Anthony D'Amato

"Brilliant." - BBC

"There’s a timeless quality, like an old folk tune reincarnated for another life." - Twangville

"Devastatingly beautiful" - For Folk's Sake

New York Post's 'Top 209 Songs of 2009'

"#26 'For Emily, On New Year's Day' - Anthony D'Amato

Acoustic tranquility."
- New York Post

Warm and magnetic...a modern folk gem - NPR

With its lilting and highly melodic style, the song 'Holy War' is a musical descendant to Neil Young's 'Pocahontas'...There's a timelessness to this song that makes it so compelling."
- WXPN (Philadelhipa NPR)

Like any artist, Anthony D’Amato loves to tip his cap to his influences. His melodies call to mind old folk songs, and he even wrote his graduate thesis on Bruce Springsteen. On D’Amato’s new track “Hank Williams Tune,” he tells the story of someone who can only communicate through music, cleverly alluding to lyrics and other artists that made an impact on him over the years.

D’Amato’s 2010 debut Down Wires garnered a bunch of buzz and even earned the twentysomething a nod from World Cafe’s “Next” series. That debut was largely a spare affair, with D’Amato recording much of the album in his Princeton dorm room. Between his studies, he toured with the likes of Pete Yorn and Ben Kweller.

On May 29, D’Amato will release his follow-up, titled Paper Back Bones. It was recorded with a lot of help from his friends, including violinist Amanda Shires and members from Midlake, Crooked Still, and Ben Kweller’s band. The aforementioned “Hank Williams Tune” also makes an appearance on the record. With Brittany Haas from Crooked Still on fiddle, D’Amato weaves his story on acoustic guitar and harmonica. He makes a connection between Leonard Cohen’s poems, Jack Kerouac’s novels, the Rolling Stones’ wild horses, and Hank Williams’s tunes, drawing inspiration from a half-century of art to create something deeply personal. - KUT (Austin NPR)

Singer/songwriter Anthony D'Amato has an exceptional gift for crafting stories. A vivid lyricist, D'Amato captures soulful, beautiful portraits in his music. His songs are both classic and current, rooted in Americana and folk, the closest modern comparisons that come to mind are Jeff Tweedy and Rufus Wainwright, with echoes of Harry Nilsson, Bob Dylan and George Harrison. A DIYer who recorded his albums alone in a Princeton University dorm room for several years, D'Amato has garnered impressive critical praise from NPR, The New York Times, and World Cafe. His latest Paper Back Bones is his finest album yet. - Huffington Post

Of the myriad of artists I’ve profiled for MOKB, few, if any, are blessed with the undistilled talent of Anthony D’Amato. - My Old Kentucky Blog

Anthony D'Amato is a talented multi-instrumentalist with a self-assured, deceptively mature sound. After hearing this week's "World Cafe: Next," you might be surprised to learn that he's is just 22, but you won't be surprised to learn that he wrote his thesis on Bruce Springsteen. After graduating from Princeton a little over a year ago, the young singer-songwriter is already gaining recognition as a talented young voice in the Americana music scene.

D'Amato single-handedly wrote, recorded and produced his latest album, Down Wires, in his college dorm room. His efforts paid off, landing him positive critical regard and a string of dates opening for Pete Yorn and Ben Kweller on their recent tour of the U.S.

Hear two songs from Down Wires on this week's "World Cafe: Next." - NPR's World Cafe

In his short career, 22-year-old Anthony D’Amato has performed onstage with Bruce Springsteen and earned recognition from The New York Post, who listed his song “For Emily, On New Year’s Day” #26 on their Top 209 Songs of 2009 list, singling it out for it’s “acoustic tranquility.”

For his new album, Down Wires, recorded in the same Princeton dorm that F. Scott Fitzgerald once lived in, D’Amato roped in members of Natalie Merchant’s and Ben Kweller’s bands, as well as Canadian singer-songwriter Sam Roberts. - American Songwriter

Sounds like [Broken Social Scene's] Jason Collett - AOL Spinner

Sometimes simplicity outshines complexity...D'Amato is definitely one to watch. - Twangville

The attention is indeed warranted...D’Amato seems to be on the fast track to a stellar career. - No Depression

The attention is indeed warranted...D’Amato seems to be on the fast track to a stellar career. - No Depression

Sure to be compared with another rising star among singer/songwriters – The Tallest Man on Earth - KUT (Austin NPR)

Unforgettable tunes - Paste Magazine

SOME aspiring singer/songwriters trying to jump-start their careers send demos to record label executives. Anthony D’Amato followed a more original script: As a student at Princeton University, he slipped a hand-burned CD of his music under the office door of the poet Paul Muldoon, who teaches at the university.

“I wanted to get better, and I knew he was somebody who could help me get better,” Mr. D’Amato, 23, said, sitting with Professor Muldoon recently in his office.

