Travis Edmonson of Bud & Travis
EXCLUSIVELY available from travisedmonson.com
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Travis Edmonson Recommendation! Love the music of Bud & Travis? then you're sure to enjoy the fabulous STREET MINSTRELS.
 If you're in Arizona, you can experience their music live, and even have them perform at an event you're arranging. But music lovers all over the US and beyond can experience the great STREET MINSTRELS sound on CD. Just go to www.streetminstrels.com to hear them and get ordering info!
 Travis Edmonson made his breakthrough with The Gateway Singers, resident group at the hungry i
Be sure and check out the website celebrating the great San Francisco club at www.hungryi.net
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Popular folk singer and co-owner of the legendary Garret Coffee House in West Hollywood , TERREA LEA, says she can still vividly remember the first time she heard Travis Edmonson sing. She also talks about one of his songs which is very special to her.
“I first met Travis the morning he and Bud Dashiell came into our coffee house. It was way back at the end of 1958, and The Garret had only been open a short time.
We were sitting around the fireplace at two in the morning and here came two guys and joined us. We learned they were folk singers and were just finishing their gig and needed some coffee.
Terrea Lea
I wasn't familiar with this duo but they were real friendly. They mentioned they had their axe's in the car and could they bring them in and sing a while around the open hearth fireplace ..... Well, I said yes ... so they did and started to sing.
And we were treated to some of the best music we had heard all during the surge of this "new" music called folk. They knocked me out. I had never heard them before, but they didn't sound like any folk singers I had ever heard.
Needless to say we couldn't get enough of them so the coffee kept coming for as long as they wanted to sing, and they kept singing. It was wonderful...as you know doubt can imagine. They were so exciting...great guitar work, voices and material.
The Garret was open till four so we had a good long time to enjoy. I felt like we were in on the beginning of the best duo to come along and I still feel that way.
"Terrea Lea" LP featuring "Time of Man"
I need to thank Travis most of all for writing "The Time of Man". He sang it that night, and I thought it was amazing. I sang it for years and don't think I ever did a set when I didn't get requests for it. I also recorded it on the last album I did.
Once I was opening for Bud and Travis at a club in the valley...doing my set with Travis in the audience ... doing his song ... “Time of Man” ... when all of a sudden I went blank.
Dummy here did recover the lyrics at once but never recovered from the embarrassment. Sorry Trav. But thanks for the song and thanks for the pleasure I have received from your wonderful music."
Terrea Lea
March 2004
The Garret Coffee House website
GREAT NEWS FOR TERREA LEA FANS!
in honor of all the fans who have visited The Garret website, and have been requesting her music on CD, a terrific new album has been issued, titled "Terrea Lea, By Popular Demand". The Cd is a retrospective album with 22 tracks from her vinyl records and,
It's available at:
Musician KENNETH GREENmet Travis Edmonson on one of the singer's visits to the Tau Delta Phi fraternity house at the University of Arizona to visit friend Bart Chiatt. Only starting out as a performer at the time, Ken was beneficiary of significant help and encouragement from Travis Edmonson, who made a special effort to assist his pal's fraternity brother.
That was four decades ago, but Ken stresses that he has never ceased feeling a debt of gratitude for that early support which has gone on resounding throughout his life.
“I hope this message somehow reaches him. I would like him to know that the beautiful music he made with and without Bud remains a treasure. Also that partly because of him, my life has been filled with music that I make myself rather than just listen to. The gift of making music with my own hands, voice and mind is so much more wondrous than merely hearing others make music.
Over the years, music has kept me sane...with no exaggeration. I probably would have made music somehow even if I hadn't met Travis but he filled me with so much wonder and joy at the music he made. He set the bar very high and it has been a life of joy trying to come close to it.”
Kenneth Green
March 2004
While medical students in San Francisco, STEVE AND LIZ CARLSON had the opportunity to see Travis Edmonson perform live, both as a member of The Gateway Singers and Bud & Travis. They took their most coveted albums with them to many exotic locales around the world, and have a special fond memory of one particular scene, which they will never forget.
"We were stationed in central Africa in the late sixties, and electricity was a luxury few enjoyed in our area. Our small house was located on a height above the town, and we had a wind-up phonograph on which we played Travis' music. With all the candlelight coming from the homes below us, it was the purest kind of magic to hear that amazing voice singing “Every Night When the Sun Goes In” and “Malaguena Salerosa” on the still night air ."
Drs. Stephen & Elizabeth Carlson
March 2004
The breadth of Travis Edmonson's repertoire makes it difficult to pick a favorite song, but his enthralling performance of “So Long Stay Well” is a special favorite of many. DAVID RUIZ, a fan for over four decades from San Francisco, is one of those who picks the “Perspective” album and that track as his top choice.
“Where do I begin? I can say I'm a fan because of Travis's wide selection of folk songs, Spanish-language songs, original compositions...he is UNIQUE. That's all I can say."
David Ruiz
February 2004
Travis Edmonson is rightly credited for his enormous importance in bringing Hispanic music to the attention of Anglophone audiences. But what about works of literature? That too, but in a more subtle manner.
