of information and writings by my father, George Wald, who was a major influence both on my performing and writing, and on my life in general. And for a sidelight on my personal life, I recommend a visit to the page of my wife, Sandrine Sheon, who aside from playing fine clarinet is the world's most daring paper modeler and an astonishing ceramic sculptor.