BIO
ABOUT TWO DARK BIRDS
Two Dark Birds is a band from the Catskill Mountains formed by singer, songwriter, guitarist Steve Koester. Koester is often joined by Jason Mills and Don Piper, along with Jude Webre, Ben Wildenhaus, Josh Roy Brown, Jeff Lipstein, Sandy Bell , Carrie Bradley, and Matt Trowbridge. The band has realeased four critically acclaimed albums.
“Bow, the latest luminous and ambitious collection of poet-grade and quietly experimental folk music written by Steve Koester and performed by his loose assemblage of Catskill cronies.” - HV1
“…poised, structured, self-aware, ambitious.” - DVEIGHT
"...there certainly is a magic to it, a kind of backwoods witchery that the only the best of the style can really capture. " - Culture Collide
“…brimming with pastoral energy and light. There's a quiet dignity to the songs, no grand or elaborate veneering.” - Chronogram
“Strange and beautiful… It’s a record heard best with a beer in hand beneath a star-punched sky.“ Nylon
“…one of this year’s most subdued and moving releases.“ The Big Takeover
“Koester takes on the populist challenge of the form: how to be at once folk-accessible and lit-deep, how to wed image to experience and emotion without ever getting too fine or too poetic for the idiom. Koester hits the mark again and again…” Woodstock Times
“Steve Koester is a folk singer whose darknesses and frailty are worn on his sleeve, the kind of sorcery you get from living a life in old mountains like the Catskills. He’s got a beautiful album out called Songs for the New.” yvynyl
“…a masterful soundtrack to self-reflection.“ Men’s Vogue
ABOUT STEVE KOESTER
Prior to Two Dark Birds, Koester also fronted the bands Maplewood, Koester and Punchdrunk, who altogether released eleven critically-acclaimed albums and toured extensively throughout the US and Europe. The music has been called "knockout gorgeous" and "timeless. . . great rock music" and has received glowing reviews everywhere from Fader and Nylon to The Village Voice and The NY Times, showing up on year-end "Best" lists in Magnet, Popmatters, Rhapsody, Disclaimer and more. Koester has also written, recorded and produced a wide variety of songs for film and TV, including features in Sideny Lumet’s “Before the Devil Knows Your Dead” and Laurie Collyer’s “Sherrybaby.”