John Kael

Musician
Best known for Bass

John Kael is a bluegrass musician, songwriter and teacher who plays guitar, mandolin, banjo and bass. He has taught at music camps in California, Oregon and Canada, played bass on Molly and Jack Tuttle’s The Old Apple Tree (2007), and created the website bluegrasslyrics.com.

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He has played, taught and performed bluegrass for more than twenty years and has toured, performed and recorded with a number of local and regional bands. He has taught at the Sorrento music camp in Canada, Bluegrass by the Beach in Oregon and the California Bluegrass Association’s music camp, and is an IBMA award-winning songwriter. On The Old Apple Tree (Back Studio, 2007), the duet album the Palo Alto teacher Jack Tuttle made with his daughter Molly, he played bass throughout, under songs such as the Louvin Brothers’ “I Wish You Knew,” Hazel Dickens’s “The Singer from the Song,” “Kentucky Waltz,” “Rain and Snow” and “Diamond Joe.” As of 2024 he played in the Portland, Oregon, band Whiskey Deaf with the fiddler Annie Staninec.

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