Ross Sutter

have established individual reputations as a musician and a writer, but when they perform as a pair their work has the kind of counterpoint and easy intimacy unique to sibling acts. A Sutter Brothers performance is a fun-filled blend of music, storytelling, and poetry, highlighting their small town, preacher's kid roots and Scandinavian heritage.

Ross is best known as a singer of Scandinavian, Scottish, and Irish songs, and for his wide repertoire of American traditional and popular songs.   He accompanies himself on guitar, dulcimer, button accordion, and the Irish bodhran. He has performed throughout the region and beyond, from concert halls to libraries and schools, and from outdoor festivals to senior centers. His music is featured on the recordings Walking on Air, Up the Raw, Crossing the Shannon, Hunger No more, and others, including his popular children’s album,  Mama Will You Buy Me A Banana. 

Primarily a poet, Barton has published poems, essays, and stories in over a hundred magazines and produced eleven books, the most recent of which is Cotton Grass: New and Selected Poems of the North (Nodin Press, 2024). My Father’s War and Other Stories (Viking, 1991, U of MN 2000) won the Minnesota Book Award for Fiction. The Book of Names: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions, 1993) won the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. For several years, Sutter wrote and broadcast monthly commentaries for Minnesota Public Radio, and these essays were collected in Cold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map (U of MN, 1998), which won both the Minnesota Book Award for Creative Non-fiction and the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award.

Bart graduated from Southwest Minnesota State University and earned an M.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University in 1975. In 2011 he retired from more than a decade of teaching full-time at the University of Wisconsin, Superior. 

Website: http://www.bartonsutter.com/