Tucson Folk Festival
Stefan George Memorial Songwriting Competition
JOIN US FOR THE FINALIST SHOW AND OFFICIAL FESTIVAL KICK OFF!
FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2025: 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Jacome Plaza Stage
All Proceeds Benefit the Annual Tucson Folk Festival. The finalist performances will be filmed and later made available on the Tucson Folk Festival YouTube Channel.
ABOUT
The Stefan George Memorial Songwriting Competition is a beloved part of the festival each year – a chance for established and emerging songwriters to share new insights, new songs inspired by the times, and play for an audience that is hanging on every lyric. Each year, over 80 entrants compete for a spot in the finalist showcase at the Tucson Folk Festival. The winner of this showcase receives a coveted evening slot at the Saturday night festival.
Each year, a 1st Place, 2nd Place, and 3rd Place winner are decided by a panel of judges considering the performers’ originality and uniqueness, song structures and arrangement, talent, and general stage presence.
AWARDS
- 1st PLACE | $300 Cash Award, Free Registration to Folk Alliance International Conference, TKMA T-Shirt, Bookmans Gift Card, 25 minute set on the Jacome Plaza Stage on Saturday at 6:15 pm
- RUNNER-UP | $150 Cash Award, Bookmans Gift Card, TKMA T-Shirt, 10 minute set on the Jacome Plaza Stage on Saturday at 6 PM
- 3rd PLACE | $50 Cash Award, TKMA T-Shirt, Bookmans Gift Card
2025 FINALISTS
ANNIE ANNA – Tucson, Arizona
Annie Anna is a singer and songwriter currently based in Tucson, AZ. Inspired by artists such as Hozier, Matt Maeson, and Shakey Graves, her music features prominent vocals mixed with dark acoustics and auxiliary percussion. Her sound can best be described as a mixture of folk and rock.
ARIELLE SILVER – Toluca Lake, California
Arielle Silver is a consummate storyteller whose rich, expressive voice and acoustic guitar frame expansive melodies that echo her tours and travels across the American heartland. Raised on folk festival fields and synagogue pews, in woodsy and watery places up and down the Atlantic Seaboard, Arielle now lives in Los Angeles, just a traffic jam away from the Pacific Ocean. Arielle currently serves as President of Folk Alliance Region West (FAR-West), and has shared stages with America, Ellis Paul, Rebecca Loebe, Alice Howe and Freebo, and more.
FRANCIS LARSON – Scottsdale, Arizona
Francis Larson is a multi-instrumentalist songwriter raised in the desert of Arizona. He cut his teeth busking in 40+ countries and collecting anecdotes from Normandy, New Zealand, northern Minnesota, South Korea, and Budapest. He writes music that radiates heartland Americana rock with a 90s flair, as if 70s-era Jackson Browne fronted the Counting Crows but spent his formative years purposefully getting lost backpacking Europe & reading untranslated foreign literature past midnight.
GABRIELLE PIETRANGELO – Tucson, Arizona
Gabrielle Pietrangelo’s desert inspired, voice centered, indie-folk has been evolving in the Tucson region for two decades. Driven by guitar and ethereal vocals, Gabrielle’s music holds themes of nature, image invoking lyrics, humor and personal spirituality. She is a recent John Lennon Songwriting Contest winner and has arranged and performed vocal harmonies for many national and local acts including, Calexico, Howe Gelb, Amos Lee, Marianne Dissard, Brian Lopez, Mamma Coal and more.
JON FRAILEY – Tucson, Arizona
Jon Frailey is a Tucson based singer-songwriter and front man for the band Cat Mountain. Frailey has been writing and performing original music for nearly three decades and has appeared on stages all across the United States.
LARA RUGGLES – Tucson, Arizona
Lara Ruggles’ new record Anchor Me, her first release under her own name in 9 years, is a return to form, a rediscovery of Ruggles’ vulnerability both in lyricism and production. The arrangements are left open, alternating between piano ballads and understated folk-rock that allow Ruggles’s powerful voice to soar through the mix. Whether she is delivering a gut-punch of a realization or a contemplative rumination, the songs feel close, tangible, and real.
RYAN DAVID ORR – Lakeside, Arizona
Ryan David Orr has been writing and performing original compositions in the US and abroad for many years. Often compared to Cat Stevens, Eddie Vedder, and Gordon Lightfoot, his writing style is both familiar and fresh, and very lyrically driven. Orr wrote the words and music to the recent self-titled debut EP of the The Secret Trails, which is an AZ-based folk duo.
THE BROTHERS REED – Medford, Oregon
With their comedic brotherly banter, impeccable harmonic expression, and widely varying influences, a Brothers Reed performance will have you reflecting on lost lives and lovers, laughing hysterically and leaving completely entertained. Whether they are finger picking their way through a lamentable ballad or bringing you around full-speed with a barn-burning bluegrass number, The Brothers Reed are masters of their craft.
2025 Judges
Chris Baron – Winner of the 2022 Stefan George Memorial Songwriting Competition, Chris Baron is a model singer-songwriter who tours west of the Rockies, plus Texas. He commands a big band sound reminiscent of Cat Stevens that really brings the lumber. The highly stylized music will draw you in, shake your hand, and stay with you along your way. Ferocious acoustic guitar and mountain high melodics sweep you from groove to shining groove. His 2024 album features world-renowned fiddler Gabe Witcher.
