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April Fools core quartet in action.
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Photo by Jake Jacobson
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Buskin & Batteau have been winning hearts and minds with their soulful acoustic balladry and fun-filled performances for more years than they care to remember.
“We’re not from the Cambridge, came-over-on-the-Mayflower first wave of folkies [ Joan Baez, Tom Rush, Eric Von Schmidt ],” says Buskin, “but we’d like to think we’ve stolen many of their licks.”
The Washington Post called their work “an irresistible amalgam of melodic, sensual pop, folkie grit and killer wit.” And while their humor runs the gamut from topical irony (“Second Homeless”) to terminal silliness (“Jews Don’t Camp”), it’s their unique combination of instrumental virtuosity (piano and violin, primarily, though both play other instruments as well), soaring vocal harmonies and unparalleled lyric-writing that prompts the standing ovations and rhapsodic reviews: “The most musically sophisticated act in folk” –The New York Times; “Acoustic Heaven” – The Boston Globe. And with the help of uber-percussionist Marshal Rosenberg, they manage to kick the rhythm pretty hard for a couple of seasoned troubadors.
Famous in the eighties as superstar jingle writers –Batteau’s “Heartbeat of America” heads a list of a hundred or more hits — they’ve also divided their time between writing songs for other artists — e.g., Judy Collins, Tom Rush, Astrud Gilberto, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Peter, Paul and Mary and Bette Midler; helping a diverse group of non-profits — Paul Newman’s Hole-In-The-Wall Camps, Harry Chapin’s WhyHunger, Roger Payne’s Ocean Alliance, among others; and hosting their quirky, unpredictable Radio B&B show on WPKN-FM and WPKN.org. Their latest CD, Love Remembered, Love Forgot was recorded at Neale Eckstein’s Fox Run Studios in Sudbury, MA, features some delightful guest appearances and is now available.
COMMENTS
“Buskin & Batteau… are something special. I think they levitated the audience. Terrific musicianship, memorable songs and just great all-around entertainers. The audience was raving about them…”
Rich Warren, WFMT Midnight Special & Folkstage
“Buskin & Batteau let the poet drive their songs forward with an unstoppable beat and untamed fiddle solo. One of our stand out Village performances of the year!”
Mary Sue Twohy, The Village – Sirius XM Radio
“…Versatile, sophisticated…by turns acerbic, funny and plaintive. Buskin and Batteau are breathing new life into the genre of the folk-pop singer/songwriter.”
New York Times
“…an amalgam of melodic sensual pop, folkie grit and killer wit.”
Washington Post
“Acoustic heaven”
Boston Globe
“Post-folkies on cruise control … sexy … magical…”
Boston Phoenix
“The best act ever, anytime, anywhere in the entire universe.”
Reviews for a Dollar!
Christine Lavin started her professional life as a waitress/bread baker at the Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY in 1975 where she met Dave Van Ronk who encouraged her to study guitar with him in NYC. She took his advice and is now a singer/songwriter/guitarist/recording-artist/author/videographer based in New York City. Her latest solo album, her 25th, ON MY WAY TO HOOTERVILLE, includes 10 new songs and one re-worked song, “Ramblin’ Waltz,” a re-telling of her time in 1975 when she was an entourage driver for the first week of Bob Dylan’s iconic “Rolling Thunder Revue” tour.
In 2023 Christine released “The Seasons Project,” an 80-song seasonal compilation that features the work of 63 American, Canadian, British and Irish singer/songwriters.
In 2024 she is completing her 26th solo album, DRUM SCHOOL DROPOUT.
HONORS AND AWARDS:
In May 2021 Christine received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from her alma mater, the State University of New York at Brockport. In an odd twist, she has a younger brother also named Chris (born on Columbus Day) who also in May 2021 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from his alma mater, Hobart/William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY.
What are the odds there would be two Chris Lavins from the same family to both be awarded honorary doctorates one week apart?
