Joel Mabus is a longtime fixture in the American folk music scene. He’s a songwriter with roots deep in tradition, and a risk-taking multi-instrumentalist with a well-travelled voice. He’s toured the major folk clubs and festivals all over North America but is firmly centered in the Midwest.

Joel was born in 1953 to a family of old-time country music performers, who had worked in the 1930’s in a traveling “Hillbilly” troupe for Chicago’s WLS, home of the famed “National Barn Dance” radio show. His father was a champion fiddler, his mom a singer and banjo & accordion player. Widowed when Joel was 2 years old, Ruby Lee Mabus raised her three kids in a small Southern Illinois town on meagre survivor benefit checks from her husband’s social security, plus income from piano & accordion lessons and other odd jobs. It was the era before food stamps & WIC; the family sometimes had meals of “government cheese” and the occasional can of government “meat.”

Joel started on the family mandolin at age 9 and played bluegrass with his older brother at home; he learned his gospel by singing in a store-front Pentecostal church. Guitar, banjo & fiddle were soon in Joel’s mix. Despite the poverty, Mabus did well in public school and earned a full National Merit Scholarship. Attending Michigan State University, he studied cultural anthropology and English literature, while earning his spending money as a folk & blues performer in local bars and coffeehouses.

Making Michigan his home after college, Mabus traveled the sizeable folk & bluegrass circuit, playing festivals and small concert venues, occasionally winning some fiddle & banjo contests to cover expenses on the road.

Beginning a recording career in 1978, Joel has traveled all over the United States (and parts of Texas, he adds) performing for folk societies, festivals, art houses, music camps, square dances, contradances and churches. Teaching instrument & songwriting workshops is part of the mix, too.

Joel has done sideman duties for several tours with folk icon, Tom Paxton. He has played on stage with many of his heroes: Doc Watson, Dave Van Ronk, Norman Blake, Peggy Seeger, Jethro Burns, Sonny Terry, Buffy Saint Marie, Johnny Gimble, Utah Phillips, Rosalie Sorrels and many more. He has worked alongside many of his friends & songwriting fellows: Greg Brown, John Gorka, Claudia Schmidt, Si Kahn, Christine Lavin, Jack Hardy, Sloan Wainwright, Peter Ostroushko, Bob Franke, Steve Gillette, Susan Werner…and the list goes on.

He has 27 solo albums to his credit (some featuring songwriting, others focusing on traditional guitar or banjo, and some very eclectic), along with studio work as side musician. His latest album is Time & Truth in 2019. He is the author of a book on fingerstyle guitar (Parlor Guitar, Hal Leonard Publishing) and has written many columns about the business of folk music for the Folk Alliance International, of which he is an award-winning life member.

Joel was also a frequent guest performer on Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, a highly regarded weekly live program on public radio until the recent unpleasantness.

“The dean of singer-songwriters”
Rich Warren, host of Chicago’s
Midnight Special on WFMT-FM

“Joel Mabus is the Joe DiMaggio of the folk music world – a virtuoso who can make the toughest plays appear effortless.”
Ron Olesko of WFDU-FM
(Fordham University, New York)

Craig Harris of Allmusic.com writes, “Joel Mabus is one of contemporary folk music’s most eclectic performers.”