ArtistInfo

KP Devlin

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Musician of Rock, Pop, Folk and World

At the age of five when his parents took him to see a Pete Seeger/Arlo Guthrie concert, KP Devlin’s interest in music took root. His interest grew as he began to write poetry and while in college in New York in the early 90’s got his first guitar. Revering Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, he started to write his own songs and began performing live in NYC. His first CD, Spirit of the Mule, came out in 1995. Since then he has toured the US and Australia and has received airplay in those countries as well as in Belgium, Holland, Costa Rica and other parts of the globe. In early 2014 he released his 9th CD, entitled Violescent. Of his work, listeners have said that it’s "eclectic, always compelling." He uses words not only for their meaning but because of the way they sound, completely stripped of meaning. Devlin strives to follow his own mystical vision and shies away from being constrained to one particular genre. As he says, "I just know that I hear music in my head and each record I make gets closer to sounding like that." In Violescent, to satisfy his fascination with ethnic music as well as early music, Devlin blends the two by his use of uilleann pipes, tin whistle, hurdy gurdy, viola da gamba and krumhorns. The result is distinctly Irish with a flavor of the renaissance. At the same time, he incorporates upright bass, drums and electric guitars to produce more of a rock context. In earlier recordings, he embraces a wide variety of ethnic music and instruments including Mexican (trumpets), Indian (sitar), Middle Eastern (oud), Chinese (erhu) and Greek (bouzouki). Accompanying him on Violescent are many fine musicians including Eric Bazilian (the Hooters, Joan Osborne) and Sammy Merendino (Cyndi Lauper). From that first inspiration when he was five years old, he has honed and continues to sharpen his musical sense into what is distinctly Devlin.

Genres

• Rock
• Pop
• Folk
• World
• Blues