Born and raised a block from the Atlantic Ocean on the South Jersey shore, Craig Sonnenfeld grew up during the folk-boom of the 60’s and often would travel to nearby Philadelphia to see and hear artists such as Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Tom Paxton, Eric Andersen, Linda Ronstadt and many others.
Craig began to study finger-picking style guitar as a teenager with famed folk and blues artist Philadelphia Jerry Ricks. Craig played during his high school and college years at several Jersey venues and won a songwriting and performing contest at the age of 16 in Ocean City, New Jersey.
Although he continued to love and listen to music after graduating from Rutgers University, careers in teaching, the mental health field, graduate school, family, and a career in information technology (in which he still works today) took a lot of time and effort and his playing fell by the wayside.
The urge to write and perform returned in recent years and Craig began playing open-mikes and other venues in the greater Boston area, where he has made his home for his entire adult life.
Encouraged by audience responses and by other local Boston-based artists, Craig has sought to continue to write and perform and released his first independent cd ‘Reverie’ in October 2004.
Many have described Craig’s original songs as sounding like they are traditional folk songs, some influenced by old classic country music, and some influenced by old rural blues stylings.
‘American folk and rock music is an amalgam of African-American music blended with the Scotch-Irish traditional songs which influenced country music’, says Craig.
‘I love these traditions and I call them the real American classics. Whether it is Robert Johnson or Mississippi John Hurt, or Hank Williams or Woody Guthrie or Elvis or Ray Charles you listen to, all of these people were originals drawing on past traditional music and creating new embodiments of it. These were the real greats of America. There are so many talented artists on the singer-songwriter circuit today. I hope people just enjoy my own small contribution. It sure gives me a great deal of pleasure to be back writing and making music after all of these years.’