Can someone recommend a good acoustic/lyrics artist?
 

I'm thinking of things like The Eagles - Hotel California etc. Some relaxing acoustic guitar with lyrics, but with a good tune.
Lou Reed - Take a Walk on the Wild Side
is another similar track.

I hope you guys know some artists along these lines, because I don't.

Damien Rice and Josh Ritter are 2 I can think of now. I'll try and think of more. Since you're not looking for modern artists listen to Don Mclean, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce I mean all those guys are phenominal.

Asta!!

You might want to check out a Norwegian band called Jim Stärk.

Brian Vander Ark - Resurrection

Still with the Verve Pipe, but this is his first solo album. It's good stuff. In particular, check out "Mileage" and "1229 Sheffield".

Check out Nickel Creek or Mutual Admiration Society. Excellent accoustic music. Their first CD was bluegrassy their second, "This Side", was totally different. Here's a link to some of their videos.

http://launch.yahoo.com/artist/video...tistID=1049618

Smoothy Song is an instrumental that in my opinion just kicks ass. These guys are in their early to mid 20's and have been playing together since they were around 6-8 years old. Each one of their CD's has been a total departure from the previous.

MAS is basically Nickel Creek and Toad the Wet Sprocket. Good stuff.

You might like Rocky Votolato. He plays indie rock, often acoustic, with a little alt-country thrown in. I like his lyrics because they're simple and devoid of convoluted metaphors. Check out the songs "Montana" and "Suicide Medecine."

Howie Day has some good stuff. (or a friend of mine told me he did anyway)

I love Nickel Creek. So good.. Saw them play with John Mayer last fall.

Hmm.. Mutual Admiration Societ = Nickel Creek + Toad the Wet Sprocket? Might have to check that out.

James Taylor, can't go wrong there.

This may be obvious, but Eric Clapton. OAR (Of A Revolution) is good too.

O.A.R. is great.. how the hell did I forget about them?? good call! :thumbsup:

Ooh I like OAR too :)

I'll go ahead and suggest early Dashboard Confessional. Might get crap for that but I don't care. I love em :D

Try Joe Satriani, especially if you can find a copy of the unplugged stuff he did with Stevie Ray, its awesome, acoustic guitar and piano with some great vocals...

yeah in the secrets thread in members playground I admitted to liking emo. Early DC is good..but I really wonder about this new stuff..

Check out the MTV Unplugged series.... If you can still find some of 'em -- they're completely worth it.

Unplugged Nirvana is wonderful - best album Nirvana ever put out
Alice in Chains blew me away, I didn't expect it to be good, and it was great,
Bruce Springsteen's Unplugged I'm hardly impartial, but this will always be my fave-- but I'm a springsteen groupie -- this CD is acoustic with a real bluesy edge to it.
Eric Clapton Unplugged is as close to his roots is a close second behind Bruce...

Looking at Amazon, Dashboard Confessional (I've only listened to them because Averett's such a die hard fan, I wanted to see what the fuss was about,a nd they're pretty good, the reviews onthe unplugged CD are fantastic.

There's a bunch more... in the series...

There was a similar thread here a few weeks ago.

You should look it up, you may get some good Ideas. a lot of suggestions on it..

Ill try to link it here.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=63741

Acid Bath - Dead Girl

maybe try some sondre lerche...??

Oooh, good rec. Listen to this guy.

M. Ward. I saw him with Bright Eyes and Jim James (lead singer of My Morning Jacket) in Pittsburgh. He's an extremely talented, Bob Dylan-esque singer/songwriter with some very inventive guitar playing, a raspy, metallic voice and some mean harmonica licks. I highly recommend him.

Wow a Josh Ritter refrence. This guy was totally unheard of to me until last thursday when I was lucky enough to catch him opening for Sarah Harmer. He played a great set, I was impressed.

Also, Cat Stevens (aka enemy #1), Jim Croce, James Taylor are all great. As well as maleficent's suggestions of unplugged.

Right, I'm looking to make up a library of about 100 songs, so 7-10 albums, probably one a week for a few months. Depends on if this new job goes through etc...
Mainly looking at groups I've forgotten about but heard one or two songs from, I think this gives me enough material to download a couple of tracks from each, see if I like the style, then go out and buy.
Thanks all!

I'm not exactly sure what your looking for (I can't catagorize music for my life) but Kings of Convienance is really awesome aucoustic guitar plus voice....

Ditto the James Taylor. Another more recent one is Jack Johnson.

Yeah I had some friends in this old town I lived in. They were musicians. One of my friends was big on Jack Johnson, the other on Ben Harper, and the last on Josh Ritter. When I hung out with him he would play Josh Ritter records for me. It was really good stuff. I haven't seen any Ritter records around though :|. I guess maybe I'm not looking hard enough. If I do find any I'm prolly gonna buy em.

Asta!!

You could try Jason Mraz. Great live performer. You can download his live performances at www.archive.org which is on .shn lossless format.

^ I have his CD. I really like it a lot. He has a great voice..very rhythmic(sp?). Absolutely Zero is by far my favorite song on the album. Very beautiful song.

Asta!!

Last year, I was listening to music on my friends comp. I clicked on a song called "Could You Bite the Hand?" it was pretty good. Decent lyrics, good solo acoustic guitar. It was written by anime legend Yoko Kanno, and was performed by Steve Conte.

Gillian Welch is nice and relaxing and bluegrassy.

Another suggestion: Iron and Wine. Most of the songs aren't acoustic but have great lyrics and only sparse percussion.

Double ditto on James Taylor and single ditto on Jack Johnson. Howie Day is okay, but I hear his first album is better than the new one.

Some acoustic greats of the past few years are John Mayer, Jason Mraz, and of course Dave Matthews...As for someone who is a little less well known, Keller Williams is amazing on his acoustic...he really does some inventive stuff in his songs.

I'll suggest Josh Ritter too, he's great.

There's this dude named Bob Dylan that you might want to check out. ;)

I think "Harrisburg" is a very good Josh Ritter song.
Patty Larkin is worth anyone's attention.

Jack Johnson - either of his two cd's or Elliot Smith - entire collection

Have you heard the Mutual Admiration Society cd? My friend told me it wasn't near as good as the first two Nickel Creek albums.

I'll put my vote with Nickel Creek as well. They have the unusual talent of being gifted in song writing and their instruments. Very nice group of kids as well. Very approachable.

Also, Nickel Creek's band members have a lot of solo albums which are very good.