Andy Padlo

Raised in California's Central Valley, Padlo comes from a family of teachers and musicians. His parents were both performers in local jazz bands. After studying Russian in the US and the USSR, he began making his own music with Redwood Highway, a folk and bluegrass trio in fairs, festivals and coffeehouses around the state. He's shared the stage with Laurie Lewis, Robin and Linda Williams, Duck Baker, and the Cache Valley Drifters.

His song (written with Reed Fromer) Startin' Over was featured on Gregg Allman's solo CD "Searching for Simplicity."

Padlo is a frequent Best Song winner in West Coast Songwriter Association competitions. In 1995 he was a featured performer in the Emerging Songwriter Showcase at the High Sierra Festival.
In 2004 he recorded Love's Dark Satellite, issued by Last Stop Records, which earned praises from many, including this rough compliment from Indie.com's AJ Beest:

?Padlo's got an honest-to-goodness, real-life voice. You know there's no voice coach, no cadre of controlling suits, and definitely (please, God) no spandex. The flaws in his voice sometimes remind me of the flaws in my life (yeah, I'm a little rough around the edges and sometimes fade out in the middle of things, too) and let me make a closer connection to his work.?

Padlo's latest CD is a collection of his best songs, recorded with Jim Mirkovic on drums and Gahko Sakai on bass, with simple arrangements and tight harmonies, featuring the entire spectrum of his writing, from Somewhere in Between, a song about a rough night for a 14-year-old kid in the Central Valley, to One LA, about the loss of open space in that same valley. Padlo's guitar work sparkles throughout this disc, and his voice brings home the simple force of his lyrics:

The stars are coming out along the Great Highway
There's a long dark night waiting down the road
She's got her own long night to face and her man waiting back at her place
And we're all tuned in tonight
To love's dark satellite...

From andypadlo.com