Joyce Woodson

Finally - here is someone who understands western music. Joyce created a project that acts like a time machine. Whew - is all I can say. Check out Joyce Woodson's newest CD chock full of timeless songs about worn out cowboys, starving miners, and dying cattle. Sadness infuses the songs and both heals and redeems the lonesome characters who walk, ride, and wail through Joyce's new-old landscapes. Truly the work of a unique mind.

Winner of the 22nd Tucson Folk Festival Songwriting Contest, she’s played throughout southern California, worked for many years at the legendary McCabe’s Guitar Shop, performed at the Napa Valley Music Festival, Kerrville Folk Festival and is a founding member of the Western Music Association in Tucson, Arizona. She is a regular performer at the Gene Autry Museum in Burbank, California and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. She enjoys touring the United States from coast-to-coast, played by invitation from the BBC to perform at the Queens Festival in Belfast, Ireland. She’s toured Wales and Great Britain as well. She’s an instructor at the bi-annual music camps SummerSongs and resides in her home town of San Juan Capistrano, California.
Writing about the disappearing California landscape and her love for the land is Woodson’s strength. Her first two albums present her original tunes in the California folk music style (think Kate Wolf). Her recent album If I Hadn’t Seen The West is pure western music. Inspired by the The Sons of the Pioneers (think cowboy) who wrote and made famous the songs, Tumbling Tumbleweeds and Cool Water, she says, “Those harmonizing voices brought the cowboy life and landscape clearly into focus for me - so much so that I felt like I was in the saddle with them and I never wanted the trail or the song to end.”
Joyce grew up on the family farm in the Capistrano Valley, riding the tractor with her Dad. Watching the fields turn from dark loam to green created a strong bond for her with the hills and valleys where she lives and gives her a strong sense of place. She’s a graduate of UC Irvine, with a degree in Education and a teaching credential. After a few months as a school teacher, Joyce knew her true calling was in music. After 12 years playing folk clubs and coffeehouses in LA and New England, she chose to move to Nashville. There she spent almost a decade writing songs, running her own publishing company, and performing her own tunes in clubs such as The Bluebird and Douglas Corner. Returning to California to care for her aging father, Joyce Woodson is now settled back in her childhood neighborhood, where she continues teaching at songwriting workshops with SummerSongs West, touring the US, and crafting her own brand of songs.