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
SHOW TIMELINE
- 6 PM – 6:30 PM: Opening performance by 2024 competition winners, Admiral Radio
- 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM: 2025 Stefan George Memorial Songwriting Competition
- 8:30 PM – 9:00 PM: Closing performance by 2023 competition winners, Fox and Bones
- 9:00 PM: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Place Winners Announced
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 – SECOND PLACE
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 – THIRD PLACE
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.
PHIL REED – Medford, Oregon – FIRST PLACE
Phil Reed is one half of the dynamic folk duo, the Brothers Reed. 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.
Day-Of-Show Live Performance Order:
- Francis Larson – Scottsdale, AZ
- Annie Anna – Tucson, AZ
- Ryan David Orr – Lakeside, AZ
- Gabrielle Pietrangelo – Tucson, AZ
- Jon Frailey – Tucson, AZ
- Arielle Silver – Toluca Lake, CA
- Lara Ruggles – Tucson, AZ
- Phil Reed – Medford, OR
2025 Judges
Becca Smith – Becca Smith is one half of Admiral Radio, the other half being her beau and fellow songwriter, Coty Hoover. The duo won the 2024 Stefan George Memorial Songwriting Competition, and now Becca will be joining the competition as a judge for its 2025 iteration. Becca and Coty’s songwriting has also been acknowledged by the LEAF NewSong Competition, American Songwriter’s Lyric Contest, the Kerrville Folk Festival’s Grassy Hill New Folk Competition, and Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend Retreat, which Becca was a part of the most recent version of. South Carolina’s Admiral Radio continues to tour the country, with appearances in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Colorado shortly following the 40th Annual Tucson Folk Festival.
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.
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.
Fox and Bones – For the first time in festival history, one of our songwriting competition judges are actually a unit! Fox and Bones, the Portland, Oregon folk, rock, and pop duo, will be operating in unison to score each of the finalists. Alongside their accolades as songwriters and national touring artists and performers, Scott Gilmore and Sarah Vitort also produce Portland’s Folk Festival each winter.
Virginia Cannon – Virginia Cannon is a music industry consultant with decades of experience. Having also curated a successful slew of songwriter series between Nashville and Tucson, she currently hosts a songwriters showcase series at Brother John’s that occurs on the fourth Saturday of every month. She is passionate about coaching young music artists and has helped many notable names reach higher levels of acclaim. Her “Young Superstars” concert series, which will be returning to a Tucson stage soon, has shone the spotlight on these artists as they gain experience performing in front of a live audience.
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.
2025 Additional Performances
SHOW OPENER (6:00 PM – 6:30 PM) – Admiral Radio – 2024 Songwriting Competition Winners
Inspired by their 1941 wooden Admiral radio, this South Carolina- based husband and wife duo creates an Americana sound rooted in tradition that touches the heartstrings of the modern-day listener. With tight vocal harmonies, endearing storytelling and authentic energy, Becca and Coty hold a presence that is palpable and real, both on and off stage.
SHOW CLOSER (8:30 PM – 9:00 PM) – Fox and Bones – 2023 Songwriting Competition Winners
Scott Gilmore and Sarah Vitort are Fox and Bones—energetic offbeat folksters with a retro-tinged, soul-stirring, modern vintage bent. The indomitable duo has brought their optimistic Americana polish to international stages shared with the likes of Rayland Baxter, The Dead South, ZZ Ward, Fantastic Cat and ALO among others.
2025 Songwriting Competitors In-The-Round
Join the eight Songwriting Competition finalists for a low-key songwriters round bloc on the Wildflower Stage from 1 PM – 3 PM on Saturday, April 5! The finalists will be given an opportunity to perform original songs in a relaxed setting, split into two “in-the-round” sets of four acts each.
1 PM – 2 PM: Annie Anna, Gabrielle Pietrangelo, Jon Frailey, Lara Ruggles
2 PM – 3 PM: Arielle Silver, Francis Larson, Ryan David Orr, The Brothers Reed
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
2025 – Phil Reed – Medford, Oregon
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