Dom Flemons

blues · country · country blues

Dom Flemons is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer and songster born August 30, 1982 in Phoenix, Arizona, of African American and Mexican descent. He studied English at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and came up through the local folk and poetry-slam scene in the early 2000s before moving to North Carolina. He performs old-time music, Piedmont blues, early jazz and traditional country on banjo, guitar, harmonica, jug, fife, quills and percussion, and works as much as a researcher and interpreter of pre-war Black American repertoire as a performer, which is why he bills himself as the American Songster. From 2005 to 2013 he was a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, whose album Genuine Negro Jig won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2011. His solo records include Dance Tunes, Ballads and Blues (2007), American Songster (2008) and Buffalo Junction with Piedmont guitarist Boo Hanks (2012), both for Music Maker; Prospect Hill (2014) on Fat Possum; A Selection of Ever Popular Favourites with English guitarist Martin Simpson (2016); and two albums for Smithsonian Folkways, Black Cowboys (2018) and Traveling Wildfire (2023). Black Cowboys, which assembles songs and history of Black cowhands and settlers in the American West, was nominated for the Grammy for Best Folk Album in 2019 and for a Blues Music Award; Traveling Wildfire drew a second Best Folk Album nomination in 2024. He has performed at Carnegie Hall in a Lead Belly tribute, at the Grand Ole Opry and at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and was inducted into the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame in 2025. His solo sets move between instruments and frame each song with the history behind it.

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