The Ballad of Berggren
An Adirondack Voice Echoes Through the Eddies Hall of Fame
The hall at Proctor’s was abuzz, a low thrum of anticipation that only a gathering of music people can generate. Names, familiar and less so, hung in the air—inductees into the Eddies Music Hall of Fame, a regional pantheon honoring those who’ve shaped the 518 music scene. Among the eight celebrated that March evening in 2025 was Dan Berggren, a name as steady and true as the Adirondack granite beneath his boots.
Dan Berggren, now among 48 “518” artists honored in the Eddies Hall of Fame.
Berggren, introduced as “a beloved folk artist and storyteller whose songs capture the heart and history of the Adirondacks and beyond,” approached the lectern with quiet dignity. This was not the boisterous entry of a rock icon, but the steady presence of a man rooted in the soil and stories of his home.
“He was raised on the land farmed by his mother’s family for generations,” the announcer said, and you could almost smell the balsam and hear the rustle of trees in that invocation. It is this very rootedness that defines Berggren’s music—a sound that has branched across borders, yet remains tethered to the spirit of the mountains.
To understand Dan Berggren is to understand the Adirondacks. A place of vast wilderness and hardscrabble perseverance, it is a region where people endure, remember, and sing. Berggren didn’t just observe this landscape; he lived it. He “grew up on the land,” and worked in the woods with forest ranger and survey crews. This intimacy with the land—with the rhythms of the seasons and the voices of its people—infuses his songwriting with a reverence that is both personal and profound.
His songs are not mere melodies; they are living archives. Each lyric is a distillation of local memory, echoing the ballads sung in logging camps by Irish and French Canadian workers—songs forged in labor and longing. “The music of the Adirondacks was a way of knitting disparate lives together,” Berggren said at the Eddies. His work does the same: it gathers up voices and stories and holds them aloft in song.
Take “Big Beams”, written for the dedication of a restored barn. The phrase becomes a metaphor: “people in our lives who are our big beams—our parents, our teachers, our elders.” The barn stands, but so does the emotional architecture it represents. That is the Berggren way—finding the universal in the particular, seeing the sacred in the everyday.
His path to recognition was neither straight nor smooth. After a military stint in Germany and Belgium working in radio, he returned home to pursue a master’s degree at Syracuse University. “That experience helped me get in the door,” he recalled. But the folk music scene was not always welcoming. “If you can play country western or rock and roll, come back. Folk music doesn’t attract people,” venues told him. So he bought his own PA system and played wherever he could, even in bars that weren’t ready for storytelling songs.
“But I would much rather sit in a room and tell stories,” he said. “Stories that lead to songs, that remind someone of their parent, or a place they used to camp.”
That impulse led him to Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, the oldest continuously operating coffeehouse in North America. His first open mic in 1985 was a kind of homecoming. “Lena liked my 15 minutes on her stage and invited me back for a show in November. I’ve been performing there every year since.” It was at Caffè Lena that his “gentle wit” and “songs with great choruses” found their most enduring audience.
Beyond the stage, Berggren has been a dedicated educator, eventually becoming professor emeritus of audio and radio studies at SUNY Fredonia. He received the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1992—not just for teaching sound, but for teaching listening. His Uncle Van once challenged him, "Close your eyes and tell me what kind of tree is behind you,” then pointed out how the wind sounds different blowing through a spruce than through a white pine. That single lesson opened a lifetime of learning to hear what others might miss.
Berggren has passed on that skill and spirit through programs like Folk Club Kids, a children’s music series, and Roots and Branches, a weekend at Great Camp Sagamore where young musicians explore North Country music.
“The goal,” he says, “is to perpetuate folk music and music of the Adirondacks”—not just the songs, but the soul.
His induction into the Eddies Hall of Fame isn’t just a personal accolade—it’s a moment of recognition for a form of storytelling that is deeply regional and quietly revolutionary. As Vermont Public Radio noted, his work is “a genuine treasure. Fresh and timeless, full of courage and down-to-earth richness.” A radio station in Slovenia called him “a wonderful and careful songwriter who makes every word count.” Indeed, he does.
At the Eddies, Berggren expressed gratitude to the mentors, family members, and fellow musicians who lifted him up. “There’s a wonderful energy in the room when people sing along,” he said. “Getting folks to sing along on the choruses—that’s the joy.” And as he closed his remarks, someone in the back started to hum, and others soon joined. Not loudly, not perfectly. Just voices—knitted together by melody, by memory, by love.
Dan Berggren is more than a musician. He is a keeper of stories, a steward of song, a living echo of the North Country’s voice. His induction is a well-earned honor—but the ballad is still being written. In community halls and forest clearings, on college campuses and campfire rings, his music continues to ripple outward. It reminds us that to be human is to remember, to sing, and above all, to listen.