In September 2019 Christine spent a month at the artist retreat Yaddo in Saratoga Springs. Three of the songs she wrote there are included on her latest HOOTERVILLE album. In April 2019 she was inducted into the Rochester, NY Music Hall Of Fame along with Al Jardine of The Beach Boys. She received a 2012 Nightlife Award given annually to the best concert and cabaret performers in New York City. In November 2011 her book COLD PIZZA FOR BREAKFAST: A MEM-WHA?? (Tell Me Press, New Haven) won the 43rd Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. is available in paperback, kindle, and audio book formats, with the foreword written by actor/playwright/singer/songwriter Jeff Daniels. Christine has also won five ASCAP Composer Awards, The Kate Wolf Memorial Award, and her album Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind won Album Of The Year from the National Association Of Independent Record Distributors.
She has produced ten compilations, and so far these compilations have showcased songs of close to 100 songwriters whose work she admires. The food-themed compilation, ONE MEAT BALL, includes a 96-page cookbooklet that Christine edited — songs and recipes by Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, and many more, including a surprise appearance by international — and now late — gigastar Dame Edna.
For four years she hosted “Slipped Disks” on xm satellite radio, playing CDs slipped to her backstage by compatriots, and was occasion guest host for City Folk Sunday Supper on WFUV-FM at Fordham University. She also writes freelance for various publications (The Washington Post, Huffington Post, St. Petersburg Times, Performing Songwriter, and Delta “Sky” Magazine). Her song AMOEBA HOP is a science/music book by illustrator Betsy Franco Feeney (Puddle Jump Press), receiving the stamp of approval from The International Society of Protistologists, and a “Best Book Award” from The American Association for The Advancement of Science.
THE PLUTO FILES:
THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICA’S FAVORITE PLANET
(W.W. Norton) by Neil deGrasse Tyson, head of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC, includes the complete lyrics to Christine’s song “Planet X,” which details Pluto’s history and planetary status debate in rhyme. Neil included Christine in a live concert event at The Beacon Theater in NYC, “Comedians & Astronomers,” and his voice is on that recording, her 23rd album, SPAGHETTIFICATION.
Christine performs concerts all over the US, Canada, and points beyond (Australia, Germany, Israel), often hosting knitting circles and Downton Abbey-style napkin folding backstage at each show. Songs of hers have been performed by artists as diverse as Broadway stars Betty Buckley, Sutton Foster, Karen Ziemba, and Klea Blackhurst, cabaret divas Andrea Marcovicci. Barbara Brussell, and Colleen McHugh, the a cappella Dartmouth Decibelles, and The Accidentals, winners of the National Harmony Sweepstakes Championship.
On A Winter’s Night, her first seasonal compilation project, (20 artists) became a four-artist national tour that first hit the road back in January 1991 and was a five-artist tour that hit the road November 2019, including Christine, Cliff Eberhardt, Patty Larkin, Cheryl Wheeler, and John Gorka — only to be abruptly sidelined by the pandemic on March 12, 2020. The remainder of those dates went on as rescheduled in February/March 2022.
LATEST PROJECTS:
Christine started creating videos for her songs in 2011, and now creates them for other artists (including Michael Feinstein, Noel Paul Stookey, Janis Ian, Judy Collins, Craig Werth, Julie Gold, David Ippolito and others).
Christine was the keynote speaker in November 2016 at the annual North East Regional Folk Alliance Conference (NERFA) in Stamford, CT, and that keynote address has become the basis for her next book, which will take up where COLD PIZZA left off. She was also keynote speaker at the Lifespan National Caregivers Conference in 2017 in Huntsvile, Alabama.
Until November 2018, Ms. Lavin was very involved with the care of her aging mother in Geneva, NY. She relocated there twice, while continuing her full time performing in 2010 – 2012, and then again in 2016, to help out. She taught herself to make videos to help her mother remember daily events, having no short term memory. Soon she started making videos for her own music, and now videos for others. Her mother died in November 2018 at the age of 99-1/2, and her family cherishes those videos, which inadvertently spurred Ms. Lavin’s career on in an unexpected direction.
