STAN RIDGWAY
Welcome to stanridgway.com the official website for Stan Ridgway; songwriter, singer, film music composer, and Wall Of Voodoo mastermind.
"Music is more than just chords and notes to me, it has the ability to make pictures in the mind,” says noir troubadour and sound alchemist Stan Ridgway. “My records are designed to be seen as well as heard.”
It's been a long and influential road for the songwriter/guitarist and original Wall Of Voodoo vocalist. His darkly humorous, and richly cinematic musical tales of the ironies inside the American Dream have been compared to other classic songwriting iconoclasts like Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash and even hard boiled mystery writers like Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson, as well as twisted film makers like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. The San Francisco Chronicle said, "He conjures "Burroughs, Bukowski and Brecht," while LA Weekly has called him "the Nathaniel West of rock."
"Mr. Trouble" is Ridgway's latest solo recording from the A440 Music Group, and is his 12th solo album.
"Singer/songwriter Stan Ridgway's new solo album is a glorious hard-boiled Hollywood road movie for the ears. " THE WIRE
"Ridgway's post-Wall of Voodoo output has cemented his neo-noir rep as one of American music's greatest storytellers, the wild and wily Steinbeck of sad whiskey railroads and rusted, ramshackle American dreams." AUSTIN CHRONICLE
"Truly modern, 21st century folk music, Ridgway’s dark, tall tales often take place in the microcosmic miasma of L.A. and its outer desert, where his characters try to wrest meaning from the beautiful catastrophe of their lives." UNCUT
"Stan Ridgway is equal parts Raymond Chandler and John Huston, Johnny Cash and Rod Serling." NME
"Through the bright lights and wicked nights of Real America, Ridgway deserves the reverence of the best of fellow soul troubadours Randy Newman, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen." TOTALLY MUSIC
"Ridgway has always peeked around corners as a kind of detective "of the heart ". He misses nothing and he keeps his mouth shut. That's a hard trick for a singer," . - GREIL MARCUS
“Mixing folk, crime jazz, garage rock, electronic music, film scores, big
-band covers, country-inspired excursions,- no question, Ridgway is a restless creative spirit.” WASHINGTON POST
"Probably the most compelling portrait of American social life to appear on a rock 'n' roll record since Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska." ART FORUM
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