Fergus McCormick

:For the New Zealand rugby union footballer see Fergie McCormick

Fergus McCormick is a British-American indie singer-songwriter based in New York City. McCormick grew up in a family of poets and writers in an old house in the country on a gravel road near Flemington, New Jersey. The family was not particularly musical but it prized the arts, often spending years abroad in England, Spain and France. At the age of thirteen, McCormick began writing songs in the singer-songwriter tradition established in North America in the 1960s and early 1970s. Like those earlier musicians, McCormick's music is folk- and country-influenced, often told from a personal perspective.

In high school, McCormick played in house parties, bars and restaurants in Princeton. Later, at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, McCormick gave regular concerts where he would air his new material and record a series of cassettes. Excursions around America followed, from the mall in Boulder, Colorado, to coffee houses in Maine, to clubs in San Francisco. McCormick then expanded his travels abroad, where he would go on to play in the Paris metro, in pubs in the north of England, in the bars of Rio de Janeiro, in hotels in Eastern Africa.

On his travels, Fergus developed his own style of Americana drawn from various influences, from America, Canada, Britain and France, Brazil and Cuba -- from Mississippi John Hurt to Mark Knopfler to Paul Simon to Bob Dylan, Jorma Kaukonen, Neil Young, Nick Drake, Francis Cabrel, Silvio Rodriguez, Caetano Veloso, Alexi Murdoch, Aimee Mann, Patti Griffin.

In 2000, McCormick moved to New York City and began playing in a variety of venues around town, including the Knitting Factory, the Cutting Room and Sin-e. In 2003, McCormick released his first album, the eponymously named Fergus McCormick, and promoted it throughout the U.S. and Britain in a variety of small clubs, bars and coffee houses. The songs reflected his impressions on lost love, longing, and the pleasures of life, often set in foreign countries. In 2005, McCormick released his second album, Jumping the Gun, to critical acclaim. On this album, McCormick worked with producer Mike Davis to create a more organic, sophisticated sound, incorporating a wider array of instruments while maintaining the song and the singer central in the arrangements. McCormick's latest album, "I Don't Need You Now", was released in 2007.

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