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Carrie Newcomer
Sat., Sept 29, 2007
7:00 pm Reception; 7:30 pm Show

To my mind… Carrie Newcomer is much more than a musician. She’s a poet, storyteller, snake-charmer, good neighbor, friend and lover, minister of the wide-eyed gospel of hope and grace. All this, and she comes with a voice that declares: “Sit down here a minute and listen.” Who could ask for more?” Barbara Kingsolver

Carrie is a touchstone of authenticity in an image-driven, media-defined musical world. She is a beautiful singer and songwriter, and deeply refreshing. Rosanne Cash

Carrie Newcomer (born 1958), a native of Elkhart, Indiana, is an American singer and songwriter. During the 1980s she was a member of the folk group Stone Soup. Since the early 1990s she has released a number of solo albums.

She has pursed her passion for music and justice across two continents, and considered one of the definitive voices of the heartland. She has been an artist, a teacher, a truck stop waitress, a single mother, an activist and writes and sings about the human condition with compassion and clarity. Newcomer presents ideas of spirituality in her music that are compelling and challenge traditional interpretations of theology. Her music draws a bridge between the everyday and the divine rather than setting up a fence between them. Newcomer’s activism springs from her Quaker faith and belief in the dignity and value of the individual, the power of that individual’s calling, and the importance of the gathered community. She supports and contributes a portion of her touring CD sales to many charitable organizations, including America’s Second Harvest, The American Friends Service Committee and Planned Parenthood.

In 2006, Newcomer released her tenth Philo/Rounder release, Regulars and Refugees, a songwriting exploration of the human/spiritual condition told from the viewpoints of the characters in a small town diner.

 

For further information about Carrie or to hear music clips, please visit her website:

http://www.carrienewcomer.com

Fri., Oct. 19, 2007
7:00 pm Reception; 7:30 pm Show

This woman is great. . .  Period. Music Row

This classically trained and jazz inspired singer is redefining the genre and winning admirers around the country. Philadelphia Inquirer

Susan Werner, a clever songwriter and an engaging performer, brings literacy and wit back to popular song. The New Yorker

Susan Werner made her first public performance at age five, playing guitar and singing (where else?) at church. She began playing piano when she was 11, and after earning a degree in voice from the University of Iowa, she completed her graduate studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she performed in recitals and operas. While she’ll still on occasion perform “Madame Butterfly” to close any one of the 125 club dates she does annually throughout the U.S. and Canada, she opted to forgo a career as an opera singer and dedicated herself to songwriting, performing at coffeehouses from Washington D.C. to Boston.

Werner launched her recording career with the self-released Midwestern Saturday Night in 1992, which was followed by Live At Tin Angel in 1993. The second album impressed executives at Private Music/BMG, which released her major label debut Last Of The Good Straight Girls in 1995. She also received critical accolades for her subsequent recordings Time Between Trains (VelVel, 1998) and New Non-Fiction (Indie, 2001). She has toured the nation with acts such as Richard Thomson, Keb Mo and Joan Armatrading, and was featured in a 1998 Peter, Paul and Mary PBS television special as one of the best of the next generation of folk songwriters.

From her folk/pop beginnings, to the songbook flavored I Can’t Be New and now The Gospel Truth, Werner relishes the challenges of being a creative free spirit and says she’s in an exciting new phase of doing themed projects. “I’m consciously choosing to do that now,” she says, “not only because these types of projects challenge and interest me so much but because in a vast marketplace of ideas, I’ve found that it’s good to give the audience a clear concept and a specific point of reference where we can engage each other.”

“The music industry loves to pigeonhole recording artists,” Werner adds, “but I like to see myself as having more of a painter’s career, giving myself the freedom to try entirely new things, to incorporate new colors, new language into my songs.” And with The Gospel Truth, she says, “I am trying to simply convey the reality of being a skeptic in a landscape of believers, what it’s like to sit there in the pew, and to see what feelings, what songs, show up. Some of these tunes are uncertain and distrusting, for sure, but some of these seem more beautiful and true than I’d ever written in any other style on any other project. And I had to go back to church to get them. Who knew?”

