Warren Jackson Hearne
Warren Jackson Hearne is a singer and guitarist who writes original music based in experimental aspects of Southern music traditions, which usually shuffles in a minor key. He has been crafting his style for over 20 years from the music traditions of his upbringing and the more diverse sounds he has absorbed from loving music of all kinds.
Warren was born in Oklahoma to exceptionally musical parents, Lindy and Lynda Hearne. The Hearnes started Warren on music early, enrolling him in piano lessons when he was only 3 years old. While growing up in Memphis, he banged on the drums at Ardent Studios where his dad recorded. Lynda relocated to Montana, and through Warren’s schooling in Missoula, he joined the marching band and eventually found the guitar. By fifth grade, he was playing violin, bass and contra alto clarinets, as well as tenor sax, leading him to begin composing his own songs at age 15.
In the early 2000's, he moved to Denton, TX, where he recorded several solo albums and founded the all-acoustic ensemble "Warren Jackson Hearne and the Merrie Murdre of Gloomadeers." The Gloomadeers played festivals, toured the country, and released “Rusalka Songs” followed by "Grave Ambitions" in the first decade of the new millennium. In 2012, he released "Eleutheros!" with a new band and electric instruments, morphing the sound to encompass more of the music he and his band mates love.
The Dallas Observer noted that 'everything Warren Jackson Hearne touches turns to gold', frequently nominating his solo work, projects, and collaborators for awards. This acclaim is mirrored by the Great Falls Tribune, which calls Warren Hearne “one of the most original folk musicians working today." If folk music is defined as either a type of traditional music that is passed down through families or as Mike Seeger puts it “all the music that fits between the cracks,” then Hearne is comfortable with that category.
Over the years he has shared bills with acts as diverse as Weyes Blood, Billy Joe Shaver, The Growlers, Miranda Lambert, Voodoo Organist, Michael Hearne, Charlie Parr, Ian Moore, David Dondero, Steven Fromholtz, Baby Gramps, Jimbo Mathus and the Tri-State Coalition, and many others. Hearne continues to tour the United States with plans to tour the rest of the Americas, Europe and beyond. He is working on a new solo album, an album for a brand new band, and longer pieces for theater and other multi-media projects. You can bet that all of these projects will strike the listener as different from the norm, for as the Denton Record-Chronicle says, "everything about him is authentically and uniquely him."
Solo audio
Band audio
"Cinematic musically and visually, Warren Jackson Hearne is a very singular singer/songwriter/ bandleader whose music evokes the best of Ennio Morricone and Marty Robbins, with a touch of David Lynch."
Steve Carter, Patron Magazine
"...increasingly fascinating when compared to the sort of popular local nature folkies he and his band could musically chew up and spit out..."
D Magazine
"...a southern ballad maker, crafting songs you wish you could hear in the streets of a late 1800s gold panning outpost..."
Thomas Mooney, New Slang
"...one of the most original folk musicians working today..."