Stone Room Concerts @ Hill Center Featuring Acclaimed Singer/Songwriter Danny Schmidt

Curated and Hosted by Stone Room Concerts Founder David Holiday

“Danny Schmidt is a force of nature: a blue moon, a hundred-year flood, an avalanche of a singer-songwriter. His songs are a flood of poetry, mythology, folk wisdom, and surprise. He is perhaps the best new songwriter we’ve heard in the last 15 years.“

– Matt Watroba, Sing Out! magazine

Named to the Chicago Tribune’s list of the “50 Most Significant Songwriters in the Last 50 Years”, Austin, TX-based singer/songwriter Danny Schmidt has amassed a cult following for his poetic, poignant lyrics. With a craftsmanship and emotional depth drawing comparisons to Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt, Schmidt is considered a preeminent writer.   Performing solo most often, armed with just his voice, his acoustic guitar, and his acute insight and commentary, Schmidt’s an authentic timeless troubadour, one man sharing his truth in the form of songs, in unadorned and intimate fashion.  The understated effect can be powerful.  As songwriter Jeffrey Foucault put it: “Everything about the man is gentle, except for his capacity for insight, which is crushing.”

After garnering unanimous critical praise for his self-released Parables & Primes album in 2005, Schmidt’s follow up release, Little Grey Sheep in 2007 began a streak of albums that topped the FolkDJ Radio Charts internationally.  And on the heels of being crowned with one of the prestigious Kerrville New Folk awards in 2007, Schmidt won the notice of venerable Americana roots label, Red House Records, who began releasing his albums in 2009, alongside such notable artists as Greg Brown, Eliza Gilkyson, and John Gorka, thus exposing his music to a broader audience. Schmidt released three albums on Red House Records, including the critically acclaimed debut Instead The Forest Rose To Sing in 2009, the spare and intimate Man Of Many Moons in 2011, and culminating with the amorous duo album For Keeps with his partner, Carrie Elkin, in 2014.  Schmidt returned to self-releasing his own music in 2016 with the album Owls, a mystical collection of ethereal allegories.  Standard Deviation in 2019 is Schmidt’s ninth solo record and tenth album total.

About David Holiday: David Holiday — a lifelong music aficionado who in his youth performed with the Grammy-winning Texas Boys Choir and numerous youth orchestras and ensembles, founded Stone Room Concerts together with his wife in 2012 to bring  intimate, high-quality performances by local, national and international independent musicians to the DMV area.  He has hosted more than 200 shows over the past decade in homes, churches and other eclectic venues, including for several years at Bikenetic,a full service bicycle shop in Falls Church. Stone Room Concerts also serves as the fiscal agent for Niñas Arriba, a charitable project of Latin Grammy-nominee Gina Chavez and their wife Jodi Granado, which they set up to support the college education of young women in El Salvador and Central America.  In keeping with his long standing professional involvement with Central America, Holiday is part of a team supporting the Maya Kaqchikel musician Sara Curruchich.  In 2023, he had the privilege of serving as tour manager for Curruchich’s first-ever US tour, including major venues and festivals in New York, California, Colorado and Illinois.