Award-winning Iowa songwriter, Chad Elliott has performed for folk music audiences in the U.S. and Canada, sharing the stage with such great artists as Tom Paxton, Loudon Wainwright III, Odetta, Dan Zanes, R.L. Burnside, The Nadas and Storyhill. Elliott's songs stand out and have earned him accolades in the folk world over the past few years. Recently he was the winner of FolkAlley.com's Open Mic Finals. He also had a song chosen out of 300,000 songs as an award nominee for Top 20 New Folk Songs on Just Plain Folks. Often compared to James Taylor, Elliott has a similar voice with a relaxed fingerpicked style on the guitar, but he has many songwriting influences, some of them being: Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Greg Brown, John Denver, Chris Smithers and Tom Waits. With hundreds of original songs to pull from in his performances, Elliott will read the audience to create most of his setlist. He may lead the audience from an upbeat, fingerstyled blues song, into a soft ballad that then leads into a honky tonk sounding song, all of which are interlaced with stories from Elliott's unique life as an artist and musician. Stories about living with the homeless, about love, about divorce, about fatherhood, and about inspiration in the modern world.