Coltt Winter Lepley is a North-Appalachian songwriter, folksinger, poet, author, folklorist, former racecar driver, and full-time touring musician from Bedford, Pennsylvania. He always opens shows with,

“My name’s Coltt Winter Lepley. Coltt like the horse, but with two t’s, Winter like the season, and Lepley like myself.”

When asked about his name and its quirky spelling, he says, “It’s my government name, ask my parents. But my friends and Rup (Dad) have called me ‘Cowboy’ and ‘Hoss’ since elementary school.” Coltt’s known for his storytelling and poetic songs filled with literary characters. Pennsylvania Musician Magazine called Coltt “Bedford’s own poet laureate,” winning the 2023 and 2024 Entertainer of the year there. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing focused in fiction from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. He also has won writing awards in poetry and short fiction. Coltt has been described as having a cult following with songs often requested at venues from Pittsburgh to Wyoming to Nashville to New England such as “Crack Cocaine,” “Toilet Wizard,” “The Bandito,” “Doves and Pine Boxes,” and “Joe Goode – A Sailor Story,” among a prolific catalog of original pieces.

Coltt is now based back where he grew up in Western Pennsylvania and plays upwards of 150 shows a year. He makes stops at prominent stages, festivals, theatres, and more across the country. Coltt’s largest crowd so far consisted of just over an hour of music to 8500 people. In the last year or so, Coltt has played famous Folk, Americana, Traditional, and Country stages such as Americanafest’s September Social at Dee’s Lounge in Nashville, TN, Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Pine Grove Hall in State College, Pennsylvania, The Ruffed-Up Duck Saloon in Laramie, Wyoming, Club Cafe in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Waynestock Music Festival at New River Gorge, Fayetteville, West Virginia. In 2023 alone, Coltt performed 166 shows in 8 states including 3 tours, with a schedule put together on his own, working independently as a full-time musician in every definition of the word.

Coltt’s songs have been featured on distinguished songwriter channels such as Truthful Sessions, Wallflower Wanderer, Crabtree Sessions, and Adapt Sessions. He has also been interviewed and had songs featured on Studio 814 (WTAJ News), Hugh Shows – Pittsburgh, PA, Around the Alleghenies (FOX News), The Band Junkies from State College, PA, The Weird Turn Pro – Nashville, PA, Pennsylvania Musician Magazine’s music reviews (3 times) Music Savage’s songs to listen to, as well as being the subject of dozens of newspaper articles across the country.

“I always enjoyed songwriters who I held in the literary category of songwriting. I tried to acknowledge where the bar was set by my heroes, without setting any goal of meeting or exceeding it in doing my own thing. I wrote the songs I would’ve wanted to hear myself, which I’m sure is what everybody else says,”

Coltt says of his process before he went on to list his influences. A laundry list of songwriters and musicians included folks such as Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, Bob Dylan, Guy Clark, Woody Guthrie, Jean Ritchie, Doc Watson, Elizabeth Cotten, Leadbelly, Dave Van Ronk, Phil Ochs, Jason Isbell, Gillian Welch, Hank Williams, Stan Rogers, Blaze Foley, Son House, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Carter Burwell, Stephen Collins Foster, Pete Seeger, Joe Hill, and many others.

Coltt also noted that other writers outside of the songwriter medium have influenced his work such as Ron Rash, Charles Baudelaire, Steve Yarbrough, Charles Bukowski, Ted Kooser, Rick Bass, David Joy, Charles Frazier, Ernest Hemingway, Louis L’Amour, Edgar Allan Poe, Eugene O’Neil, Flannery O’Connor, Emily Dickinson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sylvia Plath, Cormac McCarthy, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, among so very many others.

Coltt’s love of fiction, poetry, and other mediums of art helped shape his love of literary songcraft.

“Some of my earliest memories are Stacey (Mom) reading The Complete Collection of Edgar Allen Poe Short Stories to me or listening to Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. She’d always be painting or doing something creative. Dad would take me to school and have Molly Hatchet playing. I had plenty of influences across the board immediately from an early age. Art was an integral part of life.”

Coltt mentions being influenced by classic works such as Wuthering Heights (one of his favorite novels) or classic cinema such as the spaghetti westerns like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Other interests and influences include Coltt’s love of local folklore. Bedford County was the original wild west for the thirteen colonies and home to the whiskey rebellion. So many stories including Indigenous peoples’ battles, highwaymen, train accidents, ghost stories, and cryptids helped shaped its romance. It was these stories, coupled with watching the tradesman and blue-collar laborers that found themselves telling stories and lies in his father’s garage after their workweek over some beers, that fed a desire for Coltt to begin thinking of story craft at an early age. One of his earliest memories is hearing the story of the Lost Children of the Alleghenies from his mother, a Bedford County historic event from the Blue Knob region, dripping with the magic of public opinion and supernatural legend craft. The true tale was eventually turned into novels and songs, including “Jacob’s Dream,” performed by Allison Krauss.

