About Kieron Means

Kieron Means is a singer primarily of traditional songs but also of contemporary songs and guitar player of great merit. He has a great rapport with an audience and has an exceptional professionalism for a young performer. His voice is as smooth as silk, rich and mellow and he sings to his audience not in spite of them.

Kieron is the son of the traditional singer Sara Grey and music journalist Andrew Means, one time writer for Melody Maker. He was born in the United States and grew up in Britain gaining a great love of the music of both traditions as well as the contemporary scene. He has become a performer of traditional songs from the US and from the UK and many of the contemporary songs he sings he has written himself.

He has toured in the States and often performed with Sara Grey. In 2000 he has performed at Whitby and Wadebridge festivals where he was received with much acclaim. His first CD has received much praise with air play on Travelling Folk and Mr Anderson's Fine Tunes both on radio Scotland. An article on him will shortly be appearing in Folk Roots magazine.

 


IIn 2001 Kieron had a major UK tour which includes Sidmouth, Dartmoor , Whitby , Wadebridge , Edinburgh and, Fylde Festivals as well as a wide range of Folk Clubs in England and Scotland. He has been included in the Evolving Traditions III CD being put out by Mrs Casey's Music. He is preparing a new CD to be released on The Living Traditions Tradition Bearers series in 2002.
In the Introduction on the sleeve notes of his Tradition Bearers CD Brian Peters says "Kieron Means is a young American singer with a strikingly individual sound. His voice is high and lonesome, yet rounded, and his skilful guitar accompaniments are sparse and understated, doing just enough to support the song. His material draws from the deepest wellsprings of North American culture, from the old-time music of the Southern mountains to the blues – which he sings with startling conviction – and the work of latter-day songwriters steeped in the old traditions. Where so many young folk musicians of today dazzle us with their instrumental virtuosity or flatter our ears with their vocal purity, Means delivers a much rarer virtue: a true passion for the music he plays. He sings the songs because he loves them and, whilst his stage presence carries undoubted charisma, his work betrays no hint of artifice or pretension. Kieron Means has soul, and I can think of no greater compliment to pay to a singer of folk songs."