John Paul "J.P." Cormier (born January 23, 1969), is a Canadian bluegrass/

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fol ...

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language * Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Fo ...

singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. To date he has won thirteen

East Coast Music Awards The East Coast Music Association is a non-profit association that hosts an annual awards ceremony based in Atlantic Canada for music appreciation on the East Coast of Canada. Its mission is to develop, advance and celebrate East Coast Canadian mus ...

and one

Canadian Folk Music Award The Canadian Folk Music Awards are an annual music awards ceremony presenting awards in a variety of categories for achievements in both traditional and contemporary folk music, and other roots music genres, by Canadian musicians. The awards progr ...

. Cormier was born in

London, Ontario London (pronounced ) is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city had a population of 422,324 according to the 2021 Canadian census. London is at the confluence of the Thames River, approximate ...

and began playing guitar around age five. As a child he displayed an unusual ability to play a variety of instruments by ear and won a guitar contest at age nine. Appearances on '' Up Home Tonight'', a television show devoted to bluegrass music, followed at age fourteen. Cormier has stated that he learned to play guitar by listening to such noted

country A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...

/ bluegrass musicians as

Chet Atkins Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), known as "Mr. Guitar" and "The Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nashville sound, the country music s ...

and

Doc Watson Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter, and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. W ...

. Other instruments J.P. has played on his albums include

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...

twelve string guitar A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in o ...

, upright bass,

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

, drums, percussion, synthesizer, cello,

tenor banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

and piano. By age sixteen Cormier had recorded his first album (a collection of bluegrass instrumentals) and he began working the U.S. festival circuit. This led him to move to the United States and to begin working as a session musician. He continued to perform live on the festival circuit and at the

Grand Ole Opry The ''Grand Ole Opry'' is a weekly American country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, founded on November 28, 1925, by George D. Hay as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on WSM. Currently owned and operated by Opry Entertainment (a divis ...

with country artists

Waylon Jennings Waylon Jennings (June 15, 1937 – February 13, 2002) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. He pioneered the Outlaw Movement in country music. Jennings started playing guitar at the age of eight and performed at age f ...

Marty Stuart John Marty Stuart (born September 30, 1958) is an American country and bluegrass music singer, songwriter, and musician. Active since 1968, Stuart initially toured with Lester Flatt, and then in Johnny Cash's road band before beginning work as a ...

Earl Scruggs Earl Eugene Scruggs (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012) was an American musician noted for popularizing a three-finger banjo picking style, now called "Scruggs style", which is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His three-fin ...

Bill Monroe William Smith "Bill" Monroe (; September 13, 1911 – September 9, 1996) was an American mandolinist, singer, and songwriter, who created the bluegrass music genre. Because of this, he is often called the " Father of Bluegrass". The genre take ...

and others. In 1989 he attended the now-named

Northeast Mississippi Community College Northeast Mississippi Community College (NEMCC) is a public community college in Booneville, Mississippi. History The college was founded in 1948 as ''Northeast Mississippi Junior College,'' and became known primarily as an agricultural school a ...

in Booneville, Mississippi, where he majored in music education. At the time it was one of only three colleges in North America that offered a specialty in bluegrass instruments. During his stay at Northeast he began playing the

dobro Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar. The Dobro was originally ...

and piano. It was also during this time he first had the idea for the song "Northwind". Cormier was involved in a serious truck accident in 2009, resulting in a fractured vertebra and a halt to his touring in 2012. He went back into the studio, focused on his singer-songwriter abilities, and released ''Somewhere in the Back of My Heart'' in the same year. In April 2015 Cormier released a new album, ''

The Chance The Chance is a concert and theater complex located in downtown Poughkeepsie, New York. The complex consists of four rooms: the Chance Theater, which is the primary concert hall; The Loft, a smaller upstairs concert hall; The Platinum Lounge, a d ...

'', which included the previously released single ''Hometown Battlefield'', about soldiers experiencing

posttraumatic stress disorder Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on ...

