Stone is an integrator. He loves a through line. Whether it’s quilting together verses from an anthology of time-worn ballads, identifying the next bright constellation in the career of an artist he’s coaching, or weaving a unifying thread through a collection of songs he’s producing—Stone loves to look closely enough at things to see their intrinsic beauty and interconnectedness.
Stone is a searchlight. He has made albums like the Lomax Project, which re-imagines songs collected by American folklorist Alan Lomax; Room of Wonders, a collection of folk dances from around the globe; Folklife, which plants the seeds of folk songs in modern soil; and AWake, a stargazing indie-pop album exploring the white-hot core of love and loss. Stone is known for sharing stories of the people and places behind the songs—a 13th century Bambara queen, the rutted roads of eastern Kentucky, a symphony inside a lightbulb, the Sea Island coastline. These narratives help situate the songs in their wider cultural, spiritual and ecological contexts.
Stone is a field worker. With support from a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, he spent three months in Mali, West Africa studying with kora and n’goni players, making field recordings, and investigating the banjo’s African roots. He sat in with Toumani Diabate’s famed Symmetric Orchestra and played with griots, buskers and elders—under baobab trees, at the confluence of the Niger and Bani Rivers, and as part of an all-night ceremony in the Dogon’s sandstone cliffs. He returned home to make the Juno award-winning album, Africa to Appalachia, a polyrhythmic tale of two continents in collaboration with Mansa Sissoko. Stone has done folk song research at the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Folkways and the Folkways Alive Center.
Stone is a synthesizer. He has long balanced his commitment to music with complementary practices. His study of yoga, zen, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais and Pilates are integral to both his own work and the way he holds space for the artists he coaches and produces. As a producer, his curiosity, inquisitiveness and capacity for deep listening are matched by a strong aesthetic sense, wide-ranging studio skills and love of collaboration. He regularly co-writes with other songwriters, always looking to create a new lexicon and harmonic language.
Stone is an educator. He has been on faculty at the Silk Road Global Musician Workshop, Rockygrass Academy, Rocky Mountain Song School, Sierra Fiddle Camp, Banjo Summit and more. Fellow musicians frequently seek Stone’s advice, keen to discover how he crafts a career that hews closely to his creative vision while finding success in the world. He mentors artists through organizations like WOMEX, APAP and OneBeat and led the Artist Accelerator program at Folk Alliance. He coaches artists 1-on-1 and co-founded an online course that teaches “businesscraft to musicmakers” called Compose Your Career.
Stone is a galvanizer. He produced 400 songs for the Facebook Sound Collection; curated a concert series at the Colorado Chautauqua; directed a folk music symposium at the University of Colorado; co-produced an episode of the Afropop Worldwide podcast; directed the branding for Folkalist Records, a 21st century label centering music from the global south; and co-facilitates a traveling global music retreat called Sonora Expeditions. Other career highlights include winning two Juno Awards, three Canadian Folk Music Awards; being featured on NPR, BBC, and CBC; and performing thousands of concerts including venues like the Lincoln and Kennedy Centers, Library of Congress, Rockygrass, Celtic Connections, Vancouver Folk Festival, Chicago World Music Festival, Montréal Jazz Festival, and more.
