We have been trying to book Steve Poltz at Sycamore Creek for a long time. Born in Canada and moving to San Diego, playing with Jewel early in her career, and an all-round spectacular performer. Gail and I first saw Steve perform at the home of Carrie Elkin and Danny Schmidt about twenty years ago during a SXSW conference. He simply blew everyone away with his high energy performance and musicianship.

We actually had Steve booked for Sycamore Creek several years ago and then COVID hit, and many concerts were cancelled and never got rescheduled. We never forgot and we continued our efforts to book Steve. One of the primary reasons we went to Folk Alliance International in 2026 was to make another attempt to book Steve. We saw him walking with his manager and I rudely interrupted their conversation and we were instantly on track.

I ran across this description of Steve and his performances on the internet, and I think it says it all:
Steve Poltz is not normal. He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada), but has lived most of his life in southern California, and those geographic poles are quite likely responsible for his unhinged genius. Over the course of his life he’s met Elvis Presley (who hugged his sister for far too long), trick-or-treated at Liberace’s house (each finger had a diamond ring), was Bob Hope’s favorite altar boy (according to him), bravely traveled the world busking before he knew how to do it, famously co-wrote “You Were Meant For Me” with Jewel, pissed off David Cassidy, and can count some of the world’s coolest people as fans. He’s also an ex–high school wrestler (98-pound class), an obsessed baseball fan, a yoga practitioner, a hopeless romantic, a smart-ass philosopher and a child-like adventurer/observer with an absurdist’s view of this crazy world and the various life-forms that inhabit it.

He’s interested in it all—the big and the small, the sublime and the ridiculous, the terrestrial and the cosmic. As good as his albums are (and they’re very, very good), Steve positively owns a crowd when he’s on stage, where the proverbial rubber hits the road. His shows are the stuff of legend—no two are alike—and can take an unsuspecting audience from laughter to tears and back again in the space of a single song. He is a master of improvisational songwriting and works without a set list to be free to react instantly to the mood of a room. He comes to the Folk Festival with a new album, “Stardust & Satellites.”

For more information about Steve and to get a taste of some of his music, go to his website. 

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