Bruce Piephoff

Singer and songwriter Bruce Piephoff is closely associated with the music scene in his native town of Greensboro, NC, and also did extensive work as an artist-in-residence at schools and colleges in several Southern states before the government funding for this wonderful program was truncated. Hard Times for Dreamers, a new album he was working toward completing in the fall of 2002, is a title that perhaps sums up the trials and tribulations of a non-commercial musical artist attempting to survive from his creations. It would be hard to find any aspect of Greensboro that lends support to such a performer. In some three decades of musical activity there have often been years at a time in which not a single club in Greensboro presents music such as Piephoff's, while only a few of the city's record stores carry his releases, all of them on his own Flyin' Cloud label. Needless to say, none of the local radio stations program his music, or any other local music for that matter. Piephoff was something of a latecomer to music, beginning guitar at 18 while a student at UNC-Chapel Hill. His father had been a shade-tree guitarist and had exposed him to the folk music of artists such as Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Weavers. Piephoff still owns these original albums from his father's collection, as well as the old man's somewhat valuable Martin D-35. The Chapel Hill college music scene was where his performing life began, with the small stages of various coffeehouses more than just an inkling of what was to come. While cover songs by Dylan as well as Hank Williams, Lightnin' Hopkins, the Carter Family, John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits, and legendary Chapel Hill fingerpicker Elizabeth Cotten were in his repertoire, Piephoff began writing and performing his original...