Brought up on rock and roll, poetry, americana and King's Road punk, Vanot's eclectic erudition led him though the groves of Academe, a reluctant pedagogue and rock critic inevitably emerging onto the popular music stage, and a career as singer-songwriter which began with Virgin Records in 1993. It is his encylcopaedic knowledge of rock, folk and pop combined with  an unerring instinct and a natural affinity for the form which sets him apart. On his solo albums or in his instrumental compositions he accomplishes that most elusive goal: to travel the well-worn path of familiar forms, emblematic instrumentation and iconic voicings to produce a result which is wholly original. His latest contrbution to the Cézame label "Old Folks, New Folk" is another example of this: the artist totally at home with his subject.