Dom Flemons

As a resolute preservationist, storyteller, and instrumentalist, Dom Flemons has long set himself apart by finding forgotten folk songs and making them live again. His work has been recognized with a GRAMMY Award, Two-Time EMMY Nominee, and 2020 U.S. Artists Fellow. Dom Flemons is originally from Phoenix, Arizona and currently lives in the Chicago area with his family. He has branded the moniker The American Songster® since his repertoire of music covers over 100 years of early American popular music. Flemons is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, actor, slam poet, music scholar, historian, and record collector. He is considered an expert player on the banjo, guitar, harmonica, jug, percussion, quills, fife and rhythm bones. Flemons is the host of the American Songster Radio show on Nashville’s WSM Radio. In 2022, he was awarded a degree as a Doctor of Humane Letters from his alma mater Northern Arizona University.

Available now, Traveling Wildfire is his first new album since 2018’s Black Cowboys and second for Smithsonian Folkways, he turns to an important, overlooked voice that he’s proudly rediscovered: his own. Asked what he hopes his audience will hear in Traveling Wildfire, Flemons replies, “I hope people will be able to hear the different phases of my life through the lyrics and feel the energy that fuels my creativity within the songs. The past few years for me have been a time of deep reflection and meditation. I hope that the album will light a fire of inspiration inside everyone who experiences it.”