Joe Scott

Biographies

 

Acoustic Eidolon was founded in April 1998 by Joe Scott and Hannah Alkire. Herein lies the story

Fate has a magical way of bringing people together. Take the case of Joe and Hannah, aka Acoustic Eidolon. In 1995, Hannah, a studio cellist, received a call to play on a Boulder ensemble's record. As they gave Hannah directions to the recording studio, she grew more incredulous as they brought her up the small road near her and turned down her street! Little did she know that across the street and three houses away lived the greatest double-neck guitjo player in the world (ok, the _only_ double-neck guitjo player in the world). And their paths had officially crossed.

Fast forward to 1998, Joe and Hannah each found themselves between full-time musical engagements. Joe called Hannah, saying he'd always wanted to hear their two instruments together. So on a snowy day in February, they got together to play for the first time. There was such a magical timbre to their combined sounds that they agreed then and there to clear out their schedules, start rehearsing together, and form what would become Acoustic Eidolon.

On October 14, 2001, what had started as a musical/business partnership and friendship blossomed into their marriage. Acoustic Eidolon was off and running, and Hannah and Joe (and Zach and Alex) had become a family. Joe and Hannah like to joke that this was a marriage of convenience (they were already together all the time anyway!!) but anyone watching them perform can feel the love that draws them together and speaks through their music.

 
Hannah was born in Berkeley, CA but grew up in Champaign, Illinois. She started playing the piano at the age of four, then began cello at age eight. There wasn't really a beginning to her love for the cello...it was always a sound that she was drawn to.

She grew up in a musical household, where her father played the piano, her mother was a music instructor and her sister played the violin. There are many warm memories of musical sessions of piano trios by the fireside, and each bedtime routine was accompanied by Chopin and Liszt and Brahms piano works.

Hannah studied with G. Magyar of the Hungarian String Quartet, and was classically trained. She decided early on to keep the cello her passion but not go to music school, and continued to study and play seriously. At the University of Illinois, she got a degree to teach French, English and Spanish at the high school level, and then taught for 5 years. In 1992, she moved to the Boulder, CO area.

Since her arrival, she has enjoyed performing in the Boulder Bach Festival, MahlerFest and in area symphony orchestras. She moved out of the strictly classical world and started playing with rock/blues groups, performing at various local and national events like the South by Southwest festival in Texas. She was also a founding member of the Anasazi String Quartet, whose repertoire went from Dvorak to Zepplin, and baroque to Grateful Dead.

Hannah stays active recording, and has been involved in numerous projects to come out of the Rocky Mountain region. It was through her studio work that she met Joe.

In January 1999, Hannah was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and underwent chemotherapy and radiation until August of 2000. During that time, she continued to play with Joe almost daily, and found that Eidolon was a real lifeline during this challenging time. They would rehearse as often as possible, and during the last several days of each round of chemo, when Hannah felt the strongest, they would go into the studio. As a result, the debut album, Eidolon, was finished in late April 1999. In August of 2004, Hannah celebrated her five-year cancer-free anniversary.
 
A Colorado native, Joe began playing the acoustic guitar at age 12. By the time he was 14, his dad suggested he take up the 5-string banjo. So instead of learning the latest Led Zepplin and Beatles songs, he immersed himself in Bill Monroe, Lester Flat, and Earl Scruggs. Joe excelled on the banjo, and won many contests at regional bluegrass festivals by the age of 16. Over the next several years, he was involved in various folk, bluegrass and rock groups based in the Colorado area.

At age 23, he decided to attend the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood, CA. There he studied all styles of acoustic and electric guitar. During this same time period, he started experimenting with different ways of stringing the acoustic guitar. One of the ideas was based on stringing the standard 6-string acoustic like a 5-string banjo. This was an idea that Joe's father had suggested years earlier. With this stringing, he discovered that he could play all his same banjo licks, but on the acoustic guitar it created a whole new sound. This was the beginning of the Guitjo.

After GIT, Joe toured the country extensively with the New Christy Minstrels, a folk group based out of Los Angeles. In 1985 he returned home to start the group Wind Machine with Steve Mesple. Wind Machine toured for the next 14 years, and released 13 critically-acclaimed recordings.

During the later Wind Machine years, Joe started a 32-track digital recording studio, where he is still very active in engineering and producing various projects to come out of the Rocky Mountain region.

After Joe and Steve decided to stop Wind Machine, Joe thought he would take a long-needed break from performing and recording, but fate had a different plan and soon he would meet Hannah. And as they say, the rest is history.