Kurt Winikka

I’ve posted lyrics to a few new songs, and a couple from way back. The new ones are all under Lyrics | Miscellaneous. They’re arranged in roughly chronological order (oldest to newest). I am particularly happy with my newest song, “Closer To Love” and am looking forward to trying it out at some open mikes in the near future.

I’ve also been writing some poetry, so maybe one of these days I’ll post some of my poems as well.

If you notice some flakiness in this website, don’t worry about it, things will recover. I’ll be moving everything to my new server this weekend (I hope). It may take a little while to get everything ironed out, get the domain name servers updated, etc. At the same time I’ll fix the pictures section. I think that’s been broken for a while.

I performed today (December 1st) at noon at the Medicine Wheel installation at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama for the World AIDS Day vigil.

The vigil began last night at midnight and continues for the 24 hours of Tuesday December 1st, World AIDS Day. I arrived around 11:45 am, just enough time to get warmed up and ready to play.

I entered the center circle and opened with John Fahey’s arrangement of “In Christ There Is No East Or West”. Then I followed it up with a new composition I wrote specifically for this event, “Long Dark Night”. I closed with “My Love the Wind”.

I quietly packed up my guitar and after chatting with a Boston Herald photographer and a few other people, headed back to work. I will try to return this evening.

This is good and important work being done in Boston. I strongly recommend that Bostonians take a little time out of their day and offer a thought, or prayer, or memory in this space for those who struggle with AIDS, friends and families of those lost to AIDS (or cancer, or war), or just for an end to needless suffering.

I’ll be hosting a house concert featuring Chuck Brodsky on Friday, October 2nd, in Cambridge at 8:00pm. $15 donation to the artist is highly suggested.

I will, of course, also be playing a couple of my songs to open the evening. A splendid and wicked fun time will be had by all.

“This down to earth musical storyteller [Chuck, of course], with his dry, barb-witted social commentary combined with a deep underlying compassion, knows that the best stories are the little things in the lives of everyday people trying to muddle through with some grace. His great gift as a writer is to infuse these stories with humanity and humor, making them resonate profoundly with his listeners. His spoken introductions to his songs can be as spellbinding as his colorful lyrics, which he brings to life with a well-travelled voice and a delivery that’s natural and conversational. His groove-oriented strumming and fingerpicking draw on influences from the mountains of western North Carolina where he now lives, and from lots of different good old traditional folk stuff of all kinds.”

“Before you know it, you got them chills running down the back of your neck. Maybe even a lump in your throat. He’s that good.” — The Glass Eye (Lansing, MI)

“The soft, wry voice of John Prine and the detailed balladry of Bob Dylan…” — Boston Globe

For details and invitation, e-mail me at kwinikka “at” yahoo “dot” com.

My new song, “Runner’s Blessing”, is now available as a digital download. You can see the lyrics here.

Runner’s Blessing (Released Mar 27th, 2009)

This song began as a writing assignment for a songwriting class I took from Bob Franke. When I brought the first draft to the second class meeting, I thought the song was already pretty close to done. Bob had other ideas. He pushed me to continue refining it for the entire month of the class. One of the take-aways from the class was that so many songwriters stop with a pretty good song. A song their friends and families might enjoy hearing. But they don’t put in that last bit of effort to make it a really good song. A song that might speak to a lot more people. By the last class meeting, I realized it still wasn’t quite done. But I knew where it had to go. This is the result.

The new CD, “Lost In Love” is now available on this website for digital downloading. These are high quality mp3 files with no DRM. Go to the music page now!