Joe Craven
Biography
Joe Craven is an American freestyle folk, world and roots music multi-instrumentalist, singer and educator. He is the Director of RiverTunes Music Camp and a Co-Director of the Wintergrass Youth Academy. He plays a wide variety of string instruments, including fiddle, mandolin, ukulele, tres, cavaquinho, balalaika, as well as percussion, including a pickling jar, a credit card, or a jawbone. Craven is a well known sight at acoustic music festivals and, for many years, was violinist and percussionist for the David Grisman Quintet. He also played percussion in the group Psychograss with fiddler Darol Anger and mandolinist Mike Marshall. Craven lists some of his influences being Jimi Hendrix, dumpster diving, Hermeto Pascoal, thrift stores, Frank Zappa, educator and aesthetician John Dewey, beachcombing, Carl Stalling, Eddie Palmieri, field recordings, Tiny Moore, Los Pleneros De Viente Uno, Darol Anger and The Horseflies. Craven has played with many notable musicians including Jerry Garcia, Stephane Grappelli, Alison Brown, Rob Ickes and David Lindley. He performs solo and in different sizes and versions of his own projects, most notably The Joe Craven Trio.
Bio from Wikipedia
Discography
Records they worked on — most-collected first.
Credited work
154 releases · 37 albums · active 1979–2025
- Performance · 439
- Other credits · 377
- Production · 9
- Engineering · 3
Studios: Dawg Studios · Mobius Music · Suite 2000 · Music Row Audio
Frequent collaborators
- Jerry Garcia
- Various
- Alison Brown
- Chris Webster (6)
- David Grisman Quintet
- Tony Furtado
- Alison Krauss
- Turtle Island String Quartet