Ed Randazzo

Pennsylvania singer-songwriter Ed Randazzo has spent nearly two decades building a body of work rooted in blues, folk, Americana, and the landscapes and stories of his home state.

A native of Northeastern Pennsylvania, Ed Randazzo emerged as a recording artist in the late 2000s, developing a songwriting voice drawn to memory, place, loss, resilience, and the lives of ordinary people. Central to that journey has been his long-running creative partnership with singer-songwriter, producer, and founding member of The Badlees, Bret Alexander.

(The Badlees—Ron Simasek, Bret Alexander, Jeff Feltenberger, Paul Smith & Pete Palladino)

Randazzo and Alexander first worked together on “Ring Them Bells” in 2008, beginning a collaboration that would continue across albums, singles, live performances, and nearly two decades of music. Their work together includes four full-length albums, including the latest, Wishing on a Train, as well as songs such as “Still Cry” and “I Need a Woman.” The retrospective collection, Who’s That Man? Collected Songs 2008–2018 brought together recordings from the first decade of their partnership, including a limited vinyl edition.

Another enduring creative relationship began in 2009, when Alexander introduced Randazzo to musician and visual artist Tony Halchak, suggesting that Halchak create the artwork for Randazzo and Alexander’s debut collaborative album, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean. What began with that record developed into a lasting friendship and creative partnership. Halchak became the resident “record dresser” for Randazzo’s releases, helping shape the visual identity surrounding the music while also contributing as a musician and collaborator.

That partnership expanded further in 2014, when Randazzo, Alexander, and Halchak formed Miner Blues, a musical outfit that grew from their friendship and shared work and provided a live-performance extension for all three artists. The project brought together three distinct creative voices and added another dimension to relationships that had already developed through years of recording, songwriting, design, and performance.

(Bret, Ed & Tony collectively as Miner Blues in 2014)

Throughout his career, Randazzo has remained closely connected to Pennsylvania’s independent music community. He has shared bills and stages with artists including Spencer Bohren, Gabriel Gordon, Alexis P. Suter, Grammy Award winner Mike Farris, Clarence Spady, Mike Miz, Dustin Douglas & the Electric Gentlemen, Phyllis Hopkins, and Teddy Young, and has collaborated with musicians and songwriters across Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

His live work has included appearances at the Briggs Farm Blues Festival, New York City’s The Bitter End, and venues throughout the region. Randazzo received three nominations for Scranton’s Steamtown Music Awards and was named Blues/Rhythm & Blues Act of the Year in 2015. His music also appeared in the 2017 PBS documentary, Black Guides of Mammoth Cave, extending his work beyond the stage and recording studio.

In 2018, Randazzo relocated from Northeastern Pennsylvania to Erie, beginning another chapter in both his life and music. While his surroundings changed, Pennsylvania remained a persistent character in his songwriting: its towns, railways, distances, histories, and people continuing to provide both setting and emotional geography.

After several years away from making a full album of new material, Randazzo began developing songs with Alexander and Scranton songwriter Tom Flannery in 2021. In May 2023, he returned to Northeastern Pennsylvania to record with Alexander, beginning the sessions that became Wishing on a Train.

Released August 30, 2024, Wishing on a Train marked Randazzo’s first full-length collection of new material in nearly a decade. Produced with Alexander, with additional production by Paul Smith, the record brought together longtime collaborators and new voices while reconnecting Randazzo with the musical landscape from which his work first emerged. Songs of movement, memory, separation, home, and return gave the album a distinctly Pennsylvania sense of place while expanding the roots-oriented sound that has followed him throughout his career.

Across his catalog, Randazzo’s work is less concerned with fitting neatly into a single genre than with telling stories. Blues, folk, roots music, and singer-songwriter traditions provide the vocabulary, but the connective tissue is emotional: the ways people carry the past, the places they leave, the people they lose, and the things they bring with them.

Nearly two decades after his first recordings with Bret Alexander—and with creative relationships like his enduring friendship and collaboration with Tony Halchak woven throughout that history—Ed Randazzo continues to write from the intersection of memory and place, following the stories, voices, and sometimes the railroad tracks that lead home.