Tim Easton

Since emerging toward the close of the 1990s within the rising alt-country scene, the American singer/songwriter Tim Easton has built a reputation as a first-rate storyteller. Across the 2000s he cut a string of warmly crafted albums for New West Records that paired thoughtful, engaging lyricism with the sturdy traditions of folk, rock, and roots music. An itinerant existence marked by repeated world tours and periods of residence in the Midwest, Europe, and California has shaped his writing both as a solo artist and as a member of the Americana trio Easton Stagger Phillips, formed in 2008. After establishing a base in Nashville, he added further milestones with the vibrant, full-band release American Fork in 2016 and the spare, all-acoustic Paco & The Melodic Polaroids.

Born in the Canadian border town of Lewiston, New York, and raised between Tokyo, Japan, and Akron, Ohio, Easton carried a restless outlook into maturity. After attending Ohio State University and performing across the Midwest with the band Kosher Spears, he lived for several years in Europe, busking and playing clubs in Madrid, London, Paris, Prague, and other vibrant cities. Once seasoned on that international circuit, he returned to the United States and joined the alt-country group the Haynes Boys, whose sole self-titled album appeared in 1996 on New York’s Slab Records. When the band dissolved, its members scattered into separate endeavors while Easton launched his solo path.

In 1998 he tracked his debut solo album, Special 20, with Nashville session musicians and issued it on his own Heathen Records label. After signing with EMI Publishing in the fall of 1999, he moved to Los Angeles to explore film scoring and seek a label contract. Appearances at songwriter venues such as Largo and McCabe’s secured a deal with New West Records, resulting in 2001’s The Truth About Us, which featured members of Wilco as his backing band. For the rest of the decade he maintained a steady cycle of touring and recording from a base in Joshua Tree, California, delivering several acclaimed New West albums including 2003’s Break Your Mother’s Heart and 2006’s Ammunition, the latter featuring a guest appearance by Lucinda Williams. In 2008 he launched a new project with fellow songwriters Leeroy Stagger and Evan Phillips. Operating as Easton Stagger Phillips, the trio cut its first album, One for the Ditch, inside an Alaskan cabin and promoted it with shows across Alaska and Europe. Returning to solo work, Easton released the concert recording Live at Water Canyon that same year and concluded his New West period with 2009’s Porcupine. After issuing two self-released albums in 2011, In 1966 and Beat the Band, he left California for Nashville and recorded the spare early-rock and country set Not Cool for Thirty Tigers in 2013. Around the same period New West compiled the retrospective Before the Revolution: The Best of Tim Easton 1998-2011.

In 2014 another collaboration with Stagger and Phillips produced the band’s second album, the more rock-oriented Resolution Road. For his 2016 solo effort American Fork, Easton enlisted producer Patrick Damphier and a sizable studio ensemble to capture a lively, fully arranged collection. Shifting direction, he followed with the intimate all-acoustic Paco & The Melodic Polaroids in 2018, captured live and direct to lacquer at Earnest Tube Studios in Bristol, Virginia. The similarly spare 2019 release Exposition adopted an American-history theme; working with minimal equipment and handling nearly every part himself, Easton recorded it at the Okfuskee Country Historical Society in Okemah, Oklahoma, the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, and the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale, Mississippi.