WHAT SHE IS WORKING ON RIGHT NOW
During much of the pandemic, Christine made ends meet by performing online concerts, writing and recording songs, creating videos for other artists, and selling her books and CDs from her website (she is the president, secretary, messenger, and complaint department of her record company, while becoming friends with all the window clerks at her local post office). For most of her online concerts she asked for requests, and many of her fans asked for songs she hadn’t performed in years. Much to their delight, she went about re-learning many of them, and is now working on a theatrical presentation of her songs.
She is also working on a spring and also a summer compilation to join with “On A Winter’s Night” and “When October Goes” so there will be a boxed set of 70+ seasonal songs that might someday turn into a tour.
Christine Lavin has been called “A fearless folkZinger!” by the Orlando Sentinel, “Wildly entertaining,” by The New Yorker, and “A fresh kick in the pants!” by the late Paul Newman. She is currently also working on her 26th solo album.
On September 1, 2021 her song, “The Best Summer,” inspired NYT columnist Jennifer Finney Boylan to write an entire column sparked by that song.
“The Best Summer” by Christine Lavin
Puddle Jump Press for Amoeba Hop, a book based on Chris’s song.
COMMENTS
“Christine Lavin is an iconic singer/songwriter who has earned her legendary status through years of tireless performing, doing shows at once quirky, hilarious and touching. Her songs have a wordsmith’s eye for detail, with a comic’s vision for the absurd, and a huge and fearless heart that will go anywhere.”
Gary Gould, The Davison Index
“Since emerging from the NYC singer/songwriter scene in the late 1980s, (along with Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, John Gorka, etc), Lavin quickly established herself as an entertaining tour de force. Quick on her feet, witty, insightful, engaging, she remains one of the most popular and respected performers in the genre.”
BestEvents.us
“A garrulous comic observer of contemporary manners”
New York Times
“An enchanting stage performer”
Cosmopolitan
“Lavin is the central force in the most visible segment of the contemporary folk music scene. Captivating.”
Billboard
“Lavin’s hilarious, insightful story-songs always have a twist, they’re perfectly complemented by tuneful folk melodies, and theyll make you forget just about any problems you have.”
CD Review
“It is precisely her take on the ordinary that makes her work so extraordinary.”
Village Voice
“She’s a folkZinger!”
Orlando Sentinel
John Forster, Singer-Songwriter, Humorist, Performer, Music Producer
“If Joni Mitchell and Daffy Duck had a love child, he’d probably write songs just like JOHN FORSTER. His sharply observed satires range from sheer slapstick to Jon Stewart acute.”
Scott Alarik — Boston Globe
“JOHN FORSTER looks like an Episcopalian minister, but sings with adder tongue…A laser-swift wit, glinting with irony…One of the sharpest musical satirists around.”
J. Rudolf Abate — The Free Press
“JOHN FORSTER has claimed the satirical crown long abandoned by Tom Lehrer. He’s one very funny songwriter.”
Rich Warren — Sing Out! Magazine
“You don’t need me anymore. Now you’ve got JOHN FORSTER to kick around. ”
Tom Lehrer — Harvard Magazine
“FORSTER has the world view of George Carlin, the musical-parody chops of Frank Zappa in his glory days, musically and lyrically clever in ways that AI Yankovic can only dream about.”
Paul D. Lehrman — Boston Phoenix
“JOHN FORSTER bestrides the current events scene like a colossus… His winning smile, expressive face and easy voice make the evening of original songs all too short.”
Donna Coe — New York Post
“Fiercely original humor from a wonderful song satirist.”
Peter Filichia — Newark Star Ledger
“JOHN FORSTER is a one-man musical comedy, a self-contained Capitol Steps, yet with a delightful quirkiness all his own…painfully truthful and filled with fun.”
Stephen Ide — Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA)
“Article Nine” is the funniest song ever written about any Japanese state document… ever!”
Richard Foss — Los Angeles Reader