Alex' Basic Bio Info
 

Singer songwriter Alex Bevan has learned the “Rules of the Road” during the past twenty six years making friends through his music in Northern Ohio.  Born in East Cleveland, Ohio in 1950 Alex began his musical career playing the French horn at Chambers Elementary School.  His melodic imitations of rogue elephants stomping through wild savannahs came to an end in 1965 while at Shaw High School (yes, the one in East Cleveland) with the acquisition of a six string classical guitar.  Propelled by a lust to expand his musical palette, Alex haunted Cleveland’s now legendary “La Cave” and “Faragher’s Back Room” night clubs and various coffeehouses singing at all the local “hoots” (we call them “open mics” today).  While influenced on one hand by the pop icons of the day ( Beatles, Byrds, CCR), his early idols were of the “lyric folk” variety (Bob Gibson, Gordon Lightfoot, Tom Rush, Ian & Sylvia, Tom Paxton and just a smidgen of Bob Zimmerman).  By the time Alex was a ready to graduate from the hallowed halls of Shaw High School he was performing as a backup musician with Irish folk singers Gusty and Sean at Fagan’s Beacon House in the Flats of Cleveland.

The formative years from 1968 to 1970 were spent with Alex bouncing around coffeehouses and nightclubs in Ohio as an active participant, backup musician, budding songwriter and full time student at Akron University while holding various jobs as a mold setter in a plastics factory, stock boy, farm hand, truck driver and bicycle mechanic.  Through these years the desire to write and sing his own music was fueled by occasional trips to Nashville, Tennessee and Ann Arbor, Michigan’s famous folk club “The Ark”.  The result of these ramblings and fledgling expeditions was to introduce Alex to his first producer Eric Stevens.  Soon after being signed to the small but growing Big Tree Records, Alex’s first album “No Truth to Sell” was released with the single (45 rpm....little vinyl disk.....great big hole) “Linda’s Song” acquiring a small amount of airplay and allowing Alex to hit the road on the college coffeehouse circuit.  The years from 1971 to 1976 found Alex logging many thousand miles of “hard traveling around this mighty land” (driving on the interstate roads) and performing as an opening act for such headliners as the Earl Scruggs Review, Pure Prairie League, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jimmy Buffet, Livingston Taylor, Billy Joel and quite an eclectic list of other performers.  All these influences combined  and allowed Alex to grow into his own lyric style of “folk/rock” that culminated in Alex releasing his first of twelve self produced recordings.

The release of “Springboard” with the classic “Skinny Little Boy” song propelled Alex to a that of a regional star.  Performing with an acoustic trio consisting of two guitars and electric bass, Alex became a favorite with the new FM- Album Oriented Rock stations and widened his performing base opening shows for the likes of Seals and Crofts, The Michael Stanley Band, The Doobie Brothers, Hall & Oates.  It was during these years that Alex’s fast paced verbal improve skills were honed and his reputation grew on the college concert tours enabling Alex to add percussion and harmonica (in the form of Tiny Alice’s David Krauss) to his show.  The “Grand River Band” or “Alex Bevan and Friends” continued touring in various incarnations from 1979 until 1981 producing such works as “The Grand River Lullaby”, “Alex Bevan and Friends Live” and “Simple Things Done Well”.  Economic turns of the early ‘80’s changed the face of the ‘middle’ touring acts making it nearly impossible to continue to support a troupe of musicians and crew so Alex returned to solo performing with the release of “Tales of the Low Tech Troubadour Vol. 1”  (the first non-symphonic direct to disk digital recording produced in Northern Ohio at the time).

Solo singer/songwriter syndrome provided Alex with a fresh palette once again with which to work upon the imaginary canvas of his audience’s minds.  Through the middle ‘80’s he concentrated on his writing and raising of his infant son, William Cody Bevan.  The albums (yep, recordings were still 33 1/3 and groovy back then) “Best Kept Secrets” and “Cuttlefish Live”  document Alex’s forays into the studio and foreshadow the work to come in the early 90’s.

Dissatisfied with the more electric direction that his music had taken, Alex concentrated upon natural themes throughout a loosely connected body of works.  “Watersongs”  in 1991 heralded this return to a view of music more “felt than contrived” that has continued to this day.  During this period Alex and Dave Young collaborated on a musical fairytale with an environmental message titled “Who Killed the Dragon?”.  The work, while ambitious, seemed only to reach a narrow market but did set the stage for two well received and award winning critically acclaimed works.  “Magic Moments from the Children’s Nature Schoolhouse” (produced for the Lake Metroparks) and “All the Rivers Run” (Produced for the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center) mark the maturing of Alex’s “children’s educational” music into a style that is engaging to young people and not offensive to parents (Barney, watch out!).

In recent years Alex has penned and album (oops...CD) of songs about his beloved Lake Erie (“South Shore Serenade”), produced five recordings for popular Put-In-By/Key West performer Pat Dailey, written over one hundred radio and TV commercials, won and EMMY for his postscore of NBC’s “American Promise” documentary segment “The Rustbelt Blues”, re-released many of his earlier titles on compact disk and worked as vocal and guitar talent on many friend’s projects.

His most recent release “Rules of the Road” is a live recording in a small concert setting.  Once again Alex has gone to the deep well of storytelling in the acoustic tradition weaving intricate and singable melodies with words that fill the inner reaches of the heart and mind.   His guitar playing is flawless, his voice compelling and his performances are masterful. He knows the rules:

Rule #1: Show Up to Play.
Rule #2: Get Your Own Self Home!

Alex lives with his golden retriever “Harp” near Lake Erie in North Madison Twp, Ohio.
 

Tapes & CD's

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Alex's Low Tech and Proud Poster (311k)

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