Hi. My name is Craig Korth and welcome to my story.
I was born and grew up in the northern prairie town of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My friends and I were always so excited when summer fell on a weekend there – no kidding! The neighborhood we moved to when I was 5 had just been built and there were at least 2 kids, including one bully, in every house. Life was pretty idilic. At 12, I discovered the banjo, which is kind of odd in the Great White North back in the 1970's during the mustache rock era, and there was no looking back. I also took to the acoustic guitar at the same time. There was a brief and fleeting affair with the drums in my mid-teens, but the banjo beat them down.
I was in a series of bands in my teens, including one called 4 Point Tune Up that morphed into Gopher Broke and finally Joyride. Not long after, I joined Free Beer and Chicken which turned into The River City Ramblers. Then it was off to become a member Slim Picken's which begat Jerusalem Ridge. That group lasted for 18 years and being in it was a bloody screaming gas.
During this whole time, I thought I would stave off starvation by getting a trade so I became a machinist. I apprenticed at the Alberta Research Council, making the oddest things for scientists. When I became a journeyman machinist, I moved jobs to the University of Alberta. I worked for the Alberta Laser Institute making prototype medical lasers. I did that until it hit me that the best 'real' job for a musician would be a fire-fighter. 'Heck, I thought – loads of time to practice!'
After 14 years of the most intense things I had ever experienced, I left the Edmonton Fire Department and moved to Calgary when my first daughter, the gorgeous and dreamy Ella was born. I have been a full time musician/horse trader/gadabout ever since. I have one other daughter, the feisty and beautiful Amy.
Somehow I played my cards correctly enough to win the love of a fabulous wife and musical partner, Julie Kerr. We perform our original music together. A few years a go I got together with a group with fantastic musicians and we started a funky and all original, neo-traditional band called Widow Maker. Folks seem to be liking it! Julie is a member of that group as well.
I also host and produce a weekly bluegrass program on a fantastic public radio station called CKUA for a show that is called Fire on the Mountain, broadcast Thursdays at 6 pm MST. You can listen online at www.ckua.org.
Recording music has always fascinated me and last year I recorded and produced Widow Maker's debut called The Awful Truth. At the same time I produced Julie's second solo album, Deeper Still, as well as my own second solo album, Suspicious Minds.
Recently, the wilds of the southern British Columbia interior have beckoned my family and me, and we heard the call. This summer we are moving to Nelson, on the edge of the deep and mysterious Kootney Lake. I will continue to spin a great combination of old and new bluegrass on Thursday nights for CKUA, and plan on regularly returning to the province of my birth to play music with Widow Maker and visit friends.
I collect many things, including wind up German toys and De Armond pickups, but my real passion is vintage fretted instruments and recording equipment. I buy and sell fine old guitars and banjos among other things.
My likes are fried foods, jazz music, long walks and talking in dark corners with conspiracy theorists. My dislikes are mean people, watching videos on youtube where a skateboarder dislocates a limb, out-of-money experiences, and potato salad. I would rather dislocate a limb than eat mayonnaise.
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