. The song, inspired by Cormier's 2007 Afghanistan tour and news about soldiers' suicides, went viral, with millions of Facebook visits and 800,000 YouTube views (July 2015).

Discography

*''Return to the Cape'' (1995) *''Another Morning'' (1997) *''Heart & Soul'' (1999) *''Now That the Work Is Done'' (2001) *''Primary Color'' (2002) *''Velvet Arm Golden Hand'' (2002) *''X8… a mandolin collection'' (2004) *''The Long River: A Personal Tribute to Gordon Lightfoot'' (2005) *''Primary Color: The Owner's Manual'' (2005) *''Looking Back – Volume 1: The Instrumentals'' (2005) *''Looking Back – Volume 2: The Songs'' (2005) *''Take Five – A Banjo Collection" (2006) *''The Messenger – J.P. Cormier Sings'' (2008) *''Noel – A J.P. Cormier Christmas'' (2008) *''Somewhere in the Back of My Heart'' (2012) *''The Chance'' (2015) *''Two'' with

Dave Gunning Dave Gunning is a Canadian folk singer-songwriter born in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. Gunning credits the first live concert he ever observed, a 1981 double bill of John Allan Cameron and Stan Rogers, to be a major driving force in shaping the ...

as Gunning & Cormier (2017) ----Albums No Longer Available *"Out Of The Blue" (Out Of Print) *"The Gift" (Out Of Print) *"Lord Of The Dance" (Out Of Print) *"When January Comes" (Out Of Print) *''The Fiddle Album'' (1991) CBC UG 1003

Awards

He has won or been nominated for the following awards: *Maritime Fiddling Festival- Best Reel - 1989 *

East Coast Music Award The East Coast Music Association is a non-profit association that hosts an annual awards ceremony based in Atlantic Canada for music appreciation on the East Coast of Canada. Its mission is to develop, advance and celebrate East Coast Canadian mus ...

(ECMA) Instrumental Album of the Year - 1991 *Maritime Fiddling Festival – Best Reel – 1995 *

(ECMA) Roots/Traditional Artist of the Year – 1998 *Nominated for a

Juno Award The Juno Awards, more popularly known as the JUNOS, are awards presented annually to Canadian musical artists and bands to acknowledge their artistic and technical achievements in all aspects of music. New members of the Canadian Music Hall of ...

in the Roots/Trad recording of the year category for "Another Morning" 1998 *

(ECMA) Instrumental Album of the Year – 2000 *

(ECMA) Instrumental Artist of the Year – 2003 *Music Industry Association Nova Scotia (MIANS) Folk/Roots Artist of the Year – 2005 *Music Industry Association Nova Scotia (MIANS) Musician of the Year – 2005 *

Canadian Folk Music Awards The Canadian Folk Music Awards are an annual music awards ceremony presenting awards in a variety of categories for achievements in both traditional and contemporary folk music, and other roots music genres, by Canadian musicians. The awards progr ...

– Instrumental Album of the Year – 2005 *

(ECMA) Folk Recording of the Year – 2006 (The Long River)"Canyon is the toast of the coast", ''The Toronto Star'', 19 February 2007 In addition, he has won several

and the Music Industry Association of Nova Scotia (MIANS) Award in various years. In 2005 the

Bravo! CTV Drama Channel (formerly known as Bravo) is a Canadian English language specialty channel owned by Bell Media. The channel was founded as the Canadian version of the U.S. channel Bravo (which is now owned by NBCUniversal) on January 1, 1995 b ...

network aired ''J.P. Cormier – The Man and His Music'', a one-hour documentary examining the life and music of J.P. Cormier. J.P. was also featured on Bravo's half-hour program "Men Of Music".

References

External links

Official Web Page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cormier, J. P. Living people 1969 births Canadian bluegrass fiddlers Canadian male violinists and fiddlers Canadian folk musicians Acadian people Musicians from London, Ontario Musicians from Nova Scotia Canadian Folk Music Award winners 21st-century Canadian violinists and fiddlers 21st-century Canadian male musicians