One of The United States’ first folklorists, Henry Shoemaker, is from the area. Following in the footsteps of folklorists before him, Coltt continues the story tradition with songs like, “The Ghost of Emmaline Bryn,” a murder ballad that seeks to give the female character (usually nothing more than the murdered party) agency, as she haunts and torments the man that took her life. This both breaks and upholds the traditions associated with the genre. Other local story tellers who have risen to national fame from the area include Kevin Kutz, Dean Koontz, and David Bradley – a PEN/Faulkner award winner.

“I’ve maintained the idea that our area (North Appalachia’s Allegheny Mountains – Western Pennsylvania) is just as rich in storytelling and culture as any of the other major areas people walk out from. I try and highlight that when I can and do my part to help cultivate that environment in a way that gives other young kids hope that being an artist, writer, songster, or anything of that nature is a real possibility here.”

Coltt hosts a free community writing workshop that promotes literacy with participants from eight to eighty years old from the tri-county area. The workshop consists of writers discussing and providing feedback on various pieces offered up by community volunteers. The workshops also includes a guided free-write, and lecture provided by Coltt or guest speakers.

“I started the workshop with the hope for folks to get back to writing, no matter what their skill level or prior experience was. Writing is for everyone. Art is for everyone. I’m proud to have started a group where different local ideas can flourish together in an environment that unites artists and writers. Anybody with a general curiosity for this stuff from our area with their own ideas is welcome.”

True to folksingers past, the idea of including his home’s heritage, struggle, and traditions are something stitched into the fabric of Coltt’s creations. The area Coltt grew up in (Bedford County, Pennsylvania) is one that is near and dear to him. Coltt’s logo is a “hex sign,” or “barn star,” born from his original design but based on stars from the region introduced historically by the Pennsylvania Dutch. These hex signs often adorn barns or outbuildings of local farms as symbols of good luck and prosperity, as well as identifying art pieces for different families and homesteads. Coltt’s lucky number is 4, which is also his former racing number. The logo is made up of two four-sided stars together in tradition of hex signs having six, eight, or twelve points, and the colors borrowed from original Pennsylvania Dutch imagery. The banner that houses this logo was hand-stitched in-state by Woolly Pennants.

Another great part of being home is that he’s around the people and his family.

“As an only child, I had to learn early to keep myself entertained by making up stories and songs in my head during the Summers or school breaks when I didn’t see kids all that often. My parents were my closest friends. Though I always was totally immersed in any hobby I ever asked them to get into. They (my parents) always supported every hair-brained idea I ever had - whether that was art, race cars, 4 leagues of baseball across 4 counties, moving to Boston in the middle of the night on a Craigslist ad, or driving a van by myself across the country to play a show in Wyoming. Thank God for my mother and her resolve to never deny my dream of being an artist. The world has enough adults who are bitter without accidentally making more. Though I think if I came home and told her I wanted to join the circus as a seal trainer, she would have supported me. Dad would’ve come to the big top tent too, though probably for the motorcycles in that big Mad-Max lookin’ dome, or the popcorn.”

Being home in Bedford County has always offered the grounding support of friends and family anyone would need after putting tens of thousands of miles in on the road every year. That hometown familiarity can make the creative process feel both stagnant and whole again, Coltt says of moving back. Though he says there is important work to be done within our own hills and culture right here at home.

“There are more young artists here who really could be the next great thing being told they’ll starve in that pursuit by their parents and their parents’ friends working in insurance or finance, who are miserable, by the way. Those kids need someone in their corner. I’m not a billboard success by any means, but I think I’m a good stand-in for proof of concept. I got to go back to my high school this past Spring and talk to a group of middle school and high school students about pursuing a career in the arts. It was the most nervous I’d ever been in front of a crowd, but those kids really did appreciate it. I felt like Pete Seeger. Insurance is a scam.”

Coltt travels the country playing shows, telling stories, and crooning to crowds with his witty personality to willing ears wherever they exist. Coltt is genuinely a road warrior, playing every calendar weekend of the year, and has even been known to play up to three shows a day. The road has provided Coltt with plenty of fodder for new stories and he’s made friends wherever he’s landed in his travels across the nation. Whether he’s sleeping in a Chili’s parking lot in Bardstown, Kentucky or in a Cracker Barrel in Cheyenne or taking water bottle showers at daybreak in Fort Wayne, Indiana–from concert halls to street corners from barns to boats, Coltt Winter Lepley has seen it. Life on the road is the call he hears and responds to 52 weeks a year. The road is his career, and now, closest friend. He often paraphrases an Oscar Wilde quote, that a person’s curse is that they becomes what they wish to be. Of this he notes,

“I was born to tell stories and go into the world to bullshit with people about my scribblings and their scribblings and see if we can’t manage a laugh or a nod about something together. I prefer folks as delusional as me.”