Professor Muldoon, 55, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2003, and he is chairman of the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton. Starting in 2009, Mr. D’Amato, then a Princeton junior, met with Professor Muldoon every few weeks to pore over drafts of Mr. D’Amato’s songs, which he started writing as a high school student at Blair Academy in Blairstown.

Mr. D’Amato’s independent study with Professor Muldoon and Paul Lansky, the William Shubael Conant Professor of Music at Princeton, resulted in his receiving a musical performance certificate from the university, where he graduated last June with a major in English and American studies. And Professor Muldoon got something out of it, too.

“I love the fact,” Professor Muldoon said, “that even though I’m not really musically adept at all — I’m really musically ignorant in most ways — that I’ve had a little bit of a chance to partake in what Anthony, I hope, is going to go forward with as a kind of lifetime’s adventure.”

Despite his protestations of ignorance, the poet has had other musical interests. He collaborated on songs with Warren Zevon and has played guitar in a few Princeton-based rock bands. His latest, called Wayside Shrines, is to play its first show on Feb. 16 at the Stone, a performance space in Manhattan.

As for Mr. D’Amato’s musical adventure, it has already taken turns onto some promising byways. “Down Wires,” his third CD, was recorded last spring in his dorm room; it made its debut in October at No. 29 on iTunes’ Top 200 Singer/Songwriter chart.

In late November, he was named American Songwriter magazine’s Songwriter of the Week. And his song “My Father’s Son,” from “Down Wires,” was featured as NPR’s Song of the Day last week.

Mr. D’Amato said the attention was the result of “making an album I’m really taking seriously, that I’m actually taking the time to promote,” despite his full-time job as a publicity coordinator at Shore Fire Media, a New York public relations company where he has worked for six months.

“Professor Muldoon absolutely changed the way I thought about writing songs,” said Mr. D’Amato, who moved to Manhattan in July. “You can see his touch on everything I’ve done.”

That apparently includes the folksy “Songbirds,” a short song Mr. D’Amato released this month on a two-song EP — or extended play — recording.

Professor Muldoon, in his recent meeting with Mr. D’Amato, said, “I really like it.” Then he read the lyrics aloud: “From that lonesome feeling/Of a hollow chest/The cage is empty/All the songbirds left.”

“One of the things you’ve got down to a fine art,” Professor Muldoon told Mr. D’Amato, “is the sense of structure.”

The two routinely worked on structure, Mr. D’Amato said in a later phone interview.

“What I would do is finish a batch of songs and e-mail him the lyrics,” he said. “He would take a week or so to go over them, and he’d mark them up with red ink, and there would be certain things that he would really like — images — and there would also be places where he would mark and say, ‘This doesn’t really fit with the rest of the song.’ ”

Mr. D’Amato also often worked by e-mail with Professor Lansky, who said in a telephone interview, “I thought there was a lot of poetry in Anthony’s work.” The idea to enlist Professor Muldoon to assist him in earning the certificate was Mr. D’Amato’s, Professor Lansky said. But he was fully supportive. “I thought it was a good choice; he’s a great poet and a great adviser,” Professor Lansky said.

Mr. D’Amato credits a poem of Professor Muldoon’s that he read in his senior year of high school, “As,” with guiding him toward the poet. “That poem is what got me really to focus,” he said.

Another influence was the singer/songwriter Jesse Malin, whom Mr. D’Amato befriended as a teenage freelance journalist writing for local magazines. “For me, it was an excuse to go to as many shows as I could and really pick the brains of musicians,” he said.

Mr. Malin, an owner of the bar Niagara in the East Village, was one of them. In 2007, Mr. Malin invited Mr. D’Amato to play there, and that led to a string of other shows and musical friendships, including one with Pete Yorn, a fellow New Jersey native. On March 11, Mr. D’Amato will open a show for Mr. Yorn at Terminal 5 in Manhattan.

It also led to his sharing the stage with Bruce Springsteen at two Light of Day concerts, one this month and one last year. The annual event is a benefit show at the Paramount Theater in As - New York Times

"Offering 10 tracks worth of right-on music that alternates between full-blooded straight-out stirring rockfests and more low-key reflective ballads, this album delivers a satisfying eclectic mix of stuff that's constantly engrossing and engaging throughout." - Jersey Beat

Folksingers are an absorbent lot. The young Bob Dylan, for example, was constantly picking up tricks from other artists on the folk circuit, and incorporating what he had learned into his own writing.

Blairstown-born singer-songwriter Anthony D’Amato is far too humble to compare himself to Bob Dylan. Many of the songs on “Down Wires,” his new album, do echo Dylan’s early writing. And Dylan would certainly approve of D’Amato’s commitment to learn from the best. While enrolled at Princeton University (the folksinger graduated this spring), D’Amato sought help from the most celebrated poet on the star-studded faculty: Paul Muldoon, whose command of the English language won him a Pulitzer Prize.

“I came to him and gave him a CD of my songs, and he liked it enough to work with me,” says D’Amato, 22. “We’d talk about each lyric: what worked, and what didn’t, and how to make everything flow.