For further information about Susan or to hear music clips, please visit her website:

http://www.susanwerner.com

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Sun., Nov. 11, 2007
7:00 pm Reception; 7:30 pm Show

The pre-eminent male singer/songwriter of the new folk movement. Rolling Stone

He’s far more than just an entertainer; he’s an entire generation’s poet. Conductor, Winfield Symphony

Godfrey Daniels is one of the oldest and most venerable music institutions in eastern Pennsylvania. A small neighborhood coffeehouse and listening room, it has long been a hangout for music lovers and aspiring musicians, and in the late 1970s, one of these was a young Moravian College student named John Gorka. Though his academic course work lay in Philosophy and History, music began to offer paramount enticements. Soon he found himself living in the club’s basement and acting as resident M.C. and soundman, encountering legendary folk troubadors like Canadian singer/songwriter Stan Rogers, Eric Andersen, Tom Paxton and Claudia Schmidt. Their brand of folk-inspired acoustic music inspired him, and before long he was performing his own songs — mostly as an opener for visiting acts. Soon he started traveling to New York City, where Jack Hardy’s legendary Fast Folk circle (a breeding ground for many a major singer/songwriter) became a powerful source of education and encouragement. Folk meccas like Texas’ Kerrville Folk Festival (where he won the New Folk Award in 1984) and Boston followed, and his stunningly soulful baritone voice and emerging songwriting began turning heads. Those who had at one time inspired him — Suzanne Vega, Bill Morrissey, Nanci Griffith, Christine Lavin, Shawn Colvin — had become his peers.

In 1987, the young Minnesota-based Red House Records caught wind of John’s talents and released his first album , I Know , to popular and critical acclaim. With unusual drive and focus, John hit the ground running and, when an offer came from Windhan Hill’s Will Ackerman in 1989, he signed with that label’s inprint, High Street Records. He proceeded to record five albums with High Street over the next seven years: Land of the Bottom Line, Jack’s Crows, Temporary Road, Out of the Valley, and Between Five and Seven. His albums and his touring (over 150 nights a year at times) brought new accolades for his craft. Rolling Stone called him “the preeminent male singer/songwriter of the new folk movement.” His rich multi-faceted songs full of depth, beauty and emotion gained increasing attention from critics and audiences across the country, as well as in Europe where his tours led him through Italy, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Switzerland and Germany.

Gorka is known for applying his rich baritone vocals to a wide range of song forms--intimate confessional songs about love and loss, humorous observations about daily life in his neighborhood, poignant commentary on political moods, and exuberant explosions of unmitigated joy.

For further information about John or to hear music clips, please visit his website:

http://www.johngorka.com

Sat. Dec. 1, 2007
7:00 pm Reception; 7:30 pm Show

Canadian songbird Lynn Miles sings lusciously on her fifth country-tinged, folk-pop album. Smart lyrics abound as she expounds on love lost and gained, sketched with dark hues and rising tempos. Billboard

With her crystal-clear voice and an insightful songwriting style, Ottawa, Canada’s Lynn Miles is one of the most acclaimed singer/songwriters to cross the border since Joni Mitchell in the late 1960’s. Dallas Morning News

Born outside Montreal in Sweetsburg, Quebec, Lynn Miles grew up in a musical home. Her father played the harmonica and listened to his jazz collection while her mother was a lover of both opera and country music. Miles’ mother recalled once that she knew when Lynn had finally fallen asleep in her crib: Lynn stopped singing. During her elementary school years, Miles learned guitar, violin, flute and piano. She began performing in public at around the age of sixteen and when she was in her early twenties she studied with an opera singer to strengthen her voice and enrolled for a time at Carleton University in Ottawa where she studied classical music history and theory. Years later, Miles put this training to good use while serving as a voice teacher at the Ottawa Folklore Center. While at the center, she taught voice to many students including a then fourteen-year-old Alanis Morrisette. The lessons came just prior to the making of Morrisette’s first album.

Her latest album, Love Sweet Love (Red House Records – February 7, 2006), is a road album. Songs like “Night Drive”, “Sweet and Tender Heart”, “8 Hour Drive” and “Never Coming Back” trace the metaphorical journey of the human heart, sketching a roadmap of modern relationships and heartache.

For further information about Lynn or to hear music clips, please visit her website:

http://www.lynnmilesmusic.com

Sat. Jan. 12, 2008
7:00 pm Reception; 7:30 pm Show

A performance by Eric Bibb is an enriching experience – both musically and spiritually. Purveying a beautifully realised and deftly accomplished, soulful and gospel infused, folk- blues, Eric has no problem melding a traditional rootsy American style with a subtle contemporary sensibility. As one critic wrote “Eric’s singing and versatile guitar playing fuses a variety of genres to become a New World Blues”.

