Career
Raised in Lexington, Massachusetts, Staines began his professional career in the early 1960s in the Cambridge area. He began touring nationwide a few years later. He performs about 200 times a year and has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, and The Good Evening Show.
Staines"s songs include "Bridges", "Crossing the Water", "Sweet Wyoming Home", "The Roseville Fair", "A Place in the Choir", "Child of Mine", and "River".
His songs have been recorded by many other artists, including Peter, Paul and Mary, Makem and Clancy, Nanci Griffith, Mason Williams, The Highwaymen, Glenn Yarbrough, Jerry Jeff Walker, Schooner Fare, Grandpa Jones, The Grace Family, Hank Cramer, Coty Hogue and Priscilla Herdman. Staines has recorded 22 of his own albums, 15 of which were still in print as of 2005.
Staines"s songs have been published in four songbooks, If I Were a Word, Then I"d Be a Song. River; Music to Maine: The Songs of Bill Staines, and All God"s Critters Got a Place in the Choir.
Staines is left-handed and plays a right-handed guitar upside-down, with the bass strings on the bottom.
Consequently, he has developed his own fingerings and picking style. In 2004 his memoir, The Tour: A Life Between the Lincolnshire, was published.