2025 winner of the Eddies Awards
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Award-winning singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and roots singer Deb Cavanaugh lives in the foothills of the Taconic Mountains, in upstate New York. She started making music as a toddler singing before she spoke and singing harmony and rounds by age 3. Her dad exposed her to Classical, Big Band, Blues and Jazz. As a teenager, while studying classical voice, she became enamored with rock and Motown. While studying classical music, she was given the opportunity to sing Duke Ellington’s sacred music in a church choir directed by him. During the mid-70s, Deb met her future husband and hitchhiked with him across the country to San Francisco, jumping into the world of rock and roll. After moving back and forth from coast to coast, sometimes by thumb, sometimes in a VW bus, they eventually found their way to upstate New York where they formed the band General Eclectic.
In the mid-nineties, Deb focused on traditional folk music including Old Time, folk songs, Irish dance tunes and more. She started playing the guitar when she was forty and soon moved on to mandolin and mountain dulcimer, which is now her favorite instrument. Deb has taken all those influences and blended them into her own unique style calling it psychedelic folk. Early influences included The Beatles, Motown, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and The Grateful Dead. She has six CDs: “Returning” (Cavanaugh & Kavanaugh), original songs in the folk tradition, “General Eclectic,” live recordings from her rock and roll band, “Tunes for Tots,” a five-song EP for kids, “Highway In Your Eyes,” her first solo CD of original songs and tunes accompanied by a spoken word memoir for each song, “Love Songs and Lullabies” (Deb Cavanaugh & Dandelion Wine) spans a variety of genres from reggae, calypso and spacy psychedelic rock to blues and country, and her latest release, a 5-song EP focuses more on her rock and roll roots. She currently plays shows with Dandelion Wine, a collection of musicians that changes from show to show depending on the venue. Dandelion Wine can be a duo or a full band. She has played such notable venues as Caffe Lena, where she has had three CD release concerts and The Linda, WAMC's Performing Arts Studio. Deb recently won the 2025 Capital Region Thomas Edison Awards "Folk/Traditional Artist of the Year." Don't forget to check out her memoir-based blog about those early adventures traveling around the US via thumb, VW bus and growing into the performer she is today. |
"Your vibrato is so well seasoned that it reaches inside the listener to places an unvibrato’ed note would not reach, thus exemplifying the raison d’etre of vibrato."
MacLeod Cushing (translator, freelance writer, musician) Vancouver, BC, Canada 
Follow me and order the CD on bandcamp.
Be sure to check the calendar for upcoming live shows with more being added all the time.
Re:" Highway in Your Eyes"
"Wow, I love the song. The way your voice turns at the end to the wrenching, almost crying vocal is astonishing." Anne Saunders (promoter, artistic director Falcon Ridge Folk Festival) - Sharon, CT |
