Tony Lewis Wiki Biography

Tony Lewis is an American singer-songwriter based in Switzerland. He is mainly known as a Country artist, but has made successful forays into other musical genres, including Jazz and Latin.

Lewis was born and raised in Orange County, California, and spent part of his youth in Hawaii. From a very young age music was his deepest passion, and by the time he was 11 he had taught himself piano and guitar. As musical influences from that time, Lewis cites the Beatles, Dylan and Motown as well as Sinatra and Nat King Cole. Summers visiting his grandparents in the rural Owens Valley of California exposed him to Folk and Country Western.

Lewis left home at age 15 citing a deep curiosity to see the world. While on a backpacking and hitchhiking tour of Europe in 1975, he was robbed and left on the side of the road with literally nothing more than the shirt on his back. This event was pivotal. He borrowed a guitar and for survival began playing on the street for coins. Soon he found himself playing in small clubs and abandoned busking in favor of a more advantageous performing environment.

During the next 18 years, Lewis traveled the globe performing in venues as diverse as a luxury hotel in Hawaii to a backwater pub in New Zealand. He also did some studio work with Lee Hallyday in Paris and spent a year and a half performing in Latin America as Cultural Ambassador for the US Government. During this time, he performed in some 30 countries on 4 continents.

Lewis decided to take up residency in Switzerland, and to record an album of original songs. “Wanted Man” was released in 1993, followed by his first Nashville-produced album “Another Country” in 1995 and the blues-edged “Dancin’ On The Edge” in 1998. On these CDs, Lewis pushed the limits of the genre by mixing styles as diverse as Blues and Jazz in with his Country compositions, often earning condemnation from purists.

After the 1999 release of a compilation entitled “Portrait”, Lewis changed direction and produced a solo album entitled “Naked”, playing all instruments and keeping things minimalist. His stated goal was “to rely on the songs for power, not on the production”.

Between 1993 and 2002, Lewis was also touring with his band “The Shooters”, regularly performing at major festivals in Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain and Scandinavia. He stopped touring in 2003 after a series of unrelated tragedies decimated his band. In a year and a half period, he lost pedal steel guitarist Helmut Schöni, guitarist Tom Wilson, and bassist Turi Rensch.

Lewis moved back to the US for some years, running a small vineyard in New Mexico. In 2008 Lewis returned to Switzerland and began reforming his band under that name “Tuff Love”. Working together with Canadian choreographer Guylaine Bourdages, he released in 2010 both a CD and CD/DVD package of Country songs especially created for Line Dance choreography. The project was lanced in Paris on Valentine’s Day, 2010.

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