BAND SPOTLIGHT

Danny Schmidt Sunday, March 1 BluCat Café Williamsville 5 p.m. www.dannyschmidt.com

Danny Schmidt

Danny Schmidt is an intense and arresting, interesting and entertaining, profound and grounded singer-songwriter garnering praise from critics who dare to speak his name in the same breath with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.

The Austin-based performer stays on the road most of time, playing his lyrically driven, acoustic guitar-based music at festivals, coffeehouses, theaters and homes, treating his audience as companions, living the lyrics he sings in one of his most beloved songs, “When I die, let them judge me by my company of friends.”

Schmidt, one of most gifted and respected underground folk artists currently on the scene, recently signed to Red House Records, one of the top labels in the folk, singer-songwriter world, and has a new album, Instead the Forest Rose to Sing, scheduled for a March 2009 release.