Jeff Warner is among the nation’s foremost performer-interpreters of traditional American folk music. The son of noted music historians Frank and Anne Warner, he accompanied his parents on field recording trips throughout the Eastern US and Canada as a child, sitting and listening while they recorded locals who remembered the old songs of their region. These significant recordings are preserved in the Library of Congress.

From 1979 to 1993, Warner toured nationally for the Smithsonian Institution, accompanying his songs on concertina, banjo, guitar, and pocket instruments such as bones and spoons. A founding officer of Folk Alliance International and past president of the Country Dance and Song Society, Warner received the CDSS Lifetime Contribution Award in 2016.

Warner edited his mother’s book Traditional American Folksongs from the Frank and Anne Warner Collection (Syracuse University Press, 1984) and produced the two-CD set Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still, comprising his parents’ field recordings. He has recorded for Flying Fish/Rounder and WildGoose (UK), and appears on Short Sharp Shanties, Vol. 1, Short Sharp Shanties, Vol. 2, and Short Sharp Shanties, Vol. 3.