Larry Kenneth Potts

An award-winning singer-songwriter based in Petaluma, California, Larry Potts has won considerable acclaim by winning and placing in numerous local, national, and international songwriting competitions, and has been invited to perform at prestigious U.S. folk festivals as well.

He began writing original music during a brush with a life-threatening illness ten years ago, and now, fully-recovered, he continues to accrue awards and gain attention from newspapers, magazines, and A&R reps from Nashville and Los Angeles.

He's won finalist positions in the John Lennon International Song Contest (1K prize) the Unisong, Great American Song Contest (multiple times) and has won the Dan Howell West Coast Songwriters Song of the Year and third place in the WCS International Song Contest, as well in recent years, the #1 winner for Folk category twice and Humor once, and many honorable mentions. He's shared soundtracks on the Artists For Literacy Album (SIBL) with the likes of Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Roseanne Cash, and David Bowie, and landed a spot on the WCS "Winners" Compilation. He's been a Kerrville New Folk and Maryhill WA. finalist, and a Tucson Folk Festival finalist twice. He won the Sebastopol Center for the Arts "Best of Show" award in that local competition, and has garnered 12 "Best Song" wins in juried WCS showcase opportunities, and 8 "Best Performances." He's also performed at the annual WCS conference evening concert, and sold out a number of performances (90+) at the Petaluma Folk Concert Series, which included luminaries like Lorin Rowan, Nina Gerber, and Steve Seskin.

As a seasoned performer, he's delighted audiences in the San Francisco Bay Area with his spirited vocals and precise delivery of songs with inventive guitar accompaniment, relying on travis-style picking and unusual strums with alternative tunings. Topics like trains, dogs, hats, adventure, the sea, soldiers, love, heartbreak, getting old, quirky frontier characters, and progressive political songs engage the listener with sharp lyrics, strong melodic hooks, and soaring choruses. Always accessible, his songs have found their way onto the air of Bay area radio and recently have garnered praise on Air America, XM radio and international podcasts.

Although his primary genre is Acoustic/Folk, he also writes country and Americana, as well as Blues, Pop, and Jazz, mixing his performances with a variety of stellar tunes. He's released two full length, fully-produced albums, "The Shape of Things to Come" (2002) and "All Things Considered" (2006) with a third on the Way, "Close to Home" due out July '09. He released a short fundraising album in 2007 entitled "Hometown Hardware" to help a local habitat-for humanity style group providing home repairs for the elderly, disabled, and disadvantaged.