Seth Bernard has a uniquely Michigan anatomy: knee deep in glacier-folk with a belly full of whiskey and peaches smuggled from the root cellar of a ’70s guitar god. Fingers resinous with fresh cut white pine, and sacred north star geometries whirling around his brow.
Born on April Fools Day, and playing the trickster-bard every day since, he’s grown from a potent young Interlochen idealist into a black-bearded surprise-eyed psych-rocker singing the woods and water, souls and soils of the Great Lakes.
The tools! He’s got a pine-box-full, from his Gretsch (and the chops to play it, mister), to the many iterations of Seth-music. I mean Airborne or Aquatic, bristling with fuzz-poem arena-anthems, to Public Access, the madly talented instrumental guitar army. Or he can roll solo, with a catalog of hundreds of original tunes, thousands of covers and millions of improvisational licks. And the waltzes. By god the waltzes.
And more tools: Earthwork Music Collective, Family Weekend, Harvest Gathering, The Water Festivals, the Clean Water Campaign, Title Track (you gotta google this stuff), youth engagement, and partnerships with dozens of local non-profits. Like a true old-school folkie, he plays the songs because they mean something, and that something they mean drives a life beyond just playing songs.
His most valuable tool, though, doesn’t live in that box: two good ears. Seth listens like a priest. To his audience, to his community, to his deep-rooted intuitive star-born aurora borealis campfire ancestor soul. That alone makes every show – EVERY SHOW – worth the price of admission.
-Brad Kik, Co-Founder of Crosshatch