Paddy Mills is an award winning folk singer from the coast of Maine. Paddy grew up in the small fishing village of Owl’s Head. The son of a DJ at the local AM country station, he cut his teeth playing Irish music at pubs throughout New England. These are the elements that inform his writing; from the direct and simple approach of classic country music, the emphasis on melody and storytelling found in traditional Irish music, to the unpretentious attitude and dry wit that stem from a hard scrabble life of scratching out a living where the ocean meets the land.
Paddy’s 2014 album Race to the Bottom reached #13 on the Folk DJ list and garnered comparisons to Greg Brown, David Mallet, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger in Press reviews. According to the Muses Muse "At the end of the day Paddy Mills brings the mojo, and is clearly a marquee talent". Whether at a coffee house, Festival, folk club or the corner of a bar, Paddy has a way of making listeners feel like they’re sitting in a living room listening to the telling of old familiar stories about their own family and friends.
Over the past several years Paddy has won the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival Songwriting Contest, the CT Folk Festival Grassy Hill Song Competition, the South Florida Folk Festival Singer-Songwriter Competition, the Mid Atlantic Song Contest- Gold- Folk/Acoustic category and the Rose Garden Coffeehouse Performing Songwriter Competition. He has also been selected for the 2016 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Grassy Hill Emerging Artist Showcase.
As a songwriter, Paddy has a knack for the overlooked. He knows that common sense is not so common, and simple truths are not so simple. The Noise states "He strikes me as the kind of folk performer people want to sing along to—and possibly even emulate" Most importantly, though, Paddy's music can leave you grinning like you've just been let in on a secret -- one that you might just have known all along.
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