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Biography
Spencer Bohren (born Spencer Ward Bohren on 5 April 1950; died 8 June 2019) was an American roots musician, singer, songwriter, teacher, and visual artist. He played guitar, lap steel guitar, banjo, and percussion, and utilized the roots of American traditional music to write songs in blues, country, gospel and folk styles.
Born into a gospel-singing family in the wind-swept prairies and Rocky Mountains of Wyoming in 1950, Bohren began singing and playing music as a young boy. At the age of fourteen, inspired by the folk music he heard on the radio, Bohren picked up a guitar and within a few weeks started performing in public. The next few years found Bohren delving deeply into America’s treasure of blues, country, gospel and folk music, soaking up guitar styles and historical details from hundreds of sources, both popular and obscure. He played with several rock, country and blues bands through the sixties and seventies, always touring and performing for an endless succession of audiences throughout the western states and along the west coast. In the mid-seventies, Bohren and his wife, Marilyn, left Boulder, Colorado, and found a spiritual home in the storied music city of New Orleans, starting their family there.
