Eddie Berman

A folk singer/songwriter whose rugged tonality is tempered by warm introspection, Eddie Berman built a solid D.I.Y. career in the front half of the 2010s, self-releasing a pair of albums and touring throughout the U.S. and Europe. In addition to his own material, the Portland-based musician gained recognition for his stripped-down acoustic covers of songs by Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, and others. He signed with the Nettwerk label, which released highlights like 2019′s Frontiers and 2021′s more sonically textural Broken English.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Berman learned to play the guitar and piano and began writing songs as a teenager. Among his influences were folk icons like Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk, and that troubadour tradition can be heard in Berman’s own folk style, which favors stripped-down acoustic arrangements, fingerpicked guitar, and rough-hewn vocals. He spent some time touring the U.S. and Europe and befriended British folk star Laura Marling, with whom he duetted on a minimalist cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.” Berman debuted in 2013 with the self-released This Past Storm LP and followed up the next year with an EP, Blood & Rust, and the full-length Polyhymnia.
In 2016, the Nettwerk label signed Berman and reissued Polyhymnia nationally, expanding his audience significantly. His first proper outing for the label was 2017′s Before the Bridge, which yielded the song “Untamed,” a somber piano and guitar ballad that became a streaming hit. Surrounded by the Sound, a covers album, arrived the next year and saw Berman offering up scaled-back takes on songs by Paul Simon, Kurt Vile, and Nick Drake. Berman became more adventurous in his production on 2019′s Frontiers, a trend that continued two years later on the psychedelic-tinged Broken English. ~ Timothy Monger