Carolyn Striho

 

Regarded as one of the city’s best singer/songwriters, Carolyn Striho made her name as a songwriter and singer fronting the dynamic Detroit Energy Asylum, and for her work with Patti Smith. As a solo performer, Carolyn gained a reputation for charismatic, high-energy stage performances on vocals, guitar and keyboards. Backed by a great band, her live shows have been hailed as both moving and memorable. With her new CD Word Attack already winning the Outstanding Acoustic/Folk CD of the Year in the 2014 Detroit Music Awards and just back from Italy and another European tour, she has worked through a serious illness with breast cancer and battled back to the stage!

 

Carolyn has been nominated for nearly 50 Detroit Music Awards in recent years, winning several, and she has performed at Lollapalooza, and in Rome, Italy at Donne In Musica several times, tours in England and several months performing in Japan. Carolyn also performed with legendary producer Don Was at Detroit’s Concert of Colors, toured through Chicago, Toronto and the Midwest, performed many times at Michigan’s Arts Beats & Eats, The Ann Arbor Summer Festival, Mackinac Island Music Festival, Porcupine Mountains Festival, Wyandotte Street Art Fair, Chicago, Toronto, Grand Marais Festival, Detroit’s

Dally in the Alley, People’s Arts Festival, Metro Times Blowouts and other outstate festival, clubs and art galleries.

 

In other awards, Carolyn’s CD Honesty won the Outstanding Rock/Pop CD of the Year in 2010’s
Detroit Music Awards and has garnered much airplay. Carolyn and band won the Outstanding Indie
Label Group of the Year in Detroit in 2012, Outstanding Acoustic Act 2011, Outstanding Instrumentalist

– Acoustic 2010 and Outstanding Electronica/Techno Recording 2010 for “Promised Land Remix.”

Carolyn’s videos, including “Promised Land” and “Sing it to Me” have been nominated and screened for several

music awards as well in Germany and other US independent film festivals.

 

Carolyn played with Patti Smith and the Patti Smith Group on several tours, including London’s
Meltdown in 2005 at the Royal Festival Hall and Patti’s comeback tour in 1995. Carolyn recently
performed in 2013 with Patti and her band again at the Majestic Theatre in Detroit. Carolyn opened for folk artist Steve Earle in London, U.K. several years ago and has performed with Iggy Pop and the legendary Ramones. Carolyn had a huge honor performing at the Detroit International Jazz Festival in 2009.  Carolyn’s Detroit Energy Asylum featured Don Was’ Was (Not Was) Band, as one of Detroit’s premier, live bands.

 

As Detroit’s Metro Times said recently, “Word Attack is a true-to-form seven-track mini–album from Detroit’s rocker-turned-chanteuse. The title track has some driving guitar and sugary-pissed vocals, while ‘Always in my Heart’ is an acoustic gem typical of contemporary Striho. Plus, ‘Enchante,’ a staple of the live show for some time, is excellent.”

Carolyn and guitarist Scott Dailey’s “East of Eden” and “Word Attack” are being used in a new film
“Tough Luck” featuring stories of Detroit, with a movie release from Chicago in the Summer of 2015.

Carolyn recently appeared in a PBS film by Keith Famie, featuring outstanding Detroit singers with Jill Jack and the “Embrace”, as well as featuring Carolyn’s song, “Promised Land” in the film. Carolyn, Scott and band appear in a terrific German film called “Motor City Music” with legendary Detroit artists, premiering in Germany and France and recently shown at the Montreal Film Festival and in London, U.K. With new reviews in London, Toronto and a new tour being set up for 2015, Carolyn is recording another new album and working on a book.

 

This once teenaged punk/art rocker playing in the clubs of Detroit with her infamous bands the Cubes and Rough Cut, opening for Iggy Pop, the Slits, Sonic’s Rendezvous Band and the Ramones, playing jazz and cabaret to folk and acoustic, she has come a long way – Carolyn continues to walk to her own drum down an amazing path.