Don Cento

Don Cento’s three-decade career spans jazz, indie rock, and Americana. He has toured and recorded with numerous award-winning artists including Sarah Jaffe, Ume, Little Jack Melody, and Chomsky. His production work extends across genres from metal to classical with artists like Jerry David DeCicca, Matt Kivel and Vitskär Süden on labels like Drag City, Bloodshot, Ripple Music, Worried Songs, Idol Records and Tompkins Square. His contributions to these projects have been admiringly noted in features on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Uncut, SPIN, The New Yorker, and Aquarium Drunkard. Cento has also performed on stages at ACL Festival with members of Belle and Sebastian, Charlie Sexton, and David Grissom. As a solo artist, Cento has released music under the moniker El Cento and with instrumental group Shibboleth, scoring placements with both on FOX, MTV and Discovery.

Cento Threeo: Halfway to Mellowtown

Read "Halfway to Mellowtown" reviewed by Ken Hohman

by Ken Hohman
August 6, 2026

For those old enough to remember and hip enough to latch on to it, the '90s were a time when thick chords and spacious tremolo guitar twang were back in fashion. Taking a nod from the late '50s sound of Link Wray and Western swing guitarists like Eldon Shamblin, the sound could be heard in TV and film with David Lynch's Twin Peaks and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, the pioneering work of guitarist Marc Ribot, aging surf guitarist Dick Dale (who still had ...

“Don Cento could easily be described as the thinking man’s musician.”
Texas Music Magazine