Dr. Scott Simpson is a songwriter, poet, author, educator, and indie music producer living in the quiet beauty of Spearfish Canyon in the Black Hills of South Dakota. A lifelong creative, he has been writing songs and recording music since childhood and has independently produced and released more than sixty albums since 2000, with music available worldwide through major digital platforms.
Originally trained as a poet and literary writer, Scott completed his Ph.D. in Creative Writing in 1997 after years of teaching high school and college English and directing theatre productions. His early poetry appeared in a wide range of literary journals and publications, including a 2000 Pushcart Prize nomination in poetry. Over time, his creative focus expanded from poetry into songwriting, multimedia storytelling, educational writing, and interdisciplinary artistic work exploring meaning, identity, spirituality, memory, creativity, human relationships, and the changing role of technology and artificial intelligence in human life.
Scott is the author or co-author of numerous books, educational resources, poetic collections, and curriculum projects centered around storytelling, relational learning, culturally responsive education, spirituality, and human development. His publications range from poetry collections and reflective nonfiction to educational frameworks and Indigenous-centered learning materials used by teachers and schools throughout the United States. His recent writing increasingly explores the intersection of creativity, spirituality, artificial intelligence, storytelling, and human identity.
For more than seventeen years, Scott has served as a Learning Specialist with Compass Partners in Learning in Rapid City, South Dakota. During that time, he co-developed and now co-directs the WoLakota Project, which provides educational resources and training related to Native American Essential Understandings, Indigenous storytelling, and culturally responsive education for schools throughout North Dakota, South Dakota, and beyond. A central part of his facilitation work involves leading Circles of Trust retreats and storytelling-centered learning experiences where participants gather in respect-filled spaces for reflection, dialogue, and personal narrative work.
Scott has also composed music for educational and documentary film projects, including The Green Siblings Project, which tells the civil rights and school desegregation story of Little Rock’s Treopia, Ernest, and Scott Green, and Tasunke Witko, an award-winning documentary about the life of Crazy Horse. He composed and directed the music for the Black Hills-themed stage musical Deadeye’s Wild West, produced in Spearfish and Lead during the summers of 2014 and 2015, and continues to develop new multimedia and theatrical projects exploring the cultural and spiritual role of storytelling and songwriting in modern society.
Working primarily from his home studio, Dancin’ Moon, Scott’s music spans an unusually wide range of genres and influences, including folk, rock, blues, bluegrass, Americana, jazz, pop, orchestral soundtrack, acoustic instrumental, spoken word, alternative spiritual music, experimental soundscape work, and children and family music through Nanapapa, the musical collaboration he shares with his wife. Across genres, his songwriting remains rooted in the same aims that shaped his poetry from the beginning: to explore experience honestly, to search for meaning, to wrestle with beauty and difficulty, and to leave behind something human and recognizable in a rapidly changing world.
Though he occasionally performs live throughout the Black Hills region, Scott’s primary focus remains songwriting, recording, producing, writing, and collaborative creative work. Since 2022, he has also written custom songs for individuals and families around the world as both a Songfinch artist and through his own independent custom songwriting work.
More of Scott’s music, books, writing, and creative projects can be found at Dancin' Moon Studio and at www.ScottSimpsonMusic.com.
Subscribe to the Dancin’ Moon Songcast:
https://scottsimpsonmusic.podbean.com/
Interested in Scott’s reflections on spirituality, meaning, creativity, and culture? Explore the Faithfulcrum podcast:
https://faithfulcrum.podbean.com/