Caleb Klauder

He grew up on Orcas Island, in the San Juan Islands north of Seattle. He started singing in church, played saxophone in the middle-school band, and after getting a guitar began writing songs with a friend; the records at home ran to Taj Mahal, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. His mother’s family came from East Tennessee, and he has said that when he first sang old-time music from that region it felt immediately familiar. Fiddle was one of the electives on offer at his college, and in his early twenties, feeling that the songs he was making up with his band had no connection to any roots, he turned to traditional fiddle music, old-time and bluegrass.

In Portland he played acoustic guitar and mandolin, sang, and wrote several of the songs on Stomp (Padre Productions, 1997) by the band Calobo, and he appears on its Live at the Crystal Ballroom (1998). He was also a member of Pig Iron, whose album Fill Me Up (1999) includes his songs “Oldest Man” and “Shoelace,” and in 2000 he released a solo album, Sings Out.

The Foghorn Stringband grew out of late-night jam sessions at the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest in Weiser, Idaho, in 2000. Its first line-up, under the name Foghorn Leghorn, was the fiddler Sammy Lind, P. T. Grover Jr. on banjo, Brian Bagdonas on bass and Klauder on mandolin and vocals. As the Foghorn Stringband it recorded Rattlesnake Tidal Wave (2002), Reap What You Sow (2004) and Weiser Sunrise (2005), and the band played “Sow ’Em on the Mountain,” with Klauder on mandolin, on Dirk Powell’s Rounder album Time Again (2004). He also recorded in 2003 with the Pine Tree String Band, on albums of bluegrass favorites and hymns for the Allegro label.

The Caleb Klauder Country Band’s first album, Dangerous Mes & Poisonous Yous (Padre, 2007), had seven of his own songs, among them “Sick, Sad and Lonesome” and “Innocent Road,” with Klauder on guitar and vocals. In 2008 and 2009 he and Lind toured as the Foghorn Duo; their album Lonesome Song, launched in Portland in June 2008, mixed traditional songs with Klauder originals and was recorded live with three microphones and mixed on the fly. A second country album, Western Country, followed in 2010. With Lind and the bassist Nadine Landry he also worked as the Foghorn Trio, which recorded Sud de la Louisiane.

Cajun and south Louisiana music became a third strand. He played guitar and triangle and sang on The Right Combination (Valcour, 2011) by Jesse Légé, Joel Savoy and the Cajun Country Revival, recorded at Savoy’s studio in Eunice, Louisiana, and by 2015 he was playing with Légé and Savoy both in that band and in the Dirk Powell Band, alongside the Foghorn Stringband and his own country band. He has described the three as one triangle: dance music built on the same kind of chord movement, so that a new song of his could go to any of them.

Reeb Willms joined the Foghorn Stringband on guitar and vocals in the winter of 2011 and moved to Portland, and the quartet of Lind, Klauder, Landry and Willms has recorded Outshine the Sun (2012), Devil in the Seat (2015) and Rock Island Grange (2018), which Klauder mixed. As a duo, Klauder and Willms made Oh Do You Remember (2012), a set of country and brother-duet songs, and Innocent Road (2016), built on his originals, including a new recording of the title song; with Savoy and Kelli Jones they recorded Farewell, Alligator Man (Valcour, 2017), a tribute to Jimmy C. Newman. Gold in Your Pocket (Free Dirt, August 2024), the country band’s third album, was recorded at the Tractor Shed in Nashville, with Chris Scruggs sitting in and helping produce, and finished at Savoy’s Valcour studio in Eunice, with Klauder in the producer’s role; most of its songs are originals by Klauder and Willms. As of late 2024 the two lived on Orcas Island.