One of America's premier singer-songwriters, Tom Russell grew up in California, soaking up the West Coast hillbilly sounds of Merle Travis and Buck Owens. He started his career in the country bars of Vancouver before moving on to the progressive country music scene of Austin, Texas. (He currently resides on a "badland farm" on the El Paso-Juarez border.) One of the seminal artists of the americana movement, Tom blends country, rock, Tex-Mex, and folk sounds in finely honed character studies and gripping stories. He has written and recorded numerous classics, and created many inspired albums, like his Merle Haggard tribute, Tulare Dust, which consistently finds a spot on music writers' Best Albums lists.

An author and painter as well as a superlative songwriter, Tom's songs appear in numerous film and television soundtracks, and as covers on albums from other eminent artists such as Johnny Cash and Eliza Gilkyson. He recently released a new CD, Blood and Candle Smoke, a collection of powerful about which Tom Jurek of All Music Guide observed, "The songs are so inspired and strikingly visual that they reach a place beyond his own margins . . . It's roots music whose limbs are so knotted and twisted they are inseparable."