“From him, I learned how to develop continuous threads in my lyrics, making sure that every image ties back to every other image, even where there’s no obvious narrative.”

D’Amato’s commitment to coherence has paid off on the engaging “Down Wires,” an album that reads as well as it plays.

In songs like “Once,” “Holy War” and the up-tempo “Ballad of the Undecided” each line is meticulously balanced; each phrase is judiciously placed. D’Amato is the sort of songwriter who revels in the rhythms of words, and the joy he takes in his cadences is infectious. Even when his songs are downcast — and in good folksinging tradition, they often are — his poetic voice is a pleasure to encounter.

Songs aren’t all he writes. D’Amato’s rock criticism has appeared in the Little Falls-based music publication, the Aquarian Weekly, and the online versions of Spin, Paste and Rolling Stone magazines. To the young folksinger, it’s just another form of creative expression, and a chance to engage with the work of artists he respects.

“It’s all connected, absolutely,” says D’Amato, “I love writing about anything, whether it’s profiles or interviews, or song lyrics.”

Indirectly, D’Amato has taken advice from the subjects of his interviews.

“I’m shy about it, but I’m always looking to learn. Talking to my favorite songwriters gives me the opportunity to pick their brains and find out how they work and what inspires them. Often, I’ve written my article, and picked up my guitar immediately afterward.”

In at least one case, an interview conducted by the singer-songwriter led to a collaborative relationship. Canadian guitarist Sam Roberts, a regular visitor to the rock charts north of the border, appears on “One Good Time,” another standout cut on “Down Wires.”

“I met Sam when I was in high school, doing a story about him,” says D’Amato. “ I interviewed him, and we hit it off.

“?‘One Good Time’ was originally supposed to be an acoustic song, but after listening to the playback, I realized I needed to bring the energy up. I couldn’t think of anybody better than Sam. So I sent him the tracks, and about a week later, he added his guitar, and sent it back to me.”

“One Good Time” slams the door on the first half of “Down Wires.” The second half is more subdued: there is less percussion and instrumental ornamentation, and more emphasis on D’Amato’s acoustic guitar.

The division was deliberate. D’Amato is a fan of vintage albums, and wanted to create a disc with an old-fashioned double-sided personality. In concert, his setup is Dylanesque — guitar, harmonica, his personable voice, and no additional accompaniment.

He will perform songs from “Down Wires” at Maxwell’s tonight, opening a show for Marah. Typically, the respectful D’Amato has nothing but praise for the Pennsylvania rock combo.

“It’s an honor to open for them. They’re one of my favorite bands in the world, and one that always puts on a fantastic show. I remember seeing them in concert a few years ago. The air conditioner was broken, and they still played three encores.”

Chances are, D’Amato learned something valuable that night, too.

Anthony D’Amato, opening for Marah and Cookies

Where: Maxwell’s, 1039 Washington St., Hoboken

When: Tonight at 8:30

How much: $12. Call (201) 653-1703 or visit maxwellsnj.com.

Tris McCall - The Star Ledger

Once again, Friday night, Songwriters by the Sea returns to America’s Cup on Asbury Park’s Cookman Avenue. This time, the show, which starts about 8 p.m., features our hosts, fresh from performances at Light of Day last weekend, Joe D’Urso and Joe Rapolla. They are joined this week by two up-and-coming singer-songwriters who have become stalwarts of the local scene, Keith McCarthy and Anthony D’Amato. The songwriters series has become increasingly popular and has been drawing a full house to America’s Cup. - The Rhythm Room Blog

"Really struck a chord with me....extremely talented" - Rich Russo, Live on 'Anything Anything" 101.9 WRXP (NYC) - Rich Russo

"Sublime alt-country...Anthony D'Amato is a gifted folky songwriter and multi-instrumentalist" - Alt Country Forum

"He doesn't just sound like he's singing. He sounds like he's singing to you. His music is timeless and highly recommended."
- Local Verital

Saturday's New Jersey Folk Festival at Woodlawn at Douglass College in New Brunswick will bring together many traditional, contemporary folk, bluegrass and blues musicians...Brick-based singer-songwriter George Wirth, an original voice in contemporary folk and folk-rock, also will perform at the festival, as will the very talented "youngster" Anthony D'Amato, who currently attends Princeton University and performed last fall at the Light of Day Parkinson's benefit shows at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park. - Richard Skelly

"Brilliant...truly the work of an artist coming into his own. This is modern folk rock at its best." (4/4 Stars) - New Jersey Stage

"It’s instantly apparent that D’Amato is a scintillating performer...He plays with passion and skill" - Music Matters Review

"Anthony D'Amato could very well be the next big singer/songwriter to come out of the New Jersey shorelines" - Heartworn Highways

"D’Amato has penned a collection of catchy, nimble, up-tempo tracks filled with knowing, winsome smiles and affable Midwestern charm (despite his Jersey upbringing)" - DryveTymeOnlyne