Edward J. Renehan Jr. - writer & musician

About me:

Note: You are listening to VERY rough demo recordings cut at a friend's studio in western Massachusetts during November 2008 and January 2009. What we have here is basically just one take on each tune, shooting through them all rather rapidly with no backtracking for glitches. And that's cool. As a roots-oriented player, I'd prefer to sound like an old Lomax field recording rather than something more homogenized. "Service Blues" © 2009 by Ed Renehan. All rights reserved. Originally composed as a "homework assignment" for Gary Davis in the late 1960s. "One Day at a Time" © 2009 by Ed Renehan, and dedicated to my wife Christa. All rights reserved. Additional songs traditional. Many thanks to Gregg Neikirk for studio time, engineering expertise, and - most of all - friendship.


My friends know me as Ed, not Edward, even though the latter decorates the covers of my books.

Check my official web site edrenehan.com.

I'm the author of books that include Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Basic Books/Perseus, November 2007), Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons (Basic Books/Perseus, 2005), The Kennedys at War (Doubleday, 2002), The Secret Six (Crown, 1995), John Burroughs: An American Naturalist (Black Dome Press, 1992), and the much-commented e-book Mere Faith (2008).

Terrain: I live in southern coastal Rhode Island with my wife and family.

Music: During my youth I recorded with Pete Seeger for Moe Asch's Folkways Records, now Smithsonian Folkways, and also with Don McLean and others. I was literally a kid when I studied guitar with the great Gary Davis. (If you want my opinion, Jorma Kaukonen reigns as the best contemporary interpreter of Gary's tunes.) Back in ancient times, I performed at such venues as The Turning Point, Caffe Lena, Club Passim, and various folk festivals across the Northeast. March of 2008 saw me playing my first public gig in a very long time, performing with Happy and Artie Traum at WAMC Public Radio's Linda Norris Auditorium in Albany, New York. (Photos in my pics section.) I had fun.

Manic: I was diagnosed as bipolar (aka, manic depressive) in 2007. This is a progressive biochemical disorder from which I've evidently suffered for a very long time, perhaps even since adolescence, and which had reached a grave critical mass in recent years. I am currently under treatment, on meds that my doctor and I are fine-tuning, and I am slowly learning how to cope more efficiently and constructively than I have in the past. I only mention the bipolar issue because I approve of the movement of sufferers who are "outing" themselves, discussing the disorder, and thus working to remove the stigma that surrounds it.

I am a member of PEN American Center.

A number of my books are available in audio editions from Recorded Books.

Check my photostream (friends/family) on Flickr.