Dennis Roger Reed

Singer-songwriter Dennis Roger Reed has played for more than three decades on his own and with a variety of blues, bluegrass, folk, and rock bands. Reed performed for five years as the bass player and high harmony singer with the Andy Rau Band, recording two CDs on Turquoise Records of Whitesburg, KY, and currently performs wiht Blue Mama, a roots rock band with two CDs on PlasticMeltdown Records of San Clemente, CA. Reed writes, sings, and plays guitar, mandolin and bass. He has been featured in magazines such as Acoustic Musician and Bluegrass Unlimited and was the subject of a feature article in Bass Player Magazine.

Reed has performed at Southern California clubs such as the Barn, the Coach House, Coffee Gallery Backstage, the Fret House, the Ice House, McCabes and Shade Tree Music and performed for the Anaheim Living Tradition Folk Series five times. He's opened shows for talent as varied as Marcia Ball, J.J. Cale, Bo Diddley, Fountains of Wayne, Steve Gillette, John Hammond, Doug Kershaw, Hal Ketchum, B.B. King, John Mayall, the Nashville Bluegrass Band, Little Richard, and Ian Tyson. Reed has traveled and performed throughout the US and Canadaat folk, blues, and bluegrass festivals, including the Bitter Root Bluegrass Festival in MT; Doheny Blues Festival in CA; Follows Camp in CA; High Sierra Festival in CA; Myrtle Creek Bluegrass Festival in Myrtle Creek, OR; the Prescott Folk Festival in AZ; the Napa Bluegrass Festival in CA; the Salmon Arm Bluegrass Festival in Salmon Arm, British Columbia; the San Diego Folk Festival in CA; the Tucson Folk Festival in AZ; and many others. Reed has taught songwriting and guitar/bass workshops at the Tucson Folk Festival, the Prescott Folk Festival, the Myrtle Creek Bluegrass Festival, and the San Diego Folk Festival.

Reed has done live radio concerts on KPFK in Los Angeles, KPCC in Pasadena and KSBR in Mission Viejo. His recent PlasticMeltdown solo recordings, "Little King of Dreams" and "Cowboy Blues" have both garnered airplay throughout Australia, Europe, North America and South Africa.

The Los Angeles Times John Roos stated "Reed's work is rich in American music, roaming freely among country, folk, bluegrass, swing, rock and the blues." Bluegrass Unlimited's Jon Hartley Fox said "Dennis Reed is a singer with an ironic delivery that is occasionally reminiscent of the late Steve Goodman." WORT-FM, Madison, Wisconsin, radio host Chris Powers had this to say: "Reed's music has a relaxed yet lively feel, backed by the pure clean sound of American stringed instruments. His songwriting has an immediate appeal, inventive and catchy, its message clear and plain-spoken."