<p> The Doug Wintch Band 2012 MFF Bio About 370 Words</p><p>Salt Lake City based songwriter Doug Wintch has been playing guitar since grade school, beginning on an inexpensive little guitar with finger-torturing high action and almost impossible to tune. In spite of that he has persevered to release two albums of original songs, and most recently received the 2011 Members' Choice Award for Best Male Singer-Songwriter from Utah's Intermountain Acoustic Music Association. In the course of Doug’s diverse career - he is also a working carpenter and one-time brine shrimp fisherman on the Great Salt Lake - he has played everywhere from dive bars to trendy bistros to concert halls and festivals, with a few river trips and ski resorts thrown in, as a solo musician and with The Doug Wintch Band, the Blues Buckaroos, and with fellow songwriter Anke Summerhill, with whom he has traveled as part of the Utah Phillips Tribute. This year, Doug taught songwriting at the Moab Folk Camp. Doug has this to say about the beginning of his career: “I was probably 18 when I played my first ‘paying’ gig. I was walking through the park with shoulder length hair, no shirt, and a guitar-when a dozen or so picnicking seniors waved me over to their table saying, “Hey chief...how about a tune?” I started with a ditty called Prairie Song...the only thing I’d written at the time. They didn’t hate it. Then I hit ‘em with Blowin’ in the Wind...which they applauded. I finished up with John Prine’s Hello in There...which just about did 'em in! They took up a collection, and sent me on my way with 6 bucks...” About Doug’s newest album, Singin’ on the Job, David Eskelsen of the Intermountain Acoustic Musician Magazine says, “Doug’s bottom-line job as a carpenter has often come into his songwriting, but he wades in deep here, drawing out a surprising range of emotions and experiences that would be easily recognizable to the many men and women who ply this trade. For us not-so-handy, this group of songs runs the full range of human experience, from laugh-out-loud funny, to quirky, a short history lesson, to the intriguing and profound. It’s an album good for a road trip or to play as you're working on that latest home improvement project.”</p>