Bio
Clinton Curtis was born in Negril, Jamaica where he began his musical education from the the stage of his parents' famous Reggae Hall: Club Kokua. There he listened to such greats as The Mighty Diamonds, U.Roy, Yellowman, Barrington Levy, and The Wailing Souls. He sat in for the first time on drums with The Roots Explosion at age six. When the concrete mega-resorts moved into Negril, his family relocated to the tiny island of Key West. Clinton began his formal musical training on piano, sax, drums, african percussion, bass, and guitar. He was immersed in the island's multi-cultural live music scene, and began sitting in at night clubs, bars, beach shows, drum circles, and early morning cuban dancehalls. He formed his first band when he was age 10, a ten-piece R&B group, with a 5-part horn section. At age 15, he began classical vocal training, which earned him a modest living in the South-Florida cabaret and theater scene. Clinton began writing and recording songs and was accepted to New York University where he studied Acting, Classical Music, and Poetry. The West Village became his home where Clinton played frequently in small coffeehouses, poetry clubs, and open-mics. He continued working as a classical singer and has performed in Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and throughout Europe. At some point in 2006, it seemed as though a degree in acting should be put to some kind of use, and Clinton toured America in the cast of a traveling road show. The show itself quickly became an afterthought, as he found himself writing songs in the wings of the theater, writing at 3AM in hotel bathrooms, writing like the floodgates burst, and listening to countless other freewheeling singers, musicians and poets in dozens of tiny American towns. After a year, he stowed away in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and played and wandered through the American south for six weeks.
He returned to New York in the Summer of 2007, and was signed to 27 Sound thereafter. Now he and his band are a fixture in the downtown New York club scene. Together with 27 Sound owner, Matt Stine, he has begun work on his first album. The songs are stories of American life at the turn of this century, in the spirit of the great Jamaican rhythm sections, the country and western story writers, southern mythology, and contemporary urban life. Whatever that is supposed to mean.
Find Clinton Curtis on MySpace. Click here.
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