Kenn Amdahl started playing guitar and singing folksongs in 9th grade. By tenth grade he was writing songs. He paid for college by performing, doing studio guitar work, and giving as many as 40 lessons every week. He’s been playing and writing songs ever since.
During the pandemic he kept busy by digitizing many, many old tapes and creating a website for his songs (kenamdahl.com) He uploaded over 300 originals and covers to that site before it was hacked and vandalized and now, in 2024 he’s starting over. Here are a few fairly recent samples. Many more elsewhere on this site:
If I’m Ever Young Again
This is Kenn Amdahl performing his original song “If I’m Ever Young Again” in 2018 at a concert at The Atrium in downtown Eugene, Oregon.
Folsom Prison
Kenn Amdahl in 2021 or so doing the Johnny Cash song.
Many more of Kenn’s original songs HERE
More of Kenn (and sometimes his friends) doing songs he did not write HERE
More Videos and pictures HERE
“The Night We Burned the Barley” This is a song Kenn wrote for his friend Gil, who was in his mid 90s at the time. Gil made a ukulele for Kenn and asked only that he write a song for him. Gil loved to sail, Kenn wrote this song, and played it for Gil on the new uke just a couple of weeks before Gil died. Recorded in 2023 in Kenn’s kitchen on a hand-held recorder.
Kenn singing his song “Fire and Smoke” in the early 2020s.
“Ain’t Licked Yet” a guitar solo written and performed live by Kenn Amdahl. Kenn played this tune at a “master class workshop” with a dozen other guitarists, all pretty dang good. Tommy Emmanuel was teaching the class and asked Kenn to play a tune, then had very kind things to say about it. If you know Mr. Emmanuel, you understand how nice this felt to Kenn. This is not a recent recording
Audio of several dozen Kenn Amdahl original songs HERE
Audio of a few cover songs performed by Kenn Amdahl including some by groups he was in, including Cottonwood, Penn Street, Bag O’Notes, Amdahl/Swanson will be HERE
Videos wil be HERE
Three “albums” of his originals are available for streaming or cheap digital purchase at his bandcamp site: https://kennamdahl.bandcamp.comhttps://kennamdahl.bandcamp.com
Fooling Around In about 2016, Kenn tried improvising a guitar thing against a computer generated percussion. He used it as background music on his previous website. As the website evolved, the song got lost and he forgot about it. In June, 2024 he saw a thing about archive.org, which stores tons of stuff from millions of websites. He noticed this file, downloaded it, and here you go.
Clearwater Publishing Company Inc 