For further information about Eric or to hear music clips, please visit his website:

http://www.ericbibb.com

One of the finest singer-songwriters in America. There are a lot of good ones, but when it comes to the really great ones it boils down to a select few – he’s one of them. Mountain Stage (NPR)

This down to earth musical storyteller, with his dry, barb-witted social commentary combined with a deep underlying compassion, knows that the best stories are the little things in the lives of everyday people trying to muddle through with some grace. His great gift as a writer is to infuse these stories with humanity and humor, making them resonate profoundly with his listeners. His spoken introductions to his songs can be as spellbinding as his colorful lyrics, which he brings to life with a well-travelled voice and a delivery that's natural and conversational. His groove-oriented strumming and fingerpicking draw on influences from the mountains of western North Carolina where he now lives, and from lots of different good old traditional folk stuff of all kinds.

Chuck Brodsky's songwriting pokes fun at political corruption, road rage, mischief he made as a kid, even dumping garbage in the river; he sings about unsung heroes and forgotten but incredible people…odd characters from the game of baseball, migrant fruit pickers, the Goat Man, a clown, or “Radio,” a developmentally disabled man and the love showered on him for 40 years at a high school in South Carolina (this song was used in the 2003 movie “Radio”). In addition to being fixtures on the Dr. Demento show, his songs have been recorded by Kathy Mattea, David Wilcox, Sara Hickman, Chuck Pyle, and many others, and his tune “Blow ‘em Away” was selected by Christine Lavin for Shanachie's 1996 “Laugh Tracks” album. He's appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs “Mountain Stage,” “Acoustic Cafe,” and “River City Folk,” and has performed three concerts of his celebrated baseball story songs at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Chuck has toured extensively throughout the US, Canada, and Ireland for 12 years, playing at folk festivals such as Tønder in Denmark, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Kerrville, Philadelphia, and Strawberry, as well as the Lincoln Center Out of Door series in New York, among others. Some of the artists he's appeared in concert with include Arlo Guthrie, Janis Ian, Pete Seeger, Tim O'Brien, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, John Hartford, Greg Brown, Gillian Welch, Dick Gaughan, Tom Paxton, Ferron, Richie Havens, Patty Larkin, Steve Forbert, The Kingston Trio, and Christine Lavin. His influences include John Hartford, Mark Twain, Nic Jones, Bob Dylan, Lowell George, Jackson Browne, Steve Forbert, The Carter Family, Woody Guthrie, and David Massengill.

For further information about Chuck or to hear music clips, please visit his website:

http://www.chuckbrodsky.com

Any fool can write a love-gone wrong song; it takes a real genius to write a love-gone-right one. No urban songwriter does that better than Curtis. Boston Globe

Curtis’ songs are beautifully and deceptively well crafted. . . her singing so heartbreakingly pure, pained and devoid of artifice as to suggest she knows not only your secrets, but your soul. Amazon.com

Curtis has toured extensively in North America in support of her albums, including playing at several festivals, such as the Newport Folk Festival. She has also supported, among others, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Dar Williams, Girlyman, and Bonnie Raitt. She also played on the final Lilith Fair tour.

Her songs have featured in Alias, Dawson's Creek, Felicity and Chicago Hope, as well as in several independent films. In 2006, she and Mark Erelli won the Grand Prize in the International Songwriting Competition for their song People Look Around, a song written in response to the hurricane Katrina disaster.

A film documentary on Curtis, entitled Tangled Stories, has been directed by Robert Millis. An interview with her is also featured on his current affairs program, American Microphone.

For further information about Catie or to hear music clips, please visit her website:

http://www.catiecurtis.com

Her endearing, clear-water vocal delivery, eloquent gift for storytelling (which has drawn repeated comparisons to such bastions of the Southern writing tradition as Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty and William Faulkner) and easy command of a full-range of American music styles, have combined to earn Campbell recognition as a formidable talent by critics, musicians and a discerning public. Kate's sublime Moonpie Dreams (1997) and Visions Of Plenty (1998) each garnered "Folk Album Of The Year" nominations from the Nashville Music Awards (as well as enthusiastic airplay by Triple- A, folk and Americana stations), while the southern-folk tinged Rosaryville (1999) and the gospel flavored Wandering Strange (2001) extended the upward-bound arc.

As the daughter of a Baptist preacher from Sledge, Mississippi, Kate's formative years were spent in the very core of the civil rights movement of the 1960's, and the indelible experiences of those years have shaped her heart, character and convictions ever

since. As a child of the South, her musical tastes were forged in the dampered, smoky fires of soul, R&B, Southern rock, country, and folk music. Kate Campbell’s music continues to inspire and enthuse a growing audience. Ballet Memphis featured songs from each of Campbell’s six CDs as well as a live performance by Kate and band at a ballet entitled South Of Everywhere. Campbell continues to impress audiences across the US and overseas and tours extensively in support of her CDs including tours to the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia.

For further information about Kate or to hear music clips, please visit her website:

http://www.katecampbell.com

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