Jayme Stone is a producer, composer, musicmaker and instigator. As a young banjoist, Stone was obsessed with learning from both traditional players and modern masters. He quickly assimilated his endless fascinations—from learning an Ali Farka Touré song to playing free-improvised music. In his late teens, Stone spent hours at the headphone station of his local record shop listening deeply to different kinds of music. He was interested in the “heart and guts” of what he heard—the warmth and grit of folk songs, the camaraderie and risk in jazz, the dynamics of chamber music, the cyclical rhythms of West Africa—but no one genre felt quite like his own. He might have remained a listener were he not compelled to make the music he heard in his head. Stone, a “consummate team player”, has developed a process of trawling for understudied sounds in the more arcane corners of the world to see how they will land in his musical universe. His many collaborators have included Margaret Glaspy, Tim O’Brien, Bruce Molsky, Julian Lage, Dom Flemons, Bassekou Kouyate, and more. Guided by his own aesthetic compass and a desire to let his collaborators “make the sounds that only they know how to make”, he has made a surprise album every two or three years—seven total. Albums like Africa to Appalachia, a polyrhythmic tale of two continents; the Lomax Project, which re-imagines songs collected by American folklorist Alan Lomax; and most recently, Folklife, a companion album to the latter that treats old field recordings not as time capsules, but as heirloom seeds planted in modern soil. It is for this reason that Stone has also been called “a musical evangelist” who “loves using fresh approaches that get people hooked on wider musical traditions”. On AWake Stone breaks new ground: from folk musician and composer to experimental pop singer and producer. Co-produced by David Travers-Smith, AWake features Felicity Williams, Daniela Gesundheit, Jason Burger, Jason Linder, Shahzad Ismaily, and more. The album comes out on August 28, 2020. Career highlights for Stone include winning two Juno Awards, three Canadian Folk Music Awards; being featured on NPR, BBC, and the CBC; and performing thousands of concerts at places like the Lincoln and Kennedy Centers, Library of Congress, Bumbershoot, Rockygrass, Celtic Connections, Vancouver Folk Festival, Lotus Festival, Chicago World Music Festival, Montréal Jazz Festival, and more. Stone is a sought-after producer who can carefully craft the cast, atmosphere, and ethos needed to make captivating records. In addition to producing albums for other artists, he has produced, composed, or arranged over 250 tracks for a new sound collection at Facebook. For that project he’s worked with such varied artists as Trio Da Kali, Ranky Tanky, Trio Brasiliero, Julian Lage, Manik Khan, Jo Lawry, Ben Sollee, Michael Daves, Jane Bunnett & Maqueque, and many others. As an educator, Stone has taught workshops and masterclasses at universities and music camps and has been on faculty at the Silk Road Global Musician Workshop. Fellow musicians frequently seek Stone’s advice, keen to discover how he’s managed to craft a career that both hews closely to his creative vision and finds success in the world. This has resulted in the creation of two offerings: the popular workshop How to Book Yourself without an Agent and a yet-to-be-launched online course that teaches “businesscraft for musicmakers” called Compose Your Career.