Diane Perry – Diane Perry served as President of the Tucson Folk Festival for over four years, from February 2016 to August 2020. Prior to her tenure as TKMA Board President, Diane was a student of Organizational Sociology and Diversity Planning & Management at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, kickstarting a journey adjacent to non-profit organization management that made her a perfect fit for bringing our festival to the next level. Diane now resides in Green Valley and regularly enjoys live music throughout Southern Arizona.
Eric Ramsey – Arizona Blues Hall Of Famer Eric Ramsey is the Winner of the International Blues Challenge as well as the Memphis Cigar Box Guitar Award for the outstanding guitarist in the Solo/Duo Category. He’s a three time Champion of the Phoenix Blues Society’s Blues Showdown, and a two time Finalist at the Telluride Blues Challenge. He’s a Winner of the Stefan George Memorial Songwriting Contest sponsored by the Tucson Folk Festival, Winner of the Peoples’ Choice Award at the Wildflower Arts and Music Festival, a Finalist in the Al Johnson Songwriting Competition, and has been tapped for the prestigious Songwriter’s Showcase produced by Tempe Center for the Arts, filmed for PBS distribution. He’s been a 4x featured performer at the Dripping Springs (TX) Songwriter’s Festival, has garnered numerous accolades for his songwriting, and performs at concerts and festivals nationwide.
Eric Schaffer – For over 10 years, Eric Schaffer has been entertaining crowds throughout Arizona and the Southwest alongside his band, the Other Troublemakers. Frequently cowriting with his wife, Carol, and working with some of the best instrumentalists and performers in the area, Eric’s style expertly tows the line between country, folk, rock, and more. Eric currently serves on the TKMA Board of Directors and is a Board Representative on the Songwriting Competition Selection Committee. He has opened for Marc Cohn, Lonestar, Clint Black, Blackberry Smoke, and Radney Foster. Eric placed second in the 2021 Stefan George Memorial Songwriting Competition.
Mitzi Cowell – Tucson native Mitzi Cowell is a singer, songwriter, bandleader, session and performing lead guitarist and bassist, producer, recordist, visionary, visual artist, writer, gardener, and contemplative. 2012’s Tucson Folk Festival Songwriting Competition winner, Mitzi originally learned folk-blues fingerpicking as an adolescent from master Ken Tucker, and honed her electric chops gigging and recording with numerous blues, R&B, classic rock, funk, variety, and original projects. She learned New Orleans-style sensibilities and groove through immersion, gigging and recording in the Crescent City in 1989-90, and brought all it back to the desert to create a style of her own.
2025 Emcee
Sophia Rankin – Since winning the Stefan George Memorial Songwriting Competition in 2018, Sophia Rankin has become a renegade of the Southern Arizona music scene. Fronting Sophia Rankin & the Sound along with her brother, Connor Rankin, Benjamin Arthur, and Diego Martinez, they have quickly become one of Tucson’s most acclaimed bands. They have headlined at the Rialto Theatre, Club Congress, and have supported notable acts like Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, the Plain White T’s, and Ryanhood. 191 Toole Sophia also plays a part in the production of the annual DUSK Music Festival.
HISTORY
The Tucson Folk Festival songwriting competition began in the early 2000s by a passionate group of songwriters and performers. Today, the competition is in tribute to one of those founders, Stefan George.
STEFAN GEORGE
Noted for his outstanding songwriting, Stefan George had a passion for music that drove him to excel in virtually every musical endeavor he set his sights upon. And there were many, even within the confines of our so-called folk music festival where he played with so many different ensembles and configurations including the String Trotters, Arm and Hammer, White-bread, Songtower, BK Special, Four Corners, the Ditchriders and, of course, under his own name and that of his beloved partner, Lavinia White.
While Stef was already making a name for himself throughout the late 1980s and ‘90s, and often playing in primetime slots at the festival, for 20 years he could still be seen backing his mother, Emilie, usually in the hot mid-afternoon sun, whose sets were part performance and part history lesson of Eastern European folk music and traditions that she grew up with and were so much a part of her life. While it would be both difficult and redundant to add to what has already been written about Stefan, it should be noted he and Emilie were as much a part of this festival as any one or two people could be.
WINNERS
2024 – Admiral Radio – Columbia, South Carolina
2023 – Fox and Bones – Portland, Oregon
2022 – Chris Baron – Portland, Oregon
2021 – Annie Sorrells & Jerry Green – Phoenix, Arizona
2020 – Competition cancelled due to COVID-19
2019 – Nick and Luke – Brooklyn, New York & Baltimore, Maryland
2018 – Sophia Rankin – Tucson, Arizona
2017 – Eric Ramsey – Phoenix, Arizona
2016 – Janelle Loes – Phoenix, Arizona
2015 – Jen Hajj – Idyllwild, California
2014 –
2013 – Robby Roberson – Phoenix, Arizona
2012 – Mitzi Cowell – Tucson, Arizona
BROADCASTS
PARTICIPATE
Important Dates
- October 1 | Application acceptance opens ($30 Application Fee for all submissions)
- December 1 | CLOSED: Application acceptance closes
- February 5 | Songwriting Contest Finalists announced
- February 19 | Deadline for Finalist commitment to attend
- Friday Night of the Festival | Finalist Competition (Festival Kick-Off Concert)
- Saturday Night of the Festival | Winner and Runner-Up Perform Sets on Plaza Stage