Distinguished translator of Latin American drama and fiction, PROF. CHARLES P. THOMAS, credits the spark which set him on his chosen career path directly to a Travis Edmonson performance in Maine during the early 60s.
As he recently sat in the audience where his own musical play, “Daylight Spirits,” was being staged in London's West End, he contemplated on the direct line which had brought him there, the wonderful boleros, La Vaquilla Colorado, and especially one particular moment when Travis Edmonson held the audience in the palm of his hand.
“I will never forget Travis smiling to the crowd, looking up to the balcony, saying "Let's all room together next semester!" And then receiving a thunderous ovation from the crowd. I was on the floor, and I couldn't stop smiling... I thought that was so cool!”
Charlie Thomas
Oshkosh, Wisconsin
September 2003
Since March 2007, Charlie Thomas has been serving as the Treasurer of The Travis Edmonson Collection, to the eternal gratitude of all who appreciate having Bud & Travis albums available on CD.
On stage as well as off, Travis Edmonson always had a two-way rapport going with his fans. CAROL GARR (then Carol Koffman) thinks back on his days at the Ramada Inn in the 70s.
“Travis played at the Ramada Inn at St. Mary's/Granada in Tucson during my college years at the UofA in the late 60's. Many evenings, I'd walk from my dorm to Ramada to meet my friends in the lounge (no, I wasn't legal drinking age, but passed) to listen to Travis play. After the shows, he would sometimes come into the adjacent coffee shop to have breakfast with us, and occasionally even playing a few more songs at the table. We'd talk long into the night, with Travis telling stories of an older Tucson and of his earlier life in Nogales. I celebrated my 21st birthday sitting at the Ramada bar. I declined to answer when Travis asked (on the mic) which birthday I was celebrating, but he still sang my favorite songs. Those long evenings of beautiful music and camaraderie are among my favorite memories of my college years.”
Carol Garr
Tuscon, Arizona
November 2003
We all know just how good Travis Edmonson's voice sounds to the ear, butTOM MYER relates a fascinating story of what it was like to see as well as hear it.
"I became a lifetime believer that the Latin Album is one of the most significant musical works because of one musical note.
I was sitting aboard a ship in San Diego in December 1965, just returned from Viet Nam. I had a new stereo just purchased in Okinawa and had the speaker outputs connected to a two-channel oscilloscope.
Back then we were fascinated by the separation aspects of stereo. While listening to an FM station one evening, they played B&T's Malaguena Salerosa. It was the first I'd heard it and it raised the hair on my arms.
At one point in the song, Travis holds a long note. On the 'scope, this note appeared as an incredibly clear sine wave, something I've never heard before or since in a human voice. It was an incredible experience which I still remember clearly. "
Tom Myer
Former Californian JIM KINKEAD, now resident in Scottsdale, tells of the first - and most recent - time he heard Travis Edmonson sing - with 44 years of musical enjoyment in between.
"First heard Bud & Travis singing "Bonsoir Dame" on the radio in the summer of 1959. Realized immediately that there WAS life after Buddy Holly. Last heard Travis perform as part of John Stewart & Nick Reynold's (Kingston) Trio Fantasy Camp in Scottsdale in August of 2003. Hope to see/hear him again soon."
Jim Kinkead
November 2003
Travis Edmonson's open-heartedness to enthusiastic young fans is a legend in itself. Even after an exhausting show, there was always time, not just to sign an autograph, but to chat and even give an impromptu guitar lesson in a backstage corridor.
PERRY BAKER has a story that even tops such encounters.
“Growing up In Tucson, Arizona, in the 60's, Travis Edmonson was like a God to me. The very first concert I ever attended was Bud and Travis at the U of A auditorium; I was 14. Bought the double live album, memorized every song. Bought all the other albums, memorized them all.
There was a very small club, a coffee house, on north Stone Avenue, near Ft. Lowell Rd called the First Step. Tiny little place, mostly featured Phil Stover and Linda Ronstadt and Bobby Kimmel, etc. Well, 40 years ago they also once featured B & T for two nights when I was 15.
And, of course, my girlfriend could not attend a Sunday night show, so I asked them if they would sing her a song over the telephone. They agreed. I still have a very beat up photo of them singing into the phone I am holding, crammed into the tiny box office. Bonsoir Dame was the song. I still know the words.
Travis and I chatted about this tale at John Stewart's and Nick Reynolds' Fantasy Camp last summer, and he actually remembered the story and some of the details, like the address of this little club --they only played their once--etc. We laughed and thought it was a funny and fun story.”
Perry Baker
October 2003
BOB KOVITZ of Tucson, Arizona recalls Bud & Travis concerts as well as a personal meeting with Travis Edmonson …
"Certainly, one of the most anticipated events at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the 1960's was the annual "Bud and Travis" concert. They took us to places in folk music that we hadn't explored before, and we all waited breathlessly for Travis' rendition of "Malaguena."
Flash-forward into the early 1980's, after I had moved to Tucson. I was at a small nightclub/bar at a local hotel where Travis was performing. At that point, he had teamed up with local musician David Holt. I introduced myself and we reminisced about those concerts at UCSB. What a pleasure to meet
someone who had been an icon to me as a teenager in college."
Bob Kovitz
September 2003
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