• 5 years ago
http://www.balconytv.ie
BALCONYTV DUBLIN 28/11/2008
PRESENTED BY TOM MILLETT
World Travelling, Street Minstrel & Poet. At age 16 Felix started performing in a Chicago based sandwich company called PotBellys in Ann Arbor, MI. After graduating high school at 17 he took his mothers banjo from the wall and moved to Burlington Vermont, collecting old records and learning a few songs on the 5 string banjo. Singing at the Radio Bean in Burlington and becoming a busker on Church St. for the love of spreading old time music. At 19 after travelling down from Alaska he landed in Bellingham, Washington still busking in the streets, collecting 78 records and began working at a preschool starting a program he called: Interactive American Folk Songs for Children. That summer he went to Europe with a friend Mr. Jones where busking as a duet, singing gospel and country music they moved from Paris to Barcelona and on to Florence. Jones headed back to the US while Felix headed north to Ireland busking from Grafton St in Dublin to Shop St in Galway. After Europe he found his way back to Bellingham living on the Lummi Indian Reservation for a month, recording his first kids' album called the Leather Winged Bat. That fall he drove across the Great Northern back to Vermont for a snowy winter, where he hid in a cabin writing songs in a small community on a mountain called the Quarry Hill. He drove off the mountain to sing with the banjo in schools, hospitals, librarys, YMCAs and even a detention center all over the state. In the spring he left for a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with a group of students on spring break, where a fiddle player named Deep Sea and Felix walked with their instruments for one month on the AT hiking from North Carolina to Virginia. Once in Virginia they began hitchhiking down the old hillbilly highway route 421 for the purpose of studying the Ole Ballads making it to Berea College Kentucky, Niles Center in Lexington ending at the famous Carter Family Fold. He then went back to Burlington for the summer living in an art studio space The Bakery and recorded a solo album Take a Walk Opie. In the fall he went back to Bellingham to form a country rock band called the Muddy Boots band playing weekly gigs around western Washington. The spring of 2008 brought the debut of two new albums 'American Folk Songs for Familys' and The Muddy Boots Album titled 'How Has It Come To Be?' Since the summer of 2008 he has returned to Europe playing shows at venues around Ireland and continues to busk on Grafton St with the banjo and kazoo Travelling on.... Felix SonnyBoy Wilson:::: Instruments Played: Guitar, 5 string Banjo, Piano, Violin, Dulcimer, harmonica and kazoo. Dedicated to the street performers of the past - Bessie Smith, Leadbelly, Blind Lemon, Blind Willie Johnsondedicated to the street performers of today- musicians, magicians, puppeteers, dancers, statues & clowns.

http://www.myspace.com/felixsonnyboywilson
http://www.felixsonnyboy.com

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