New Orleans, LA · blues-rock · New Orleans

Anders Osborne

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New Orleans guitar poet — swampy blues-rock with a songwriter's soul, equally at home stretching into a festival jam or landing a confessional ballad.

Anders Osborne was born in Sweden on May 4, 1966, and settled in New Orleans in the 1980s, where he has been based ever since. As a teenager he took up guitar and listened to Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell, later adopting the open D tuning he found on Mitchell's Blue. He has also pointed to Ray Charles, Van Morrison, Lowell George and Robert Johnson as vocal influences.

He works in a mix of blues, roots rock and soul, with slide and lead guitar playing that can stretch out at length, and songwriting that has often dealt directly with addiction and recovery. Early albums such as Which Way to Here, released on Okeh Records in 1995, and Living Room, a 1999 record written after a breakup, drug use and a family death, set that confessional tone.

Osborne has recorded for labels including Okeh, Shanachie, M.C. and Alligator, and worked for a stretch as a staff songwriter in Nashville. His songs have been picked up by other artists, most visibly "Watch the Wind Blow By," which topped the country charts for two weeks and sold over three million copies for Tim McGraw. He has also co-written songs for Keb' Mo's Grammy-winning album Slow Down.

Osborne is a frequent collaborator within the New Orleans scene and beyond, co-writing and producing for artists such as Tab Benoit, Mike Zito and Johnny Sansone. His 2010 album American Patchwork, co-produced with Galactic's Stanton Moore and Pepper Keenan, appeared on Alligator Records. He also plays in North Mississippi Osborne, a group formed with members of the North Mississippi Allstars, and has toured alongside Toots and the Maytals and Karl Denson's Tiny Universe.

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blues-rockNew Orleans